Tel Aviv Diary July 29-August 2, 2017 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel -Aviv Diary - July 29-August 2, 2017 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

July 29, 2017

The beach tires me, my grandchildren wear me. that's why i am up early writing in the dark on a Saturday morning whil Ezi snores away, instead of writing to the moment on the same evening while Ezi snores away.

It wasn't even all that long a visit. We swam and played in the sand for an hour and then retired to the beach restaurant "Blue" that I love, and then some came back to our place for watermelon, carrying sand and weariness with them. But whatever it was, Ezi is sleeping longer than ever, and I managed to wash the greasy wall behind the stove. Now I can begim to enjoy Shabbat. And we've got a good Shabbat before us. Friends, music, poems. I'm happy - even though i'm going to have to figure out about food.

And indeed it was a very nice day. Who can think about our failing government when Zubin Mehta conducts Tchaikovsky?

July 30, 2017

Elior Azaria. I have not been able to bear his naive face, smiling and basking in publicity, on television. He should have been tried and sentenced by a military court from the very beginning. This situation, like all the other 'situations' we have been involved in recently, has been handled by crazy people from the beginning.

August 1, 2017

Overworked. Grandmothers work hard in August.

August 2, 2017

And as a grandmother I have been forced to think lately of how I would handle Yair Netanyahu as a grandson. Grandparents have all the responsibility but none of the authority to educate their children. So sometimes you watch incredibly bad behavior and you can only go 'tsk tsk' because mother had taught them that way.

Of course my grandchildren are gold and behave beautifully.

The Design Museum of Holon has often been a great joy to me, and today was just a bit of a dip. The museum was all about sound, but i couldn't quite figure out what it was about. really. i needed much more information, and information on my level, then i got. maybe i needed more natural intelligence, but i couldn't understand how the exhibits were interactive. at one point i pressed one of the people managing the technical operation of the exhibit to explain to me - I don't have control of it. of course you do, he answered. you press the button and there are four different sounds that can come out. maybe i need lessons to play it. maybe the whole problem was my definition of control.

children here seem to talk a lot about God. Whether He exists or not. I am not sure why they discuss it so much - there is no question about it in Genesis and they study it a few hours a week from first grade. I remember asking my Rebbe after years of going through the Bible in hebrew and yiddish - what if we are doing all this work and there is no God? And he took my question seriously, thought for a while, and answered in Yiddish, "Whether there is a God or not, A Jew has to study Torah."

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