December 5, 2023

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-04

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...

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The former hostages from my city come home from the hospital today. The local news site announces in the morning that there will be a welcoming celebration, but isn't clear about the time. Maybe noon, maybe not. They say to stay tuned.¹

Early in the day, there is shocking financial news.² According to an academic paper, short-selling of stocks in a major bank skyrocketed just before the October 7th attack. Someone in finance knew that it was coming and tried to profit from it. The newspaper suggests that the terrorists themselves did the trading.

I download the paper itself³ and read the abstract. I have no idea what it's saying. But I spent enough time working on Wall Street that I'm not surprised when anyone values profit over security or people's lives.

A coworker comes into the office kitchen while I'm making coffee. He puts a plastic box on the counter and opens it. "Fresh corn," he announces. "I harvested it today. Enjoy." I take a half-ear back to my desk and eat it raw. Things you learn in New Jersey: when corn is this fresh, there's no reason to cook it.

I see more stories in the news about foreign workers caught in the attacks. One tells of a married couple who were caregivers on different kibbutzim. The husband was killed, but his pregnant wife survived.⁴

Another article tells of the former hostages who flew back to Thailand after being released last week.⁵ Their government tried to keep their return quiet, but they and their families posted about it on social media. In the same piece, the Philippine worker who was released spoke of the hellish conditions that he endured. He ate dampened toilet paper to survive. But he says that he will return here. "It is my second homeland."

An item in the Times of Israel's "Those We Have Lost" series profiles a Nepalese agricultural student who was killed in the attacks.⁶ He had been here for less than a month. He had planned to support his family. They had taken out loans to send him to school, with their home and business as collateral. Having lost him, they have lost everything.

As we gather for the afternoon prayers, some of our phones beep with alerts. There are sirens in surrounding towns.⁷ Not here, though. We agree that if we hear sirens during the service, we'll just go into the staircase a few meters away, keep facing southeast, and keep praying.

Later in the day, I go back to the article about the stock-shorting shenanigans. It has been replaced. The headline had read, "Short sellers knew about Hamas attack, study shows." Now, the same web address goes to a new headline: "Huge errors in US study about TASE short sellers."⁸

According to a high-level person at our Stock Exchange, the analysts missed a detail. They had thought that transactions were reported in terms of shekalim, which are kind of like dollars. They're not. They're reported in terms of agorot, which are more like pennies. So their math was off by a factor of a hundred. In the words of Harvey Fierstein, "This was no whoops!"⁹

Something odd apparently was going on, but not to that degree. It might have been related to the financial world's nervousness due to the massive protests we had been having against the government.

The celebration of the hostages' return finally happens in the early evening. Their entourage drives by the edge of my neighborhood, turns at the Heart of the City, and travels further south along a main street. People line the sides of the road, cheering and waving flags. I'm still at work, so I miss it.

The brother and sister wave to the crowd, and hold up a picture. They ask us to remember and work for the release of another man from our town. The terrorists are still holding him across the border. ¹⁰

When I get home, I remember that I have to pay my landlady for my percentage of the electric bill. I knock on their door.

I ask her how much it is. She had told me on Friday, but I had forgotten. She reminds me.

I give her cash. It isn't enough. She is confused. I am confused.

After a moment, I realize what has happened. She had asked for 180 shekalim. I had given her 120. For some reason, I always confuse the word for eighty, shmonim, with the word for twenty, esrim. The 120 is wrong. I have made my usual mistake. I give her the remaining sixty.

Fortunately, I'm on very good terms with my landlords. In other situations, other landlords would claim that I was trying to rip them off. That doesn't happen. No shouting. No threats.

I go down the stairs and into my apartment. I sit at my computer and close my eyes. Soon it will be time to catch up on mail, to make my supper, and to write.

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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.