[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt - 28 October 2023
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...
It's still light when I head out to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. Next week, it will be dark now. We change our clocks tonight.
I had thought that we changed our clocks on Thursday nights. Someone told me that it was different this year because of Army logistics. But my family confirms that we do usually change to Winter Time on Saturday nights but to Summer Time on Thursday nights, because of Shabbat preparations.
Many of the usual people are sitting outside. The door opens automatically, as it had before the war began. When I get upstairs, an announcement plays through the overhead speakers. We do indeed change our clocks tonight. "Happy Winter," the front desk worker says.
The House had Sabbath services this morning, as before. They figured out how to deal with letting people from outside in. A couple of evacuees who are staying at the House were there. The man who reads the Torah arrived carrying a machine gun. He's in the reserves, and has to keep it with him.
Another congregant is concerned for his son and grandson, who are both serving. And the granddaughter of another is serving in a war room up north. She and everyone else working in the room have COVID, but they have to come in anyway. This is war.
One of my family's neighbors spoke with them during the day. "I was born in this country. I have been here for all the wars since 1936. I don't want to see another."
When my family mentions the woman working in the war room to me, I think they just mean a call center. I have seen the same term, "khamal," used for phone centers, including the one for the telethon a few days ago. It's an abbreviation for the words for "war room," but has drifted into other uses.
We hear distant booms from my family's apartment. The news tells us that they're from interceptions aimed at the city south of us. Further south, we're told, a nine-year-old girl has died. Her heart had stopped when she had heard sirens.
More rockets come from the north. I hear of more landing in the south, including the city where the Scratch Orchestra rehearsed, and in a large city farther away. For the first time that I know of, rockets are fired at a city farther than that, the one at the end of the railroad. I had visited there in April, to complete my project filming from all the country's passenger lines.
We get more word of what's across the border. Our tanks have gone in and done some fighting there. Our government reports that they've identified the enemy's main operations center -- carefully hidden underground, beneath the area's largest hospital. The area's phone and internet services are out. It will be harder to get word from people and press who are there.
To our west, settlers have killed a man who was harvesting olives. Four more were killed in shootouts with our soldiers. Two were from terrorist groups. And one man was shot as soldiers shut down a store in a town about nine miles from here.
After the havdalah ceremony, I come home to continue writing. A headline pops up that the Prime Minister and other leaders are about to start a press conference, after having met with families of the hostages.
I turn on the TV, sit in my big chair, and wait for it to begin. The Prime Minister looks older and more tired that I have seen him before. I'm tired, too. Soon after he starts talking, I fall asleep. When I wake up, I check the liveblog to see what they've said. It's pretty much what I expected. Nothing new.
I leave the TV news on. Analysts chew over what the leaders have said. Victims of the initial massacre recount their stories. The anchor warns that there will be graphic footage. I don't see it. I'm working in the kitchen with my back to the screen.
For supper, I finish the chicken that I got for Shabbat. When I'm done, I prepare my laundry to be picked up. When I open the door to place it outside, I hear a rumbling in the sky. I wonder whether it is thunder or a fighter jet. It lasts too long to be thunder.
I listen to another podcast, talking about the future of the Jewish left. The speakers tell of crackdowns here. An important doctor has been fired, they say, because he had tweeted, some years ago, an image of the enemy's flag with a dove of peace.
The panelists speak of alienation from the global left, who won't recognize that, while we are causing the deaths of civilians across the border, we, too, had suffered a brutal massacre just three weeks ago. They try to imagine how we might ever create a place where everyone, no matter what their religion or tribe, might have the right to have equal rights. The vision seems further away than ever.
A coworker posts a meme to the company's WhatsApp: "For all who dream that there will be peace here with our neighbors, you have one more hour to dream." I change the time on my one clock that doesn't do so automatically. Here in my bubble inside a bubble, life goes on.
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.