Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

The magic of returning to this country is never ending, but this time the green overwhelmed me. What wonderful rains have fallen. And now the air is cold but clear, and the sun is shining.

On the other hand the Israelites are squabbling among themselves more than ever. Left – right – how absolutely silly! And by the way, as someone who was an absolute television freak during the Cast Lead Operation, I am convinced that all the evidence (both real and mistaken) was available then – Knesset members were spouting absolute nonsense just to get on television – and their opinions are now cast in lead as ‘truth’ in the Goldstone Report. The same kind of exaggeration and silliness can be seen today. Let us be a little more careful and understanding of each other. Let us try to become worthy of this amazing land.

Debruary 8, 2010

Yesterday and today we spent our mornings in the hospital doing the usual Ezi-scan. I don’t have much to do but wait around in the cafeterias and give advice to the lost souls who happen to look sad around me. Today, as I was having coffee in my favorite place – the tenth floor outside the outpatient cancer ward – with a view of the entire city, and admiring the fish that used to comfort me two years ago:

a woman asked me if I speak English.
She needed help in buying coffee for her mother who was taking care of her father who had been stricken while they were on a tour. Not knowing even what kind of currency was being used in the country, she was at a total loss. How strange, I thought, not only feeling her terrible pain and shock but also wondering at the contrast: here I am totally at home tucked away in a place of critical danger.

The point is, as long as we are not in personal danger, the place is great, but as soon as it hits us, even the most warm and considerate scene is a nightmare.

Because I’m working on a computer smaller than my fingernails, I tend to skip over even the most important details of my life as a Tel Avivian. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, but suddenly I realized I have not put into writing the deep mourning I’ve felt for the loss of Avraham Sutzkever. When his daughter told me last month that he was not doing well at all, a number of twinges went through me. After all, although we’d spoken on the phone and I promised to visit him, I always put off the obeisance I meant to pay him as the greatest Yiddish poet I’d ever read. And he was in his nineties then. And he was a partisan like my aunt and probably had stories of her to tell me. And such a nice, kind, intelligent person! So it’s not surprising that my guilt at not having visited him would come out in my ignoring the great loss last week at his death. May his works at last get the credit they so richly deserve.