There is no English word for the yiddish word “feergun” which has been incorporated into Hebrew, because there is no concept like this. Feergun is the pleasure one shares with the pleasure of the success of others. Usually it is used in the negative, that is when one tries to make someone feel bad about succeeding in something. It is part of our culture. I’m not sure why we like to do this, to criticize people at their most successful moments, but I see it in everything from politics to every day life. Maybe it originates with the fear of the evil eye. Maybe it just encourages excellence. But it doesn’t work for me.
Flu shot today. Not swine flu – I’m not an endangered species. No lines, almost no waiting, no hassle. And probably no results.
“You haven’t had a shot for 4 years,” the nurse says, as I roll down my sleeve. “It’s nice to know someone cares,” I respond, wishing they’d also check up on me when I really need them. I took blood tests this morning and realized only as they were drawing blood that they weren’t taking enough – that the doctor hadn’t noted a few of the repeat tests that had gone awry last month. That means I’ll have to be stabbed again next week. How come they can note when I got my flu shot but not if they need to find out if I’m still infected?
Unlike most sane people I actually want all my records on file. Even when I say stupid things that turn out to be wrong, I’d rather have them said then not.
Interesting article about how students at Tel Aviv University are afraid to challenge their leftist professors in haaretz today. I know less than half a dozen leftist professors. I know half a dozen rightist professors. Most of the professors I know don’t have much of an opinion one way or another about anything outside their scholarship. That’s the problem.
Or maybe I don’t know enough professors.
But I can’t get over the feeling that we have been trained not to intervene in public affairs, not to apply our knowledge to ‘real life,’ and therefore to be both ‘pure’ and irrelevant.
Because this is the week of my parents’ death (in ’85 and ’87), I was particularly moved to receive from a wonderful friend who has a company called Facts & Files
(Historical Research Institute Berlin) a special gift. It was the addresses of my grandparents who lived and worked next door to each other in Lida on Market Square.
And here is, in their memory and in memory of the 71rst anniversary of the night of the broken glass, a poem to them about the first of September, 1939. They managed to leave Danzig just in time.
NIGHT TRAVEL
for my parents
On that night in Danzig the trains did not run
You sat in the bus station till almost dawn
knowing that if you could not get out,
the invaders would find you, grind you among the first
under their heels.
Toward morning an announcement came of a bus,
and without knowing where it would go
you raced to the stop.
But the Nazis were there first, and you watched
as they finished their search
checking each traveller for papers,
jewelry, a Jewish nose.
Among the passengers you recognized
a familiar face a German woman sitting
with someone else you’d seen
in the neighborhood.
They winked a greeting,
waited for the soldiers to leave,
and jumped out
pushing you up in their place.
Thus you escaped to Berlin, remaining alive
by keeping silent through the long train ride
from Berlin to Cologne in a car filled with
staring German soldiers
And arrived the next day in Holland,
black with fear and transportation.
It is a truth universally acknowledged in Israel that Saturday afternoon should be devoted to the nap. No matter how beautiful the weather is, no matter how many relatives are here from abroad, no matter how much work thee is to do, no matter what noise the neighbors are making, one should sleep after lunch on Saturday. We are not religious in the observation of this ritual, but don’t call between 2-4. It is a holy time. And so very pleasurable.
The medical establishment is wondering why no one is coming for the free swine flu shots and the free flu shots. Hello… everybody’s sick!!! When we get better we’ll come in. In the mean time we’re sticking to chicken soup.
Tonight is the memorial for Yitzchak Rabin in Rabin Square. I’d go there if I could, not just to pay respects. I feel his loss every day.
I missed three memorial services this week – Each time I thought of the people who would have appreciated comfort but understood that I’m functioning on half my engines. I wish I could have been with them, even though I really hate the aesthetics of Israeli cemeteries. They are just so dusty, and except for the military cemeteries, seem so neglected. Yes, I know the aesthetics are supposed to be of ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but I do miss the grassy, peaceful plots of my parents in Rochester. And the military cemeteries are really the worst of all, because they are all single young men, and they are manicured by despondent parents.
I’m not happy that Abbas is resigning. I’m not happy he feels it necessary. I’m not happy we’re all playing with fire. But what if it is another trick.
And so we continue, mistrusting one another, cutting off the branch we’re sitting on – from both directions (but which one of us is sitting on the side of the tree?)
What’s going on with my private life, a friend who reads this blog texted me today. When I called him (because i don’t do well with text messages), he said that whenever I write about politics he knows that something’s wrong with my private life. Not entirely true. We’re still recovering, but managed to get to dinner at Pappa’s, which is so crowded that I am having trouble getting a table. The mother of Pappa. But I got in a dose of chicken livers in marsala that should keep me satisfied for the week.
The air raid siren went off a few hours ago. I wasn’t going to run down to the shelter, especially since I was barefoot and in the middle of writing a complicated sentence, even if my life depended on it, But after a few seconds I heard my neighbors skittering down the staircase so I got up and stood in the hall for the rest of it. I guess I didn’t believe it was real, even though I heard ambulances and police. But a few minutes later when I took the dog out, I met up with a motorcyclist who asked me what had just happened. “Ah, it was just an exercise,” A guy on the street commented, “Didn’t you see it on the news last night?” “I saw the news,” he answered, “And didn’t see anything about a siren.” I didn’t either. “I was scared to death!” He added, “All I could think of was how much my helmet would protect me.” “So the war’s not on yet,” the guy on the street added.
A few hours later we had a terrorist warning that closed the highways down for a while, but that too passed. So now we can sit and watch the news about the ship of armaments from Iran to Hizballah caught less than 200 miles from our shores. I wonder how the Goldstone report is being debated
.
A Petition To Refute and Condemn the Anti-Israel Academic Boycott Campaign at Norway’s Trondheim University
Written by: By 246
October 31, 2009 To: Academic Colleagues From Around The World Wishing to Refute and Condemn the Campaign at Norway’s Trondheim University to Boycott Israeli Scholars and Academic Institutions
We, the undersigned Nobel Laureates, scholars and members of the international academic, research and professional community, refute and condemn the campaign to boycott Israeli academics and academic institutions at Trondheim University.
We stand in solidarity with Israeli academics and academic institutions; if you
boycott them, boycott us as well.
Background material
1) Translation of a petition letter against the boycott proposal from employees of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Sør-Trøndelag University College(HiST):
To the Boards of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(NTNU) and Sør-Trøndelag University College(HiST)
A group of employees at NTNU and HiST have earlier this year in an open letter requested their respective Boards to perform a cultural and academic boycott against Israel. We who sign this letter are employees of the same institutions. We are generally positive to unbiased and objective internal discussions at NTNU/HiST on the Palestine-Israel conflict. However, we are of the opinion that it is
very unfortunate if the institutions as such give their unreserved support to one of the parties in the conflict. In our view, the following arguments support that the proposed boycott should be rejected:
• The primary tasks of NTNU/HiST are research and education, not constructing their own foreign policy. To take sides in difficult political issues gives the impression of not being objective and unbiased. This goes against the university role as a meeting place
of a wide range of thoughts and ideas.
• To be associated with a controversial viewpoint in such a difficult conflict will have negative consequences for NTNU/HiST internationally. Do we really want to be known as the first western university to make an academic boycott against Israel?
• Within NTNU/HiST there are also different opinions on this conflict, and a decision of boycott will tend to make internal divisions. Even we who sign this petition have different views as to how the conflict should be solved.
• We do not know if NTNU/HiST have considered all the legal aspects of a possible boycott resolution. What means are for instance the institutions willing to employ against researchers who may defy the boycott? Will their salaries be reduced, or could they be fired?
• We do not believe that a boycott decision will contribute to a peaceful solution to the conflict, but rather that it will result in an increased polarisation.
• NTNU would also loose by cutting the ties of scientific contact and collaboration with the various internationally renowned academic groups of Israel.
• If NTNU/HiST decide to boycott Israel, it will also be very difficult to produce rational arguments for why we should not also boycott other nations who perform far worse human rights violations. It would thus mean that the institutions initiate an ongoing process where boycott will be used to flag our standpoint in other conflicts as well.
• We therefore request that the Boards of NTNU and HiST vote against the proposal of boycotting Israel. Individuals at our universities are of course free to involve themselves in international conflicts, but it is unwise that the institutions as such choose one side. Our
universities will lose more than we might win by involving ourselves in a boycott.
Letter was signed by Prof. Bjorn Alsberg and colleagues.
Nobel Laureate Endorsers
Kenneth J. Arrow
Economics
Stanford University
Roald Hoffmann
Chemistry
Cornell University
Steven Weinberg
Physics
University of Texas
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Physics
Ecole Normale Superieure
• To Sign this petition click here
Another murder solved. Just the other day I was thinking about all the unsolved mysteries in this country and thinking of how little money is allocated to police and their salaries, and here they are coming out with one success after another. I’d say I can sleep better in my bed, but I must confess that from my bedroom window I saw the explosion that blew up Shulman, heard Avia Pappo screaming unsuccessfuly to be saved from her sister’s husband, etc. etc. Yes, they were years ago, but there have been others since. All gangster or family related.
Here’s a little confession for you appropos gangsters. Today Shabtai Kalmanovitz, the spy, was murdered in Moscow, and it reminded me. On my mother’s side my grandmother’s name in Lida was Chaya Keile Kalmanovitz. My grandfather’s name was Yosel Kaganovich ( guess the name of Stalin’s economic advisor) and my father’s family was Rosenstein. Don’t mess with me.
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