Karen Alkalay-Gut
January 17, 2019
Every time we go to the cemetery nearby - and that happens a lot lately - I stop by Avraham Sutzkever's grave and ask forgiveness for not being in the country when he died. and for not translating him when i spoke with him about it. So today I translated a poem of his:
What Will Endure
ABRAHAM SUTZKEVER
Who will endure? What will endure? The wind will endure.
The blindness endures of the blind that disappears.
A hint of the sea: a wisp of foam.
A tiny cloud entangled in a tree.
Who will endure? What will endure? A chance
That recreates its emergence,
A fiddle rose enduring for itself alone
Seven blades of grass from the lawn will understand.
More than all the stars from north to here,
that star will endure that falls in a pure tear
A drop of wine always remains in the jug.
Who will endure? God will endure, is that enough for you?
we have another scandal today to gossip over - sexual favors for legal positions . the joke that's going around is that "I don't think it's right, but I'm no judge."
January 18, 2019
a visit to Amos Oz's grave this afternoon seemed like a good idea at the time, but it seems it helped my cold develop into something worse. i just wanted to help out a research student, and somehow to honor him, but it didn't work out well for me. Still, there's something sacred about Amos Oz. And if I can't get out of bed, i can watch that new Israeli series on netflix all evening.
after all, we don't have much to watch of tv anymore now that one channel has been taken away from us. we're left with 3 instead of 4 choices, and tonight they're all bad.
and maybe we can stop hanging around the house so much and meet friends more often. there's certainly enough to gossip about.
Miri Regev, our minister of culture, said last week that it will take two ministers a lifetime to fix what she has done. Certainly the cultural institutions that have folded are part of what she has destroyed, but that only immediately affects maybe a hundred thousand citizens. The diminishment of television has affected millions.
January 19, 2019
of our 20 odd friends today all agreed that Bibi is the worst thing possible for this country. And all agreed that he will win.
January 20, 2019
You know how it feels when you're sick in bed and all you want to do is watch tv. and then you turn it on and flip channels and can't believe how stupid it is. how very stupid. i used to think that Israel TV was too intellectual to watch when you're sick. oy.
and since we can't get most internet sites like BBC online we are really feeling deprived. Fortunately there's "When Heroes Fly" on Netflix that will keep me busy until i get a life back. any other suggestions?
. January 21, 2019
my cold has descended to my lungs and i've been barely able to move today. But the sun was so gorgeous that i dragged Ezi out of the house. And to what? to go to the cemetery and do a little film of the grave of Avram Sutskever and a poem of his. The film didn't come out very well because I stammered a lot on the Yiddish, but I was incredibly moved by the entire experience.
When i read the English out loud it was awful but the Yiddish was more beautiful that I had imagined.
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