[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt - 08 November 2023
Opening and Colophon (Newsletter): Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. Here we go...
(Post) The air feels gritty here. My family at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers are the first to notice. Their air monitors (tiny machines that show impressive amounts of information that humans can understand) confirm it. I smell smoke off and on walking to work.
Other members of the family think that the government is hiding the cause. They suspect it's due to the war. A lot of buildings are being rapidly demolished about an hour's drive from here.
This morning, we finally get news of what's happening. "Controlled" garbage fires are burning east of us, in the territories. The air tends to travel westward, but then gets stuck here at the coast.
We have weird air patterns here. Dust from sandstorms travels up to us from North Africa. If I remember correctly, we also got smoke from Ukraine at the start of their war and from the fires in Europe this past summer.
This also should be rainy season, but we haven't had much. I don't know if that would make it better or worse. It also should be cooler. We're in the middle of November. This morning, for the first time this fall, I wonder whether I should wear more than a t-shirt in the evening.
I spend much of the day experimenting with linking to news sources. I've been feeling guilty for not crediting them here. I publish these posts everyday through both my (Markdown-based) newsletter and Facebook. The two media handle links very differently. I'm using the notes for Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American," published on Facebook and Substack, as a model. We'll see what happens.
When I get home, an odd smell, like burnt fish, permeates the apartment. I wonder if it's related to the door to the shelter having been left ajar. I turn on the fan and keep the outside door open. I'm glad that it hasn't gotten cold.
Various groups are working to deal with the produce from farms that have been evacuated or lost their workers. A tech company here, along with the Ministry of Agriculture, has developed a free logistics app. Farmers can connect with truckers to distribute what they grow. It's sort of an Uber for fruit.
In a local project, produce is coming to the neighborhood next to mine on Friday from one of the farms to the south. People can order items online and pick them up there.
It's kind of like the Community Sponsored Agriculture systems that I enjoyed in Cleveland. When I lived in a shared house, one of the other residents and I belonged to different CSAs. On Sunday evenings, we would combine what we had gotten and cook up large amounts of vegetarian food. I miss those meals.
One of the largest grocery chains has said that they are committing millions of shekels to an initiative to promote local produce, particularly from the evacuated areas. Banners on the pages proclaim that the country's agriculture is its pride. (I only know the word for "pride" from reading about our Pride parades.)
I'm continuing to read about the work of trying to identify the people who died in the massacre here. Archaeologists have joined in. Their painstaking methods of sorting through ancient ruins are proving useful. They're helping to find and identify what is left of people whose houses had been burned down while they were locked inside.
Identifying the thousands of people who have died across the border may be even more daunting. Many have been lost in bombings and in buildings that have collapsed. I read today of a mother who came here before the war to get medical treatment for one of her children. She just learned that her other children, who had stayed at home across the border. had all died in a blast several days ago.
I read a few days ago about a word in Arabic that has no English-language equivalent: thakla. It means a parent who has lost a child. Today, I saw a piece about a Hebrew word, shkhol, which also means the grief of a parent who has lost a child, usually through violence. Neither of the articles' writers say whether they're aware that the other language has a similar word. I'm guessing that the words have similar linguistic roots, as well as roots in experience.
Today's links:
- (Some of these articles may be in Hebrew. Google Translate tends to handle them pretty well.)
- The smell of smoke in Gush Dan and the area - due to the burning of waste in the Palestinian Authority
- Letters from an American | Heather Cox Richardson | Substack
- Cooperation between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Traknet company will help to transport agricultural produce during the fighting - the Davar news website
- Joining forces to save Korin's economy from the wrap • Sharon Online
- Shufersal launched an immediate aid program for farmers
- At the army base where Israel identifies its dead: ‘They went from house to house burning family after family’ | Fox News
- Israeli archaeologists help find remains of Hamas attack victims | Reuters
- With the help of archaeologists: at least 10 victims identified as missing have been identified - the Devar news website
- Days after speaking about peace, Gazan mother's 3 children killed in Strip blast | The Times of Israel
- "Shkhol"—English doesn't even have a word for it
- How This Arabic Word Speaks to Gaza's Grief | TIME
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me there, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
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L'hitraot.