Tel Aviv Diary October 21-26, 2019 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel Aviv Diary - October 21-26, 2019 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

October 21, 2019

you guys in New York are really missing out seeing Woody Allen's latest film. It's not that it's that's great, but it has some really nice twists and I didn't look at my watch once. It seems to me that it would behoove us to separate our moral judgment from our artistic evaluations. Anyway I don't feel i had enough information about whether he was guilty of his crimes or not.

and anyway it's time to start things again. People are dancing around all evening with the Torah celebrating the end and the beginning of its reading. we should learn from these holidays to start again every year.

yeah, it's not a great film - but it is about learning that our enemies are only flesh and blood.

October 23, 2019

We came home too exhausted to record experiences. we had walked from zippori to yodfat and i didn't have an ounce of energy to relate the stories of Josephus and/or Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi and after everything that went on today i can barely remember having experienced yesterday. fortunately there's Wikipedia to remind and reinforce some of the information I gathered. (I don't always get all of the stories our archeologist guide tells us - he walks fast and stops to explain, but by the time i catch up he's finished explaining. the rest of the group is older than i am so my advanced age is no excuse. it is a bit frustrating. they are older AND wiser AND faster.

When I came home there was time for a skype conversation with my brother, who is writing about pirkei avot at this moment, about Yehudah Hanassi. and of course i've forgotten it all.

That's because we went to Jerusalem today to see Howard and Beverly who were here to show the film they made about the neighborhood they helped to reunify in Chicago. Five hours of traveling has dimmed my memory at the moment, but their work was truly interesting. interesting and amazing too was the community of Anglo-Saxons in Jerusalem. I've never been in contact with english-speaking groups in israel and am overwhelmed to discover them.

October 24, 2019

Please Benny, please - don't let Bibi undercut you. He's going to do his utmost to mess you up even at the cost of the entire country.

October 25, 2019

i never respond to articles in the paper, but when i read this article by Shlomo Biderman about the need for reform in higher education I wanted to get involved. So I wrote:

While Professor Biderman is certainly correct about the need for major revision in the concept of a liberal university education, I am not certain that he intends this revision to take place in the sciences. In any case this recognition of the problem is a first step. Perhaps we can think together about what world we would be preparing students for and next how the goals can be achieved.

but write a response just made me more upset. what kind of world SHOULD we be preparing the next generation for? many of my star doctorates can't find jobs, and i am filled with guilt that i didn't point them toward getting a certificate in electricity or carpentry. low tech skills needed for sustaining life - not learning how to think and read and understand. what good does it do anyone today to understand logical thinking, for example, when nothing in this world is logical? To Karen Alkalay-Gut Diary

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