Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

Our initial response to the amazing event of the visit of the Pope has been so strange, so critical of his every word or lack of word. We were expecting, it seems, an apology for his past and the crimes of the German people. But his visit is in itself a statement that we somehow underestimate, perhaps because we always place ourselves in the middle of every event. This is such a gesture towards universal peace that it absolutely has to be acknowledged.
For months I’ve been wanting to writing about the pictures at The Aman Gallery that illustrate soccer in Thereisenstat. The stills from Kurt Gerron’s indentured direction of the film “Hitler Builds a City for the Jews” break your heart in their beauty and hope, especially when you know that all the players were killed as soon as the film was finished, along with the director. Site of the Gallery
We’ve been asking our friends to contribute to the fund that would allow Eshchar to get the treatment for brain cancer he needs in Belgium. It is worth reading his site and worth contributing. When we contributed we felt we couldn’t do enough for such a deserving person.
I guess the point of all these seemingly antithetical topics is that the necessity for humanity is universal and enters into every aspect of our lives.

I couldn’t manage to finish writing anything yesterday and left off in the middle of the peacock, who lives in Ashdot-Yaakov, as free as all the little kiddies running around on the green. He was not happy with us guests and wouldn’t stop screaming throughout the lecture, but everyone was paying attention to the words, while we always seem to gravitate to the animals and birds.

Why am I not at the Depeche Mode concert? I am broken-hearted but a little too fragile physically to go out in crushing crowds. Even though the songs have been going through my head all day and it is a really short ride to the concert. Rats.

I wasn’t entirely sure of my vulnerability until last night. We drove up to Ikea, which opens up a half hour after the Shabbat ends on Saturday night (it was around 9 p.m.), and watched the throng of people milling around the entrance for a full half an hour before we decided we just didn’t have the strength to face it, and went home.

Never mind, I hope to use the time well – I have a costume fitting tomorrow for a film I’m acting in and I have to find myself a pair of white stockings…

We spent the day tracing the footsteps of Janusz Korczak that famous Polish educator whose convictions about the democratization of children led him through his orphanage to the kibbutz movement and this country, and then back to Poland, only to end his life with his orphans in Treblinka. The most interesting part of this long and arduous trip were the lectures of Muki Tsur and Tanya and their research. I don’t know whether most of what they had to say can’t be found on the web, but being in the places where Korczak visited and hearing the stories from the kibbutz members who remember his visits made me think about how much this country was once influenced by him. Children taking care of themselves.

Because I am on the board of the friends of the Daniel Amichai Rowing Association and because there was an accident the other day in which a girl overturned in her rowboat and couldn’t free herself, and she is hospitalized, I went down to the club to see what was up. It turned out they didn’t know more about the incident than what was in the news, because she wasn’t related to the Daniel Amichai Center, but there was another fact I was concerned about. People in the shore stood and watched her struggling and were afraid to get into the water because they’d heard about the problem of the bacteria in the Yarkon, and I admit that I too might have been influenced by that thought before I jumped into the water. It turns out that the water in the river is no worse than the water in the sea. It’s not pleasant but not dangerous.

My mother used to say in Polish that God wore out his shoes looking for how to fit that couple together. Well I wore out my shoes today looking for an appropriate kindergarten for my granddaughter.

This is not my first foray into the wonderful world of toddler-education: I’ve been doing this for months. Yesterday, for example, I knocked at the gate of a pre-school just down the street, and had a little conversation with the sweet teacher, which I tried to keep short because in the background were so many screams and roars that I could barely hear her. That was actually the only school where the children didn’t seem to be altogether happy. The others were only – well – strange. Take the religious school I went back to see today. In one room a hatted woman in a long dress was diapering one of four babies in line while a chorus of prayers was loudly playing on the stereo. They turned off the music after I came through for the first time, but the shock of it stayed with me until I visited the next nursery. It wasn’t religious but the children learn bible stories and they discuss the holidays and have lots of enrichment games and extra music and dance lessons. It would have been perfect except for the narrow stairs down to the windowless one-room basement where the classroom, dining room and bedroom are based. This can’t be, i thought, remembering that these schools cost three times as much as the university tuition. I’m going to quit the university and open up a nursery in my living room. Oh wait, I forgot, my aching feet wouldn’t be able to take an eight-hour standing position. I’ll have to stay where I am.