From Loch Ness to Pompidou

Two separate trips from Israel this summer, with two grandchildren--Itay's bar mitzvah trip to Scotland and Noa's bat mitzvah present to Paris. They both confirmed that as long as our strength holds out, this is an ideal opportunity at an ideal age to learn who our grandchildren are and to discover hints of who they will be. I suppose they also learn who we are and what matters to us.
People keep asking: "Who decides where you go, you or the child?" We decide. We have made four such trips to date. The destination hinges on a combination of what we think the grandchild would like, what we want to do, and what opportunities come up that will control the cost.

Usually we plan, read, suggest and decide what happens each day. But there always seems to be something that's an "I must see the ..." For Noa hers led to standing two hours waiting in chilly drizzle on our last day in Paris to get into the elevator to the first level of the Eiffel Tower (a compromise with going to the very top). With Itay it was Loch Ness of monster fame that became part of our one day with a car and driver on our rainiest, most overcast day in the Highlands.

Specially memorable are the totally unexpected: Itay's patience, caring and understanding when Max ended up overnite in the Ft William hospital with a probable kidney stone. While I negotiated and waited for Max's dismissal papers in the morning Itay spent half the day alone at our B&B.(Max ended up fine but we missed some hours in Edinburgh and a Highland Games experience.)

A Noa moment was when she stood contemplating a piece of typographic art at the Pompidou Center museum of modern art and compared its roughness that she liked with what she achieved in her bat mitzvah invitation's purple pomegranates.

We have 7 more grandchildren to go in the next 8 years. Challenging to think about a precedent no one wants to break.

Stones that Speak

(As you will notice from the two month gap in postings, I am not much of a blogger. Problem is an excess, not a lack, of things happening in life.)

Tonight I experienced the conflation of time. I sat with Max on the stone curb of what archaeologists identify as a shop on the road that ran along the western wall of the Temple Mount when the Temple itself stood up above. Directly in front of us, protruding from the wall high above, were the stumps that remain of the staircase (now called Wilson's Arch) where once pilgrims climbed up to the Mount. And slightly to our left on the level where we sat was a heap of huge boulders that had fallen to the pavement below 2,000 years ago during the Roman destruction of the Second Temple.

Tonight was the beginning of a day of mourning and fasting, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, Tisha B'Av. On this day, Jews gather, sit on the ground, and read out loud the book of Lamentations that describes the horrors of the destruction in 586BCE of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the exile that followed. It is commonly attributed to Jeremiah who had foretold the destruction and lived to write this heartrending poem. Over the millennia Tisha B'Av has come to be a day of mourning for numerous Jewish tragedies that were said to occur on the same day, most notably the Roman destruction in 70CE of the Temple, rebuilt and enlarged by Herod.

We sat with some hundred or so student and adult tourists and residents of Jerusalem in an area assigned to the Masorti movement, Israel's name for Conservative Jews. This location had been granted to them so that they could sit men and women together with women reading as well as men. At this marvelous spot, they are out of sight of those Orthodox who for many years protested against them, sometimes violently.

Conservative Jews In Jerusalem no doubt would choose greater visibility, but to us this location on this night and the walk past the walls of the Old City into the excavation area, was an extraordinary gift.

What Is a Hilltop Settlement?

Moshe had been asking us for months to come and see what "hilltops" are really about. So when Ellen and David came from DC ready for everything we gathered Moshe and drove an hour north into Shomron. He assured us: No, they won't stone us; no we don't need a protected car. So driving our Nissan we took off to Yitzhar where Moshe's daughter Ayelet Hashachar and husband Akiva live with their three small children in packing crates converted into a liveable space. It was a hilltop overlooking the settlement for which it was a satellite. There were three or so other families in similarly makeshift homes. Akiva showed us his whole wheat grinding machine that will again grind wheat from his fields after the shmitta year ends and a new growth occurs.
Ayelet with a glowing smile was entrancing in her long cotton dress and head covering that she wore with the elegance of a fashion model. But fashion is far from the thoughts of these idealistic youth.
She explained that they came here because here they could have some land to farm. In the Galilee and the Negev they could not buy land. Not quite clear why but it was clear that they loved their scrubby piece of hilltop with its long view to Tel Aviv when the haze lifts. The children run about barefoot on the stony soil. Ayelet explained that they homeschool the two older children, the oldest was about 5. They decided they don't want to entrust their children to teachers who may not love them enough.
Fanatics? No. Maybe yes in their patience and willingness to live with very little and to believe they can build and grow. They reported that soldiers come from time to time and destroy what they build. Then they rebuild and it happens again.
Very hard not to love these gentle pioneers trying to harvest grain and grow kids on a piece of empty land connected to a settlement.
The questions remain, many not answerable where we were.
But it seems reasonable to say that until Palestinians realize that Jews must have their nation and live in peace in it, conversations about this disputed area and how it will be divided are premature. Meanwhile, Ayelet and Akiva are not obstacles to peace.

Jerusalem Sounds

Strange day. White cloud fragments floated against blue sky; winds that in winter would have sent us indoors tossed everything. Pointed cedars whipped their spines. Twisted pines revealed how they came to lean, forever imprinted with youthful experience. Bougainvillea enflamed their swaying cedar perches.
It was shabbat so the creaking trunks and shaking leaves were all the more evident in Baka's quiet streets.

And Noa practiced her haftorah for what will be in two weeks.

Dead Hand in the Sand

We sat on the sofa--me and Noa 12, Tamar 9 and Yarden 7--looking at every photo in David Rubinger's autobiography, "Israel Through My Lens--Sixty Years as a Photojournalist." It was a quiet shabbat afternoon before the week containing both the day of remembrance of fallen soldiers and the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence as a reborn state. This seemed like a way to experience the whole span of Israel since 1948. The photos of Rubinger throughout his life and those that he took from the other side of the lens are almost all in B&W, but that made no difference to these color soaked kids. As I would try to quickly pass the image of a dead Egyptian soldier's hand emerging from the Sinai sand, or the blood-spattered Song of Peace found in Yitzhak Rabins' pocket after his assassination, or a soldier nurse tenderly caring for an injured young Israeli soldier, the girls would call me back. "Tell us about it Savta." What happened?" And I would tell them as unembellished as I could about all the wars Israel was forced to fight, from the time in 1948 when young girls learned to throw grenades at the attacking Arab armies, to the Sinai war and to Rubinger's iconic photo of the Six-Day War of three young soldiers with eyes raised standing before the Western Wall, to the sad brooding image of Golda Meir on the day she resigned as Prime Minister after the Yom Kippur War. We also looked at the ecstatic smiles of Jews arriving in Israel from Morocco and Yemen and the resigned faces of elderly Soviet Jews surrounded by suitcases in a bare room in their new land. And I showed them the moments of peace--of Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin and King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin.
Children in Israel know more about life than one would choose for them. Our grandkids know that their uncle Alex died protecting their land. They miss the uncle they only know from their fathers and from Alex's smiling photos and from his glowing art. They grow up knowing that they will have responsibilities one day to help protect and to make better the land their parents chose for them. The images that stay in their heads are not those of other children. Their reality is not that of other children in other lands.
Noa, Tamar and Yarden immediately recognized Rubinger's photo of gnarled fingertips pushing into a seam between rough hewn stones where a crumpled white paper protruded from the seam. "It's the Kotel, Savta."
Surrounded by love, reality may be a gift rather than a burden.

The Red Balloon

What's a classic film? I think I found out yesterday when we took 6 of our Israeli grandkids between 7 and 11 to see "The Red Balloon." The book had been on our coffee table for a few months after my sister and I saw it and she bought it for the kids. It contains images from the original film, and almost entirely, except for the red balloon, in the grey tones of a poor gritty Paris neighborhood. I spied a one time only showing at 11AM on the last day of the Pesach vacation. So off we went to a small viewing room in the Jerusalem Theater complex to see 34 minutes of enchantment, conceived by Albert Lamorisse 52 years ago. So there we were, Max and me, seeing it again with the pleasure of return and six Hebrew-reading sabras reading subtitles and transfixed by Pascal Lamorisse, young son of the writer/director, who discovers and tames a gorgeous red balloon to be his loyal friend. I should not say more, but it wouldn't matter. Because knowing every word and moment of the tale diminishes nothing.

And when we left the theater, young women greeted each of us with a gift of a big red balloon on a stick.

Endlessly Discovering Jerusalem

Pesach vacation this week for kids so time for thinking of new things to do with them. Yesterday, there were all sorts of possibilities from Seguay tours to guided walks to open-sided covered vehicles. Seguays, in case you haven't seen them, are powered wheel-based platforms on which you stand holding on the handlebars and directing it with slight body movements. They are stable, easy to master and fairly slow but marvelous for moving around on roads or sidewalks while the cars are jammed up. Now it is a tour option with guide. We, that is, Max and I and Itay and Alex our eldest grandchildren from Tel Aviv, and Daniel and 4 of his kids decided on a tour thru a 400 meter section of an ancient Hasmonean water tunnel that carried water from two springs south of Bethlehem to the Temple Mt. The system depended on a 300 foot difference in altitude between the southern springs and the Temple Mount. In order to accomplish this completely by gravity the engineers more than 2,000 years ago had to design a serpentine rockcut system that preserved a constant small gradient. On a very hot day such as it was yesterday--close to 90 degrees--walking for some half hour in a cool tunnel, dark and narrow though it was, was a pleasure. As many times as we have walked in this area over the years we never knew about this long stretch of walkable preserved tunnel. It is only opened by pre-arrangement with guides. All this was followed by swimming in our neighborhood pool and a BBQ by Max and me with contributions by Wendy and Saul for 15 of us in our shaggy but poetic garden garden.

Jerusalem before Shabbat and Pesach kick in

You've got to know that almost everything I do day to day and need is within 10 minutes in one direction or the other. So today I walked to my hairdresser who on Friday works out of the basement room of the Kelmans, he the rabbi of Kol Haneshama Reform synagogue. Sam reduces prices on Fridays because conditions are a bit primitive and you have to wash your own hair over the bathroom sink. The hair story is incidental to Sam musing about all the different ways his clients deal with Pesach and how he himself manages to overcome the oppression he experienced as a boy with a demanding and unbending father. Then another woman arrived having an agitated conversation on her cell phone with her daughter who decided not to come to the planned seder at a friend's house. Obviously disturbed about this rebellion she resisted Sam's attempt to start a conversation about her agitation. He offered that it was best to ignore the daughter's decision. Woman in chair said there was more to it than that and so it ended.

Max phoned to alert me to the chametz burning (symbolic burning of forbidden grain products that you can't eat during the week of Pesach) that Saul's family was about to do in the park opposite their house. While rushing to be present at the fire-making that kids always love--they are 12, 9 and 7--I passed the chametz burning on the abandoned railroad tracks between Baka and the German colony where a friend from our former shul in DC was hanging out on the edge of the smoke with people for whom this is an annual event, at least as important for the conversations as for the ritual. All along were small clumps of charred newspaper and pieces of soon-to-be- forbidden bread. And those who weren't burning were rushing around buying gifts for hosts, last minute I-may-need-this before Monday (the end of shabbat and Pesach in Israel while outside it is Tuesday)items. Neighbors were loading up their van to drive to his mother's town in the north for the seder.

You don't have to know much or be particularly observant to realize that something unusual is going on today. Judaism for a few hours exposes itself on the street.

Honoring Sayef Bisan Who Died for Israel

Staff Sergeant Sayef Bisan, 21, from the Druze village of Jat in western Galilee, was killed at the Kissufim crossing to Gaza by Palestinian terrorists on April 6. Sayef was serving in an elite reconnaissance unit, Egoz, of the Golani Brigade. His father served in the IDF; his brother is a combat officer. His Uncle said that Sayef was raised in a Zionist home, brought up to love his country. "We raise our children," he said, "to contribute to this country which we are part of."

We must praise and support these loyal Druze families whose sons stand side by side with Jewish Israelis in defense of our land and theirs. Making this effort is especially required at a time when the loyalty to Israel of some Druze and Bedouin and Israeli Arabs is uncertain. The next time we are in Western Galilee I want to stop at Jat to meet the Sayef family and tell them we honor them. Such a family, and perhaps the entire village, is a model of the way Jews and others lived before Palestinian hatred of Jews was fed to their children. Those days were not perfect, but they offered hope of coexistence without barrier fences against terror.

Depression and Uplift

I can't call myself a blogger until I begin to feel compelled by the process.
Yesterday, I spilled a lot of thoughts with Eve and Jack Menes after the piano recital of Ching-Yun Hu, co-winner of this year's' Rubinstein awards. We all just returned a couple of weeks ago from the US so we could talk about the Obama-Hillary spectacle and our hopes for McCain. But the triggers for my depression and uplift were two news pieces from the Jerusalem Post. One spoke about some U.S. congregations that are arguing over how to revise the prayer for the State of Israel. Why?--discomfort with the messianic language of the "first flowering of the redemption," feeling insulted as diaspora Jews by the "ingathering of the exiles," and being exquisitely sensitive to our enemies by not wanting to pray that the Israel Defense Forces will achieve "victory." This is a sickness of confidence in the quality of the Jewish people, a dismal lack of pride, a divorce from our ancient history. All this is addressed by the about to be released two disc DVD narrated by UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, with his chosen music throughout, affirming the awe-inspiring history of the Jewish people (read David Horovitz in the Jerus Post April 4). I'm ready to send the DVD to friends and family in the US who are not likely to stand up against the daily onslaught of hatred and diminishment of who we are.
We will cure ourselves--the signs are there, but, oh, so many Jews hold us back.

Purim, Medical Ethics and Life Building

The sun burned off the haze that hung over Jerusalem when we returned four days ago. The budding branches outside our windows promise a return of privacy and the renewal of our side terrace as a tree house. Kids have emerged as cuckoo clocks and snowmen, and IDF soldiers, Queen Esther and evil Haman. This morning a caravan left Jerusalem to bring mishloah manot, the traditional Purim packages of treats, to people under daily Kassam landings in Sderot.

We managed to avoid or ignore jet lag the day after we arrived to be with "Zeke" Ezekiel Emanuel at Hadassah Hospital for the first lecture in his honor on Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Having just met Zeke in DC it was nice to be greeted so warmly by him and his family and to meet his eldest daughter Rebekah doing chaplaincy at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital who will soon, I hope, be with us for shabbat.

The next night, granddaughters Noa and Yarden came with me to deliver Purim gift packages to the rooms of mostly poor and elderly Russians living out their days in the Diplomat Hotel in Talpiot, converted to a residence for them. Noa, 12,smiled her way into their hearts; Yarden, 7, was dutiful but ready to leave. As well as giving, the girls received candies. Noa charmed them with Russian words learned from her Latvian babysitter.

The same day, Leon Furchgott-Roth came for supper and a few good hours of talk about Princeton, physics, politics, being back in Jerusalem. He's visiting with a few Princeton friends along with their Chabad rabbi for Easter break. Other than our own family, there are hardly any people I find more important to be with than young adults embarked on and building meaningful lives. In Abraham Joshua Heschel's words quoted in Alex's book (Alex--Building a Life): "Let [young people] remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every deed counts, that every word has power....And, above all, let them remember to build a life as if it were a work of art." (television interview 1972)

DC to Jerusalem

We are on our way in a few hours. It's never pleasant for me to anticipate flights. Once I am on the way I stop thinking about the bad guys who might decide a British Air Plane on its way to Jerusalem is a fine target. Landing in Israel, life again feels normal and safe.
It's been a good 6 weeks except for two weeks of low energy from a bug--maybe bronchitis, not the killer flu that's floored some people. Setting up this blog was one small accomplishment that may lead to some compensation for not writing on assignment or by my own initiation. People have been the point for me of most of the time in DC, NYC and Tupper Lake. Satisfying to continue important friendships and to spend time with friends who want/need to share tough times.
Alex's book in Hebrew has focused a fair amount of my computer time. More to follow immediately when I return to act on the potential that I am sure it has for Israelis.
Then there is the family, much missed, who will be jumping into Purim shortly after we arrive.
Feeling grateful for all.

Murder at the HaRav Yeshiva

Strangely, although we still sit in Washington for another week and our sons and their wives and kids are in Israel, we have not yet spoken with them about the murder of 8 students yesterday in Jerusalem as they gathered to celebrate the arrival of the joyous month of Adar Bet.
What is there to say? We know that bad news about our family would have come immediately and we know where our families live and what they do and, thank G-d, we have no grandson learning at the HaRav yeshiva. So we sit here feeling the too familiar pain, disgust and anger that follows after inhumane murders.
Rabbi Danny Landes, rosh yeshiva at Pardes, sent a message this morning. When the news came of the murders, Pardes was remembering that five years ago two of their students, Ben Blustein and Marla Bennet, were murdered in the cafeteria at Hebrew University. This shabbat Rav Landes will spend at the HaRav Yeshiva, which had been his yeshiva, and then he will return to Pardes to respond with the community with learning and acts of chesed.
We are eager to be home. Grieving, remembering and carrying on are better done in Israel. So, too, is being angry and seeking to find the leaders that Israel sorely lacks today.

BB King and Benjy

When Benjy, our youngest son, was a teenager in DC, he and his friends talked about, heard, collected tapes of BB King. So when Strathmore, the new music center on Rockville Pike that's an exciting rival to the Kennedy Center, sent me an email about a BB King concert I asked Benjy if we should go to hear the famous 82-year-old blues guitarist and singer. "YES, YES, YES" came back to me. So last night we did. Sitting higher up than Max liked, we saw the great man who came on stage in a gold jacket after the warm up by a pianist and by his own seven-man band. He sat himself on a chair center front and for two hours controlled the band and us with a rambling mix of stories, songs, and appreciations of each of his musicians. He allowed his age to come into it all and to do little riffs on viagra and "ladies" and how much he loved them and how he did not like what today's rap and blues singers say about the ladies. He is a superb artist and performer. It didn't feel like a farewell appearance and he said it was not. But maybe it was and maybe it would be our only time to experience his magic. So thanks Benjy for this and so much more.

It's very valuable and absorbing to be in DC during this season of primaries and caucuses and endless conversations. Unlike Max who has decided he will no longer vote in US elections, I'm going to exercise my right as a US citizen. I still haven't found out how to get an absentee ballot now that we don't have a permanent residence in the US but I'm sure there's a way. I seem to be watching the downfall of Hillary, the rise of Obama and the steady presence of McCain as Republican frontrunner. The word "hate," until now reserved for Bush, seems to be used fairly frequently by Democrats who detest Clinton. Obama draws the warm fuzzies who love "hope" and "change." McCain, despite worries some have about his hot temper, is the controlled voice of experience.
I recommend reading David Gerlernter"s small book called "Americanism--the Fourth Great Western Religion." He traces the American self-evident credo of Liberty, Equality and Democracy back to the Puritans who turned it into American Zionism. Puritans transformed chosenness in the Old Testament to chosenness of themselves in their new land. Much has happened since the Puritans, but the United States continues to hold to a sense of mission and responsibility. Lincoln expressed this most memorably in his second inaugural and Gettysburg Address.

Second day blogging. Stuck trying to fix the type size of yesterday's blog. Maybe this one will be what I want. Need to import a photo of me. Meanwhile, trying to figure out who to tell about finding me here and how. All this sounds primitive to my ears and laughable, I'm sure, to others. I'd ask Jeremy for help but it seems that having his wife and new baby just arrive at home is reason enough to slog around here my self.

In this my first blog posting ever I'll explain why the name. I've had a running disagreement with a friend half my age or so who is the king of all bloggers in my mind. My point to him has been that emails to individuals are tailored to an image of a particular person. They are meant to speak to that person and have within them the expectation of an answer. Blogs are buckshot, landing far and wide in sometimes unknown places. But the name I've given my blog reflects something related but different. I really don't believe that every thought I have deserves to be known, nor do I want to share it randomly. So why am I succumbing? Simple, I need to write and haven't been writing enough lately and my life in two worlds is so full, so often gratifying and fascinating that I've decided to blog as a kind of exercise routine with uncertain expectations .