Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-06
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)
More shrapnel fell yesterday than I had known, over in the next town south.
As Gili Bar-Hillel wrote today in her own newsletter1 (essential if you're following what's happening here):
"Here in Tel Aviv we've grown blasé, but just yesterday, for example, three massive pieces of shrapnel (imagine something about the size of the lamppost in Narnia) landed: one right outside a toy store I love here on King George street, 3 minutes walk from my office (your place to go for Moomin merchandise in Israel); one on the north Tel Aviv balcony of a family who used to be neighbors of ours and whose children went to kindergarten with mine; and a third that landed inside a school classroom, which happened to be empty only because of the late-ish hour. A hunk of metal that size falling on you out of the sky will kill you even if it's been pre-detonated."
As Daniel Gordis titled his "Israel from the Inside" newsletter today, "This is a nation that will be mired in PTSD for as long as any of us are alive."2
(I really don't just sit around reading other people's newsletters all day. I read other news sites, too.)
So much of the news is about mental health crises here. Our national government spends its time sniping at each other and kowtowing to the small crowd of extremists (akin to MAGA Republicans) who have maneuvered their way into key positions of power. The rest of the country is improvising and working from rumors. Further down in her newsletter, Gili Bar-Hillel says:
"The rumors are wild: of rocketing suicide rates amongst survivors of the Nova Music Festival and other October 7th massacre sites, of sexual predators taking advantage of the chaos to volunteer at evacuee hotels where they are not required to be vetted, resulting in further rapes and abuses of the already vulnerable refugees... What we do know is bad enough to believe almost any horror, and so scary rumors abound and multiply."
I'm hearing of more volunteer efforts. A friend who is studying for her social work degree is working at a sort of first contact phone center. People with issues with which social workers can help are helped and guided to resources with as little red tape is possible.
The chairman of the Israeli Pediatric Association says, "We're witnessing a tsunami of anxiety symptoms among children... The recognition is beginning to dawn that this issue will be much more prolonged than before."3
A couple of weeks ago, administrators of our mental health hospitals said that they won't be able to handle the aftermath of the war. They were considering giving a press conference about it. I've lost track of whether they did.4
And this is just talking about the population in general. There are also over a hundred thousand people who have been evacuated from their homes. And, of course, the former hostages (and those whom we still hope will be freed).
And then there are the people across the border. The UN now says that some eighty percent of them have been driven from their homes. I know I have an article with that statistic somewhere, but I have run out of energy to find it.
Is there good news? I haven't heard much from here. At least Hanukkah starts tomorrow. And I'll be seeing the Beyoncé movie (if the Cinematheque can fix how their computer system has screwed up the yearly pass that I got last week). And, as I predicted, Taylor Swift is Time Magazine's person of the year.5 Much deserved. So cool. Wow.
Now to see if I can post this before my internet connection zonks out again. That happens when it's raining. And when it's dry. And when it's hot. And when it's not. But (I keep telling myself) it wasn't any better in New Jersey.
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.