Cookies

Coffee dehydrates, must drink water. Water's boring, I shift to Coke. Coke dehydrates, I feel tired, drink some coffee, cycle resumes.

Jewish mourning traditions are wonderful, they really are. I even like our coffinless funerals that involve no beautification of death. Jews are buried in shrouds, the shape of the corpses clearly visible. The dead is dumped into the grave rather than lain into it. Before the act, the rabbi reads a line of the Mishnah: "Know where you came from and where you are headed, and to whom you will need to explain your deeds. Where you came from: a smelly drop. Where you are headed: the place of gravel, insects and worms. To whom you will need to explain your deeds: to the king of the kings of kings." Merciless? indeed. Poetic? 100%.

I also like the "shiva", the seven days of community mourning, during which the family receives guests and the memory of the lost one is recreated in conversation. I like it - in theory. In practice, it's exhausting. We are at my uncle and aunt's place in a northern suburb of the city. There's a long wooden table in the back yard, an espresso machine and plenty of good cookies. On the third day of the shiva, I'm completely choked with cookies. We're all bound to gain a few pounds thanks to this tradition. Indeed, we risk being soon afflicted with atherosclerosis and getting dumped into the place of gravel, insects and worms.

Ours is not a very traditional shiva. We eat warm food. We sit on normal chairs rather than low stools. We bathe and shower through this week. We do not observe the ban on leather shoes or jewlery. The mirrors in the house are not covered (by far Judaism's spookiest custom), but my grandmother is sitting there in the shirt she wore at the funeral, with its collar that was torn by the rabbi. It's truly a heartbreaking sight. She will continue to wear this shirt throughout the weeklong observence. The shiva doesn't let her nor us forget for a moment how much her life just changed. This is its purpose, this is its curse.

A very different challenge of the shiva is the "bar-mitzvah effect". I happen to suffer from mild prosopagnosia - a neurological condition impending recognition of people by their faces. My bar mitzvah was an absolute nightmare. I knew nobody there. My grandfather's shiva is even harder. At least at 13 I was quite sure everyone was there for me. I was supposed to recognize them, so a friendly smile and feigned recognition were always in order. Here many people have no idea who I am, others are my direct uncles. I do my best not to mix them up, and fail.

But there's a lot of love going around here. My aunt warmly hugs her two ex husbands to the astonishemnt of all, old friends of my folks appear at the door, thrilling them with their presence. My grandfather left behind a rich life story, fit to fuel many a conversation. The way he died, calmly and painlessly after having a beer and watching the England-Germany match, gives a great little story with which to break the ice. His last phone call, ten minutes before his heart failed, involved a detailed critique of the English team's disastrous loss, so we even get to talk about the world cup. I just hope Wayne Roony knows to whom he needs to explain his deeds the day he kicks the Bucket. Shimon Yaar is waiting for him up there with a dish of fresh cookies and a few tough questions.

My Country, 'tis of Thee

You never bomb a school. No matter how much you are being shot at from within it. There are situations in which an army is blocked. It happens in chess, it happens at war. I'm no military expert, but there are ways to deal with being shot at from a school that has become a safe haven for civilians. You must consider it a fortress surrounded by an extra wall, one that will only be removed when all civilians are evacuated, and if they can't be evacuated, you retreat. The IDF prides itself on warning people to run away from buildings that are to be bombed, a few days ago it actually showered Gaza neighborhoods with leaflets calling for residents to evacuate, but where exactly? The Gaza strip is the most populated region on earth, it's a fenced corral. Everyone within it is trapped.

You never bomb a building that is home to families that escaped from homes you already bombed. My nation's military did it tonight, killing between 30 and 40 people and wounding scores. My tax money paid for the ammunition.

My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.

But what really kills me is how Israeli news media refuses to even refer to this as a tragedy; they only talk about how difficult it would be to justify this in the face of international press. We have ceased to be human. Everything boils now into "but they shoot qassams at us", the difficult living conditions in the south justify use of limitless force in the eyes of Israelis. They fail to see how the completely impossible living conditions in besieged Gaza were used to justify the use of force there. As in September 11th, the "terrorists" are "evil doers" without motives. They deserve the most brutal treatment, even when that treatment costs Israeli soldiers their lives, even when no long term, pragmatic plan is discussed, even when over 180 children are killed within a week.

We certainly gained a lot from bombing that school, we gained security for the south, no more rockets will fly there. We made good neighbors by bombing that school. We weakened Hamas. Now everybody in Gaza loves us and hates them! War makes wonderful sense. These words are written from an Israel in which racism is going through the roof and empathy has become nonexistent. Jaffa is lit in blinking blue, full of police cars waiting to arrest protesters. In the case of Jaffa protests, the participants (mostly Arab) get photographed and arrested after they return home.

Tomorrow I'm heading south to Ashdod to visit a bomb shelter and experience the anxiety there, but this war has already marked me with anxiety. Thank heavens for good friends, for Wassail and Jacques Brel. They help me go through this dark time, but if any darker times are in score, I will be singing of my country a very dark song.

There's no Better Way to Solve Complex Problems Than Killing Lots and Lots of People.

As of press time, at least 155 casualties were reported from the Israeli assault on the Gaza strip. This number is bound to rise over the next few days, and the tide of Palestinian corpses will doubtlessly carry more then a few Israeli ones with it. We just entered a new war. The name given the operation, "Cast Lead", is taken from a Channukah children song. It seems that the Israeli government is using the holiday spirit and the memory of a military struggle tousands of years old to enhance the concensus around its actions.

60 KM away from the battlefiled, I don't see anything of this war and the only thunders audible are in the voice of my father, critical of me for joining an anti-war demonstration yesterday. "There comes a time, when someone keeps showing aggression towards you, when you must give them a slap," he explains.

Yes, but what will be the result? what constructive scenerio can we draw?

"The more they shoot at us, the more eager they make us to attack them," he explains.

"And what do you think will happen the more we attack them?" I ask.

I agree that the shooting at Israel is intolerable and that if you threatened to slap, you usually should fulfill your threats, but this Gaza operation (try using the exciting word "operation" with one of the hundreds of widows, widdowers, orphans etc. that were created this morning), is deeply unpragmatic and looks like the clone of the 2006 Lebanese initiative. Not only is it a terrible, bloody disaster, but it's a terrible, bloody disaster that will solve nothing, and since when do terrible bloody disasters solve things anyway?

The Hammas heads don't really care for the lives of Gazans to begin with. They are in a terrible "Shaid" state of mind and will fight to the death, preferrably the deaths of others. Shooting at them won't stop Kassam and Grad rockets from flying into Israel, unless we kill the entire population of the strip.

I, being the pragmatic sort, am for one of the two: complete annihilation of all Gazans or discussing other options. No optional response to the Gaza bombing was ever discussed here except boom boom boom. Israel does not communicate with Hammas, does not give Egyptian and other mediators an easy time, Does not propose any solution for Gaza's dreadful siege situation, and yet almost its entire political spectrum, including the generaly Meretz party, support this pointless misadventure.

We've just been sitting here like hungry dogs waiting to devour the residents of that poor hellhole for years. Now our dog is off the leash. I can't stop it, (though I do intend attend the second anti-war demonstration, meeting tonight at 7:30 at the Tel-Aviv Cinemateque and marching down to Allenby), but the next time they tell me, as they often do, that "Arabs only speak the language of violence", I will have an answer ready.

Moscow-Petushki-Death

Due to a severe attention deficit problem, I find reading novels nearly impossible. I can write them, but not read them. In conversations where people exchange and compare literary adventures, I sit and nod, jealous.

But sometimes it happens, a book comes along and says: you can't read me? no problem, I'll force you. I will reveal to you each time you open me so much about the world, I'll make you laugh so hard and scare you so effectively that you won't be able to give me up. One such book is "Moscow-Petushki" by Venedict Yerofeyev. It took me nearly a month to go through its mere 212 pages, but I did it.

Moscow-Petushki is a "Russian drinking novel". Thus it was presented to me by Masha and Yonathan who lent it to me. In fact, it is a great work of late modernism, one that grabs Kafka, walks him one step further, tickles him and then kicks him off a cliff. Yerofeyev's book is a cult favorite, written in the Soviet Union during the the 70s. The text had to be kept away from authorities due to its deeply subversive nature, and was first published in a Russian language literary review in Israel. Thank god for Zionism.

The book is at one time as rustic as Robert Johnson's "Dust my Broom" and as profound as Bach's "Mattheus Passion". On one page is a recipe for a drunkards' coctail that contains no actual drink element, only nail polish and shampoo. On the next is an incredibly delicate allusion to Dante. I open the book randomly and happen directly on the following phrases, spoken by a female train passenger: "God knows where my teeth are, I am an educated woman and walk around toothlessly, like that. He knocked them out because of Pushkin. Here, I happened to overhear that you're having a literary debate. I thought to myself: I should come and sit with them and tell them how thanks to Pushkin I got my skull fractured and lost four front teeth."

Such is the plot: Venia takes the train from Moscow to a small town two hours away. He drinks the whole time, talks to some people, pretty much all of them miserable sorts, thinks a lot, hellucinates a bit. That's basically it.

Somehow. This exceeding simplicity allows Yerofeyev to penetrate us and touch us where it hurts the most. All of our fears are one fear: the fear of death. Everything we fear is a form or manifestation of death. Venia is galloping towards death on both an actual train and a train of thoughts, telling very funny stories, charming the reader and revolting him as he does so. Forget stairway to heaven, this is railway to hell. Literal death is not really the issue. Venia has death on his breath. He lives in a state of part death, two parts vodka Kubanskaya and 4 drops of nail polish.

It reminds me of the time my friend Naor found, in a newspaper film review, what he considered to be a perfect definition for life: "A few good jokes in a sea of boredom and obscenity". When life begins to resemble death too closely, as it does more and more with the advance of Moscow-Petushki's locomotive, it is life that we grow to fear. This isn't how I view the world usually, but I've been there, of course. I, too, sometimes find myself surrounded by too much death, and if only I had Yerofeyev's shiny mind, would have been the proud father of a very dark book. Even now as I write this, in full comfort and peace of mind, there's death in everything around me, from my near inability to read books, to the cup of tea I'm sipping, sugarless and dark. There's life there too, but focusing on that makes for a far less captivating read.

In Memoriam, Courage

Abie Nathan, who died yesterday at the age of 81, is remembered as Israel's most legendary peace activist. The author of this blog is indebted to him. When I was a child It is he who inspired me (along with his chum and business-partner John Lennon), to take pacifism seriously. He also inspired something else in me: wanderlust.

Abie Nathan was a great traveler and should be remembered as one. He didn't travel very far, there was no need to: going to Egypt from Israel in 1966, a one hour flight, was the furthest you could go on earth. To the Israelis it seemed more dangerous and more implausable then going to Mars. Nathan vantured out in a small plane, landed in Port Said and asked to see president Nasser. In Israel the media declared him dead.

He returned a few days later. Nasser did not meet him but the Egyptians fed him well, listened to him, put him up for the night and treated him with utmost respect. The Martians were actually quite friendly, fancy that.

In returning safely from Port said, as well as from from his meetings with other "enemies", Nathan made a very strong point, which still needs to be made and remade: It's easy to cause people to hate and fight each other if you don't let them meet. Israelis today are not allowed to visit cities in the occupied territories, nor anywhere in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and many other places that are incredibely relevant to our lives. The people of these places can't visit us.

While I understand this country's security needs, these travel bans also help to perpetuate the existance of such security need, since they are invaluable in perpetuating conflict in the region. We only know the Middle Easterners as "the enemy". Once they make us coffee, we won't shoot them with the same fervour, god forbid, and then how can we be driven like blind geese to dumb wars like in 2006?

Abie Nathan got imprisoned for merely meeting members of the PLO. Ten years later, prime minister Rabin did the same on the White House lawn, with all present cheering and cameras clicking. The only shift ever caused in the stagnant local status quo was inspired by a "weirdo", "criminal" globetrotter, as well as by several of those who met him and showed him hospitality.

The Land of Grieving Poets

Passionate poet Mahmoud Darwish died last night. He couldn't have chosen a more symbolic date. 9 in the month of Av on the Jewish calender is a memorial day to the destruction of Jerusalem. So much of Darwish's poetry is dedicated to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Are those two seperate Jerusalems? Not really. The destruction comemorated on Tisha Be'av, which had occured on the year 70 A.D., is certainly so far back in history that we can relate to it only as a symbol. As such - it is a powerful poetic reflection of the losses suffered by the Palestinians during the 20th century. When Darwish's childhood town of Barwa, near Akko, was destroyed by Israel to make place for the Jewish community of Akhihud, that was Jerusalem being destroyed, and so is Tskhinvali, and so is Hiroshima, and so is my grandparents' Shtetls in Slovakia and Poland. We are indebted to Biblical and modern poets for putting our sorrows into words, and to Jerusalem - whether mythical or real - for giving them ashen wings.

"Remember, o lord, what is come upon us.
Consider and behold our reproach.
Our inheritence is turned to strangers,
our houses to aliens.
We are orphans and fatherless,
Our mothers are as widows.
We have drunken our water for money,
Our wood is sold onto us.
Our necks are under persecution,
We labour and have no rest."

- Lamentations, 5, 1-5

"In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die."

- Mahmoud Darwish, "In Jerusalem"

Magic and Loss

I got this from Lin's blog.

It is the blog of an L.A. man who's wife (a childhood friend of a friend of Lin's) gave birth to a baby girl. The pregnancy was difficult and ended in a c-section. The following day the mother was finally strong enough to get out of her hospital bed and go to see her baby. When she did, she suffered a blood clot and died.

What was begun as a blog for sharing baby photos and stories with the extended family became the intensely photographed and written record of life as a single father in L.A., dealing with incomprehensable loss. I defied clicking on the link for a few days. This morning I did.

Famous Last Word

Legend has it that Gustav Mahler's last word was "Mozart", or rather: "Mozart!" I read somewhere that he opened his eyes, half rose from the bed, cried out the name of his compatriot composer, and passed on. some would say that this came a bit late, since Mahler's work shows so little Mozart influence.

This story came back to me over the final, Mozart-rich stages of the Rubinstein pianist competition, which I'm covering. I got ample time to reflect on how much I love Mozart, and how happy I am to have realized this early enough in life.

However, since I delve here so often over classical composers and how much I love them, let's let that go and concentrate on the other aspect of the Mahler anecdote. Mahler proved that a true artist knows how to be concise at a critical moment. Here are a few final utterings with three words or less. No experience was more morbid and delightful than seeking them out.

"I'm bored." (Gabriele d'annunzo)

"Such irrepairable loss!" (August Comte)

"I'm a pianist. (John Field to the priest's question: "Are you a Papist or a Calvinist?")

"Why not? Yeah." (Timothy Leary, a-propos nothing)

"Never felt better." (Douglas Fairbanks)

"Don't mourn. Organize!" (Joe Hill)

"Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur." (Marie Antoinette, upon accidently stepping on the executioner's foot.)

"Write! pencil! paper!" (Heinrich Heine)

"What's this?" (Leonard Bernstein)

"This is unbelievable" (Mata Hari before the firing squad)

"On the contrary." (Henrik Ibsen, upon overhearing the nurse remark to someone that he was feeling better.)

"O, holy simplicity!" (Jan Huss)

"Nothing but death." (Jane Austen. Her sister asked if there's anything she wanted.)

"Wait a second." (Madame de Pompadour, she then applied rouge to her cheeks and died.)

"Shakespeare, I come!" (Theodore Dreyser)

"Drink to me!" (Pablo Picasso)

"Yeah." (John Lennon, to the cops' question on whether he was John Lennon.)

"More light." (Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)

"This is funny." (gunslinger John Henry Holliday, presumably about the fact he found himself dying in bed.)

"I'm losing." (Frank Sinatra)

"Codeine... Bourbon." (Tallulah Bankhead)

"Good night." (Lord Byron)

In Memoriam, Moshe Ben-Shaul

A slender, aging man in jeans and T-Shirt was sitting on the rooftop of Sabkuch Milega, an Indian restaurant in Florentine. The day was hot, but there was no room for him in the shade. Moshe Ben-Shaul was the only person over 35 years old to take part in Ketem's forum for translators. He refused to take my seat in the shade, refused to be "the old guy".

Moshe was in love with youth. Ironically he dedicated the later decades of his life to the early decades of another man's life. His translations from the works of Arthur Rimbaud were an invaluable gift to the Hebrew reader. Rimbaud produced all of his poetic output between the ages of 15 and 19. Moshe translated it in his 60s and 70s.

When given the microphone at the Sabkuch Milega, he preceded his reading from Rimbaud with a reading of his own poem dedicated to the French prodigy. It was entitled: "I Am Speaking with a Dead Poet". Thursday night, at the age of 77, he joined Rimbaud at the super-hip bohemian cafe in the sky. Now they're really going to chat.

The Grateful Living

When a family mourns, the nerves are exposed and a lot of old tensions can come to the surface. The shiv'a - that traditional seven-day-long reception on which friends drop by to offer condolences - can be hard on the spirit: to much small talk, too much uneasiness, too many cookies and burekas and way too much coffee.

It turns out to be mostly the opposite this time around. We're spending the Shiv'a's days at my uncle and aunt's place. Everybody's being lovely. Late last night, after a good dinner there, my cousin Yaron took out a guitar and we sang Arik Einstein songs. His pajamaed four years old son Tuval decided he is Spiderman and I gave him a hand at climbing walls. My aunt Rachel said "Who would believe that we're in mourning?"

But we are in mourning and these days are emotional. My sisters and I all had work to do this weekend, none of it got done. I find myself being particularly upfront and expressive with people around me, Whether it be on the phone, on the street or in the pub. I notice that I'm more easy to express love, and I know my family living and dead to be that love's source.

In Memoriam, Safta Shulamit

When my grandma died last night, my sister Tamar was in the shower. She was thinking of my grandma's suffering and quietly sang Shalom Aleichem, the family's beloved song for shabbat, as prayer that death will finely embrace her.

When my grandma died last night, my parents were with her. They were returning from a wedding and stopped by at the hospice. my father touched her forehead and said: "She's warm, but something's wrong". They called in the nurse who inspected her and told them: "she's dead. She waited for you and died".

When my grandma died last night I was at the opera, Watching Rossini's "Journey to Reims". In it, a group of travelers are stuck at an inn, unable to embark on a journey that would take them to the coronation of king Charles X of France. The modernist director chose to place the action in a grounded airplane.

Last night's loss turns the rather goofy libretto of "Journey to Reims" into an existentialist work. My grandma was anxious to die, but her airplane waited long for clearance. I don't buy any afterlife theory, but if she's reuniting with my grandpa there and with her former self, that would be a coronation.

Rabin, Sacco and Vanzetti

Lin sent me all the way from Utah an invitation for a march on behalf of African refugees. It took place in Tel-Aviv this morning and was a massive success. Thousands of people, about half of them refugees, came together to protest the threat of deportation. I've posted on the subject before, the bitter pill is here.

There are more political gatherings in store this weekend. Tomorrow night will be the annual rally in Rabin Sq. in memory of our assassinated Prime-Minister. I recommend this recent post from Homefris's blog for those who wish to get a clear view on where this story stands today, with the murderer potentially only eight years away from release.

Sunday will bring a different sort of protest. First the high-school teachers went on strike, for being payed pathetic wages. They were joined by the faculty members of the state universities. Now the waitresses working at the "Coffee To Go" franchise right outside Tel-Aviv University campus have also formed a picket line. In an act that's meant to draw attention to all labor struggles, Tel-Aviv artists have arranged an evening on their behalf.

I was invited to participate in this evening. my plan is to bring my guitar and sing Woody Guthrie's ballad of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The two were union leaders who were framed for murder and executed in 1927 Boston.

Sacco and Vanzetti were no prime-ministers, but they were murdered for political reasons just as Rabin was. The Sudanese, Erithrean and Ivorians who marched with me today risk being the next on the list of victims. Here are the final verses of this rather rhythmic, refreshing folksong (Originally I published the entire lyrics, but they are readily available online), in a wish for more life and more justice.

Vanzetti docked in 98;
Slept along the dirty street,
Told the workers "Organize,"
And on the 'lectric chair he dies.

All of us people ought to be
like Sacco and Vanzetti,
And everyday find ways to fight
On the union side for the workers' rights.

Well, I ain't got time to tell this tale,
The dicks and bulls are on my trail.
But I won't forget these men who died
To show us people how to live.

All you people in Suassos Lane,
Sing this song and sing it plain.
Everybody here tonight,
Sing this song, We'll get it right.

חידלון

In a pleasent room filled with family and overlooking orange groves, lies a woman who wants to die. She's been lonely for too long, ill for too long, alive for too long. Yesterday a psychiatrist came to see her in her hospital bed. "I want to die," my grandmother told him, out of her constant slight daze and from across a complex web of plastic tubes that are stuck in various parts of her body.

"How will you die?" he asked.

"I'll jump out the window. No wait, if I jump from here I'll just wound myself. I'll climb up to the roof and jump from there."

The psychiatrist hurried and instructed the nurses to move her bed away from the window, which my family found hilarious. My grandmother suffers from fractures in several major bones and cancer in almost every internal organ. She can't get out of bed, never mind "jump" in any sense of the word. It doesn't take intimate knowledge of her wry sense of humor to figure out that what she really needed was a stroke of her hair and the words: "I understand".

Today, however, she was not in a humorous mood. "I feel that the end is near," she told my father, out of a deeper daze than usual.

"How do you know?" he asked, "What do you feel that makes you say that?"

"A sense of khidalon," she replied.

Neither my Hebrew-English nor my Hebrew-French dictionaries even bother to translate "khidalon". It is a derivative of the root "khadal" - to cease, most neatly translatad as nothingness. In this context it conveys a powerful nihilistic void, a feeling that the force of life doesn't drive you anywhere anymore and that you ceased to have a future.

My grandmother Shulamit was born in Romania and brought up speaking Romanian and French. While a genius at crossword puzzles, she's not ever been a poet. I'm awed by how she used a single rare Hebrew word to answer such a difficult question, and how perfectly it worked. Too bad she later used similarly high vocabulary (the word "Mish'i") to express her hope that I trim my beard more neatly. I love her so much and I wish for her whatever she truly needs.

A Broken Heart is Whole, A Slanted Ladder is Straight

Rabbi Menachem Mendl Morgenstern of Kotsk was born in the 1700s in Poland. He discovered Hasidism as a child, studied with great masters, formed his own court not far from Warsaw, and spent ten years teaching his controversial and extraordinary brand of existentialist Judaism.

He than fell into a state of incredibly severe depression and would not leave his room for 20 years. His granddaughter would bring him food and all other communication with him was done through a small hole in the door. He would be washed once yearly, before passover.

The Kotsker rebbe left no written records. A disciple of his burned all his writings at his demand. some of his sayings did survive, however. most notably: "A broken heart is whole, a slanted ladder is straight". He also said: "This world isn't worth even one small sigh."

I'm thinking of this man today after visiting the ultraorthodox city of Bnei Brak with my orthodox friend Michael. Bnei Brak is a somber city and a visit to its cemetery, to visit Michael's grandparents graves, was more somber still. There was no shade there, no mercy.

The cemetery is located among high walls of gray construction blocks. overlooking it is a school for girls that is equipped with only the narrowest windows. Posters commanding modest behaviour and dress are stuck everywhere, next to grafittied racist comments ("Kahane was right" etc.)

In order to be climbed, a ladder must be placed diagonally against a wall. If placed staight - it is useless. In order to develop, a heart must experience pain. This point of view sheds a softer light on a sunstruck afternoon in an austere environment. A difficult day is a good day. A glance at death is a glance at life.

The Kotsker Rebbe said: "Death is like moving from one room into another and then choosing to stay in the nicer room." Such words make sense today. That cemetery in Bnei Brak is best experienced from within one of the graves. It is there that our slanted ladders do lead.

Page Eleven

Israel's best selling daily, Yedioth Aharonot, dedicates its front page today, as well as its following four pages, to racism in Israel. What we refer to as "racism" is usually distrust and disgust across ethnic lines. The country reeks with it. It's an issue that well deserves discussing.

Yedioth picked six men, one an Arab, one Hassidic, one Jewish of Moroccan origin, one of a Russian origin, one of Ethiopian origin and one of Ashkenazy origin. They were sent to seek jobs, apartments and kindergartens for their children in several cities around the country. The absence of a woman is a bit puzzling, as well as that of a "work immigrant", but what's done is done. The big question is: how did they fare?

Of the different queries performed by the Arab (their number is not given) he was rejected 66 times. The Ashkenazi was not rejected once. Prejudice towards Moroccans and the Haredim is on the drop, it seems, but the Ethiopian was met with much hostility too, which is straight, honest to God racism.

Yesterday the IDF killed three children of the same family by bombing their neighborhood in the northern Gaza strip. In today's Yedioth Aharonot These deaths are mentioned in a small "box", on the bottom corner of page eleven, far past the five full pages dedicated to racism. They are defined in the headline as a "tragic mistake".

Why "tragic"? Aren't those Palestinian kids? They are, for God's sake, Arabs! We don't want them in our kindergartens, we don't want them on our streets. Please just let them die and don't tell us about it at all, so we can sit snugly and read in our newspaper about how everybody is so surprisingly racist.