Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-13
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...
The rain starts and stops in the early morning. Sometimes it rains heavily for a minute or so, then pauses for another minute, then begins again.
I worry whether my internet connection will stay up during my Hebrew lesson. It does. Over the course of the hour, we talk about, among other things, my experiences on my 2002 performance tour of the US, and the differences between Taylor Swift's and Beyoncé's personas and performance styles.
It might seem to be odd content for a Hebrew lesson, but it works. As I talk about things that interest me, I come across new words and language issues. I'm more likely to need these than words from some arbitrary vocabulary list.
My teacher also encourages me to find ways to talk around words that I don't know, finding different ways to say what I need to. She keeps lists in a shared Google Doc, both of new words and of relevant words and phrases that I have remembered or figured out.
Hebrew grammar is pretty simple. The conjugation of most verbs fits a few standard forms, with relatively few exceptions. Of course, as with many languages, the words that we use the most are also the most likely to have mutated into stranger forms.
The biggest challenge is figuring out which verb root to use. Even though Biblical Hebrew is different enough from contemporary spoken Hebrew to be useless in conversation (imagine beaming down to New York City speaking only Shakespearean English), I can reach back to texts, prayers, and songs that have gotten stuck in my lizard brain from childhood, and apply words from them. Sometimes it isn't the exact word that a native speaker would use, but is close enough for me to be understood.
A newsletter item today from Daniel Gordis1 includes variants of the well-known hymn Maoz Tzur (the one that everyone knows how to sing when we light the Hanukkah candles (I typoed that as "cnadles," and now I have a hankering for knaidlach.2))
Naomi Shemer, best known for the song "Jerusalem of Gold," wrote a new version in the late Sixties. The newsletter has a translation of her version and a video of it. A current well-known writer, Vered Noam, wrote an added verse about our present war. The newsletter has the Hebrew text and a translation, but no one appears to have made a video of it yet.
Musicians from a town next to ours wrote a new version of Leonard Cohen's "Who by Fire" that incorporates the names of towns and kibbutzim attacked in the initial massacre.3 It's in memory of a relative who died there.
Here's a link to the video on Facebook.4 I recommend that you open it in a new tab, if you know how, since Facebook links are designed to keep you from going back to anywhere else.
Cohen wrote the original song when he was in Israel during the Yom Kippur war, fifty years ago.5 There's an excellent recent book about his experience,6 which is being made into a TV series.7
At the office this evening, another programmer lights the Hanukkah candles. He's a little unsure of what he's doing. Several of us sing along to guide him. Afterward, we have donuts, from the larger bakery at the Heart of the City.
I stop at a small supermarket on the way home. I only need eggs. I choose a package of a dozen from the rack and bring it to the counter.
The cashier looks down and them, then up at me. "You don't want to get those."
"I don't?"
"No. They are the cage-free eggs. But they taste exactly the same as regular eggs and cost twice as much. You don't want to pay thirty shekels for those eggs."
I think of the benefits to the chickens of getting cage-free eggs (though I have seen disagreements about that), and really don't feel like going back to the racks and swapping them for regular eggs. But I feel even less like trying to argue with her about it in Hebrew. I go back and get the normal eggs.
I cross the street to my regular cafe. The worker sees me approach. "Shalom, Yosef! Sachlav?" I nod.
The worker at the brewing station calls out "Yes!" In Hebrew, for some reason, that becomes "Yesh!" which literally means "There is," sort of.
I sit down, then come back to the front to get it when they call my name. I return to my usual corner. I read news on my phone. I drink my sachlav. Order is restored to the world.
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.