Tel Aviv Diary May 24-28, 2017 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel -Aviv Diary - May 24-28, 2017 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

May 24, 2017

how wonderful to start a new page, to erase the taste of the past two days. i can, for the moment, forget the fact that Sara Netanyahu thanked the Trumps for enabling the painting of her kitchen. I can, for the moment, forget that Minister Oren Hazan pushed himself into where he wasn't allowed in order to take a selfie with Do nald. I can forget that we all made fools of ourselves to cowtow to the US, even though Trump just sold billions of weapons to the same guys who blew up the World Trade Center. I can put it all in the back of my mind and get back to trying to live a little life.

Maybe i can start concentrating on making nice to my personal enemies. Today should be a particularly trying day in this matter, but after the events in our country, it should be a piece of cake..

And so it was. As a former academic I am treated with utter disdain by those who find me irrelevant. But it's okay.

May 25, 2017

I think I knew last night that Ann Birstein would not last the night. I kept thinking of what would happen to her little puppets, to her Moses doll, her Emily Dickinson doll. what will happen to the manuscript i have of "Another Cousin," to all the research she was doing on Flora Sassoon, to the interview we were doing last year before she fell and broke her hip? But when I was told she died, I realized that all these things were now freed, liberated rfrom obligation, like that poem of Amichai about his mother's death.

Freed, freed. Freed from the body
and freed from the soul and from the blood that is the soul,
freed from desires and freed from sudden fears
and from fear for me, freed from honor and freed from shame
freed from hope and despair and from fire and from water
freed from the color of the eyes and the color of the hair,
freed from furniture and freed from spoon knife and fork,
freed from the Jerusalem on High and from the lower Jerusalem
freed from identity and identity card,
freed from the round seals
and from the square seals
freed from copies and freed from staples.
Freed, freed.

And all the letters and all the numbers
which ordered this life are also free
for new combinations, new fates and new games
of all the generations to come.

May 26, 2017

9 million Copts live in Egypt. They have been targeted by Isis and are being murdered by the tens and hundreds. I cannot understand how the Christian churches around the world have not spoken out about this, how not more of an effort to stop the persecution of fellow Christians. We too are quite unnerved by this - today's terrorist attacks are truly appalling. Pilgrims hoping for to visit a holy site in the desert are gunned down en masse.

May 27, 2017

It was a while ago, but i think you'll enjoy the performance we did in the Israel Festival. This is the dress rehearsal

Ramadan starts today. Shvuot in 3 days. Holy times. Let's pray together that we'll manage to overcome the evil in the world together.

I'm not going to the demonstration tonight. I'm too frail and there are too many things going on. Anyway I don't think i like declarations - i like processes. If I'm going to demonstrate I will demonstrate by doing something that will have an effect - a tiny effect, but an effect.

So there were 20000 people there - and a whole bunch who just couldn't make it (Oren is leaving for Oregon tonight) and another whole bunch who have just given up. Make it three quarters of the population of Israel.

May 28, 2017

what is typical in tel aviv? how do you explain all the gay pride flags hanging in the city to a six year old? where can you find Jewish food here? why is there a shortage of doctors?

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