Utah

For want of fireworks to stare at, I spend the 4th of July reminicing of my American years. There were nearly seven such years, split about half and half between two major cities of the East: Boston and DC.

In between I managed to slip nearly six months in a more exotic location: Salt Lake city, Utah. My ex-wife was a Salt-Laker and indeed a Mormon when I met her (she later left the church, a difficult and intense process). Her family all lived on the Wasatch front and we visited it often. I spent one entire winter there, one entire summer, plus many a Christmas and, well, 4ths of July.

Each 4th, a traditional picnic was held on Lin's grandparents' deck. We had burgers and green Jello pie (a local delicacy) on paper plates decorated with the star spangled banner. more stars and stripes were hanging from the trees. The house itself was full of pictures of WWII fighter planes, a hobby of Granpa's. On the floor was a furry rug about a meter deep. These were the most foreign surroundings in which a non-American can find himself. Blues dens in Mississippi slums are tuned into tourist haunts, a suburban SLC backyard never is.

The great majority of people on the deck were Republican and Mormon. Republicans were extra confident and talkative during the Bush years. Mormons, on the other hand, are secretive. Their religion cannot be discussed openly or in depth with an outsider since it features ineffable teachings, secret temple ceremonies et al.

This combination of the outspoken and unspoken complicated our visits to Lin's family. There were so many words I couldn't say: "Shit", "John Kerry", "The Celestial Room", "Abu Ghraib"... even "Oh my God!" is considered taboo in Utah-LDS culture. There was no alcohol in any of the starred and striped cups to help me face the challenge, nor even coffee.

I must admit, I loved it.

I loved Utah, I still adore it. It's the best place I lived in the States. Those mountains that grow directly out of the city, the broad streets, the drama of the west, and that of a split society: 50% devout, 50% irreverent. I loved the family too, it was warm and generous and made up of the most spectacular individuals. They accepted me so beautifully despite my being a gentile (this is the exact word Mormons use). A heathen married their offspring, depriving her of the right to the celstial kingdom, and yet they loved me and lavished green Jello on me.

Sometimes a place that seems the most wrong for us, is just right. The places in America I miss the most are not necessarily the progressive streets of Cambridge, MA. They are often places that challenged me as a liberal, a foreigner, an Urbanite. If I could make it across the room through that thick rug, I could make it across the nation and truly know its many realities.

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.

In Memoriam Saba Shimon

Last winter, when traveling with a friend to the outskirts of Berlin, we passed by the city's monumental Olympic stadium, built by the Nazis in the thirties. Suddenly I was stirred by a memory. "You know," I told her, "This is the place my grandfather wanted to visit more than anything else, and couldn't."

In 1936 Shimon Waldman was a champion long distance runner, competing all over the Middle East. He was accepted to the olympics, but then Hitler decreed that no Jews could participate and my grandfather was forced to stay at home. Throughout his life he kept a clipping from a Berliner Jewish newspaper. The headline reads: "Waldman Kommt nach Berlin!" Waldman is coming to Berlin, a celebrity, a power to contend with.

My friend took a photo of me running in front of the stadium, symbolically fulfilling that old aspiration. Unlike my grandfather, who passed away last night, I'm a slow enough runner to be caught by a cheap lens. The Athletic skill was not something I inherited, but I'd like to think that he did bequeath the athletic spirit to all of us.

Berlin's stadium was the only place my grandfather wanted to go to and failed. No other destination was unattainable, be it the finish line, a high rank (he was an officer in the British Army's Jewish Brigade and later the chief of Israel's military police), faraway lands like Peru, the ripe age of 96 or a home he dreamed of. He dreamed of quite a few and moved again and again, so besides the determination I should also credit him for the travel-bug-gene.

After WWII, still in British uniform, my grandpa visited Rome and happened to be on St. Peter's square when Pope pius XII came out to greet the multitudes. My grandfather did not bow as the others. Religion meant less than nothing to him, but he remembered that Jews were not supposed to bow before a human being and that fit well with his stubborn, irreverent spirit.

The Pope approached the only man on the square left standing, noticed the symbol of the Jewish Brigade on his shoulder, and said to him in Hebrew: יברכך ה' וישמרך - may God bless you and protect you, the opening words of Judaism's most potent benediction.

A man who's gutsy enough to stay standing has little need for God's protection. A determined human being fulfills his own wishes. The night my grandfather met my grandmother he returned to barracks and told his fellow officers: "Tonight I met the woman I'll marry." Sure enough, the beautiful Malka Shtul was to be by his side for life. This life ended last night, but the determination remains in us, a very fine gift indeed.

Mon Parnasse

The light is green, you may step into Montparnasse.

This happens to be my favourite part of the city, not because of the rooftops, over which the icon of icons can be glimpsed (I'm not referring to the McDonald's arches),

Not because of the oysters at Le Dome or the design of La Coupole,


not even due to the ghosts of Picasso, Soutine, Modigliani, Sartre, De Beauvoir, etc., that walk the boulevards. Not because of Rodin's depiction of Balzac which overlooks one street corner, nor the nighttime neon wonderland, nor the cheerful cinema crowds, nor how pretty everything looks after the rain.

It's thanks to Anouk

and the rest of them. I have a Parisian family, the best of all Parisian families imaginable. An Antwerp-born, distant cousin of my father ended up here, marrying a Marrakesh-bred professor of computer science. Their apartment on the boulevard, four floors beneath where Eugene Eunesco used to live, is where I learned major lessons in how to love Paris, people and life. A warm double kiss at the door, a room full of white books, a sunday lunch that lasts until dinner...

The above photo is obviously completely burned, yet nothing could give a better clue of what this place feels like, full of light,

Full of cheese.

It's almost a sin to leave it. If only Paris hadn't been directly outside the door...

Love in the Time of Cholera

Saturday afternoon was spent pleasently with family.

All the cute kids were there, including the one and only Meitar, my niece.

Such a peaceful afternoon.

Such crimson sunset.


Such bad news: Israeli troops have invaded the Gaza strip.


I left my parents' home and joined the Tel-Aviv protest, we were at least 8000 people, about 20% of us were Palestinian-Israelis. We marched and chanted while pro-war protesters swore at us.


A week ago there were 30 of us.

I met lovely people there, from young Renana, who would be adopted by any resistance movement as a poster child,

to ever kind, ever-fiesty Ari and Shelly,

I found my way out past the hostile groups, aided by the police, and went to Osnat's evening in Florentine. It was obvious that the new situation would affect the event, one put together with enormous love and without any wish for reward. Poet Aaron Shabtai came and then left, saying he can't perform at such a time. His daughter Nano remained to kick off the most truely Avant-Garde cultural evening tel-Aviv has ever seen. Accompanied by Billie Levi on Guitar, she created Israel's first spoken word moment.

Merhav Yeshoron worked with an entire jazz outfit.

Chicky teamed with DJ Schoolmaster. His poetry touched openly on the war and the bizzare, painful place in which we live and create, as did Itka's.


She wasn't the only one clapping. This day ended well for us, just as it began well. We will take that goodness and try to radiate it out, to make as much of a difference as possible.

Kids

My sister Michal gave birth to a baby girl early this morning. A pregnancy full of worries came to a happy end. Mother and baby are fine, grandparents delirious with joy, uncle soon on his way to visit. The only photo I got sent from the hospital featured michal's exposed, breastfeeding bosom. I won't post it here without her permission, so While I get enchanted by little miss tiny toes, enjoy an ode to her on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P5b4PBYeSI

It's actually been a week full of babies. DL and I helped look after the wife and son of a VIP foreign guest. We showed them around the country, fed them the local fare and helped them deal with the intense heat. The child, nearly two years old, was one of the sweetest most beautiful kids you'll ever meet, and also much more than a handful. He wears his mother out as I write this, somewhere in a posh Tel-Aviv hotel room.

Looking at her over the week, I wondered to what extant parenting was her dream come true. I also realized that it has to be a dream come true, to justify the complete surrender of one's life to a curly-headed, Elmo loving, constantly moving, food splattering cause. As much as I love kids, uncle-ing becomes me much more than parenting at this point in life. It's wonderful that Michal, her husband Noam and their daughter Meitar all give me the chance to indulge in it.

On Rooftops, in Streets, Underground

This is how the weekend began: with Shlomo and Rikky's wedding, which literally took place at the little Prince. The 24 hour cafe was closed for the evening and a catering service squeezed little white tables into its narrow, gravelly yard. a huppah was brought in a glass was broken for once outside the kitchen.

I don't think I've ever seen a bride this happy and the groom was too moved to pronounce his vows properly. Nevertheless, much of the happyness belongs to us, members of the "Prince" crowd. These two gave us the perfect party to mark this period in our lives, right where it's happening. Look how happy we are:



Don't you love it when a party pours out into the street,

And don't you completely adore it when the police arrives and the bride comes over and covinces them to just go away?

The following day I was guiding a very special group around Jerusalem: it featured my parents. In celebration of my mom's birthday they decided to recruit me as tourguide and take their friends along for the Yuval Jerusalem experience. I took them underground into St. Helen's cistern, through street rather overcrowded with Friday mobs and to the rooftop of the Austrian Hospice, where we took a group portrait (all three pictures by Rooti Hazroni).



That was not the last rooftop nor the last happy crowd for the weekend. Saturday happened to be the birthday of Renen Mosinzon, an urban shaker and maker. Renen is one face behind the creative commune at 70 hayarkon st, one that will be remembered in the city history.

I've only ever attended cinema nights at hayarkon 70, but knew of the weekly jam sessions, study groups and cummunally cooked feasts that made the place famous. Here was the chance to sniff the ferfumed air, sip the beer and even go onstage.


Here was a chance to stay late into the night,


and to go home feeling very lucky.

The weekend's sole memento mori was a powerful one. DL and I went to watch Ari Fulman's powerful Waltz with Bashir, possibly the most somber animation film ever made, a beautiful discussion of war, conscience and memory. I reccomend it strongly.

I Want to Drink Water

My sister Tamar is starring in a production of Lorca's "Yerma". On the surface, this is a play about an infertile woman's decline into insanity. Beneath the surface it portrays the moment in which our pain becomes who we are. Beyond that point we will accept neither condolences nor solutions. We must continue to suffer or we forsake our identity. The implications of this in the Israeli political sphere are boundless.

One replica from the play remains strongly in my mind since last night's performance. Yerma speaks to her husband Juan, trying to convey her plight to him. "I want to drink water," she says, softly and poignantly, "and I have neither glass nor water, I want to climb a mountain and I have no feet."

This line is the apex of the play, the moment of transition from the freedom granted by hope to the prison of ultimate self pity. On one hand is the metaphoric lack of water, but water and a glass can be found somehow. If you have no feet, well, that's a bit different. You're not going to climb that mountain. I want what I lack to always be water, even if I lose my feet. As long as we hope, we're fine.

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.

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.

Talkboard

Still a few days before I am allowed to break the silence, in the meantime I received a thousand words to share - my father finally managed to send a photo of me at the hospital taken by his cellphone.

So he's dealing with high tech communication technology, while I present my simple "talkboard". Somehow, both of us manage to get through in the end.

Jerusalem Syndrom

My cousin Karen was on my balcony tonight, telling me of her work with the Sudanese refugees, and interrogating me about romantic matters. "I'm trying to figure out this thing called love", she said. Glad to hear I am considered a valuable source.

She told a story that interested me. It had nothing to do with the refugees, nor with romance. It had to do with our relationship with places, which is what I dedicate my life to researching and describing.

These days Karen lives in her hometown of Paris. Earlier in life she had spent eight years living in the "Nachla'ot" area of Jerusalem, a cluster of labyrinthine neighborhoods, centered around courtyards and connected by pleasant alleyways. A week ago she was invited for dinner there by some older friends.

Arriving a bit early, she decided to take a walk around and felt eight years spring to life around her. "Here's where I flirted with this guy on the staircase, here's where I had a picnic under the tree on a hot Saturday..."

Gradually she came to feel as though her life was passing before her eyes, a strong sense of death accompanied that feeling. The weight of rather light eight years - student years, youthful years - was overwhelming. When her friends opened the door for her, she began sobbing.

Nothing a nice glass of wine can't ease, right?

Such a Lot of World

In his strange little autobiography "Chronicles", Bob Dylan writes that he liked only one hit song of those that were playing in the early 60's, when he began his career. That song was Moon River.

I find myself playing this song tonight much like Audrey Hepburn in that famous scene, sitting on the couch and looking out at the stars and at dark Jaffa. It's four AM here (the posting times as they appear on the blog are incorrect). I've been officially insomniac since three AM and spent the last hour looking for the ultimate version of Moon River on Youtube.

Why? because of spending the afternoon with Michal Anski, who wants to move to Italy and study at a strange school for culinary history and with Yoram Kaniuk, who's just written a book describing his own death as he experienced it, because of walking south with my feet in the water, along Tel-Aviv's seawall of gleaming skyscrapers and running into a farewell party for a Jaffoite Palestinian girl who's moving to the States to live with her best friend, a Jewish Israeli girl, because Ilham called again today, because Carmelli and Vizan are awake right now, designing Ketem's third issue while my grandmother is asleep in Herzliyah, losing her memory and forgetting to want to live, because my sick cousin Omer is fighting to stay alive while my childhood friend Michal Cohen is deciding to get married and Lin is asking me to remove the link to her blog from my own, because the strings of life are stretched and flexed, because everyone is dreaming and failing and redreaming and we are all completely misunderstood.