[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph ZItt - 22 October 2023
A tall woman with long blonde hair moves steadily around the traffic circle outside our office. She holds her phone in the air, horizontally. I watch her as I pause on my way to work to stop the music on my own phone and put my earbuds away. I think she is taking photos of the display at the center of the circle: a wooden carriage, painted white, filled with small plants and led by a life-size topiary horse.
It's another day without revelations or new disasters, just a slow release of details of what has happened and guesses as to what might.
The dining hall at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers is open for breakfast and lunch today, for the first time since the start of the war. They're closed for supper, but can handle the other meals while only staffing up for a single shift.
Their synagogue was supposed to open yesterday for Shabbat services, but didn't. Usually, people can enter through a door which is kept open. Right now, the only way in is an electronic door, and religious Jews won't trigger it on Shabbat. As with the afternoon prayers at my office, they need ten men to be able to hold the service, and they might not get that large a group just from residents.
More high officials will be coming here, this time from France and the Netherlands. Maybe they'll be able to get something good to happen. At least they're showing that they've noticed what's going on.
The war's effects are spreading in the economy. One of the biggest retail chains is putting half their employees on unpaid leave. As with all these corporate cuts, it's hitting the workers on the sales floor the hardest. Another large chain is putting forty percent of its employees on unpaid leave for a month. It's like COVID again, except this time the government isn't talking about covering the lost pay.
About two hundred thousand people here have been displaced from the war zones along the borders to the north and south. Some sixty thousand have ended up in hotels in a resort town that is struggling to keep up. The city is doing what it can, but its resources are just about maxxed out.
Violence is increasing to the east of where I am, with vigilante gangs of settlers attacking towns and villages as well as people along the roads. Airstrikes are also hitting places suspected of being terrorist centers.
Meanwhile, across the border, the refugee crisis keeps getting worse, as do the lives of people who can't leave where they are. Some more humanitarian aid is getting in, but it doesn't look like anyone is getting out. Neighboring countries are refusing to take them. There are rallies supporting each side in major cities elsewhere in the world, along with an upsurge in hate crimes. But we're not seeing their governments doing much to help, other than sending heads of state for quick visits.
People are reacting and viewing others through the lenses of pain, fear, and rage. A rumor goes out that people are sneaking around cities taking pictures of houses. Partway through the day, I see a report on them. Three of the instances were people taking pictures of landscape projects that they were working on and other similar situations. They had been doing this regularly for a long time. But now people see everything as suspicious.
All this news feels like it's happening at a distance, even within this very small country. Clevelanders will understand that I'm about as far from the front as they are from Canton. Californians might get that it's like the distance from Berkeley to San Jose. I don't hear any booms myself today, though my family has told me of some not far from here.
As I write this, I get an email from the White House Office of Public Engagement, announcing a briefing tomorrow: "President Biden has been unequivocal: there is no place for hate in America – not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against Arab Americans, not against anyone."
I get as little as usual done at work, but dutifully punch in and punch out at the appropriate times. I try to remain focused, but spend most of my time scrolling through news.
On my way home, a young man passes me carrying what looks like a wreath built around a bicycle tire. The man holds the front of the wreath pressed against his side. I can't tell who it's for.
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L'hitraot.