December 28, 2023

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-27

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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Coffee Commandments

Once our coffee machine is done obediently pouring a cup of whatever the human nearby has requested, it often flips modes, making imperious demands. "Fill tank." "Add coffee beans." "Empty grounds container." It won't make another cup until its bidding has been done. I imagine a troll waiting by the office kitchen's door, waiting to trip anyone who has left its orders unfulfilled.

Still, most people appear to wander off without waiting to see what's needed. I'm compulsive about doing it right. Most afternoons, I end up having to empty the coffee grounds. That's OK. It's one of the more useful things that I do in the office.

The grounds collect in an oblong drawer in the base of the machine. We can just slide it out and dump it.

Most of us dump it in the trash. I used to. A while back, one of the bosses saw me do that, and told me that the grounds could be useful. They work, she said, as a good addition to the soil in the large flower pots by the front desk.

Now, when the machine commands me to empty the grounds, I slide the drawer out carefully, run water into it, then chop up the grounds more smoothly with a fork.

The flower pots are several meters away. I carry the grounds drawer to them carefully, making sure not to stumble or to collide with anyone one else who might be coming down the hall.

The two pots are large, about a half-meter in diameter, resting on the ground. Something with large green leaves sprouts from each of them. I don't know what it is. I pour the grounds into each of the two on alternating days. I figure that I'm OK as long as I don't hear it sing, "Feed me, Seymour."¹

Pouring the grounds in has taken some practice. I had to figure out how not to spill them on the rim, the walls, or the floor. I pretty much have it down now.

Once done, I take it back to the machine and slide the drawer back in. I have done my duty to our robot overlord.² Unless, of course, the amber display is now flashing "Fill tank."

ZAKA

A well-known volunteer group, ZAKA, has been meticulously collecting the remains of the dead from the massacre and afterward. One of our pet oligarchs has attempted to donate a couple of million dollars to the group. The bank won't let him.³

The problem is that the oligarch is reputedly friendly with Putin. The European Union has sanctioned him and a bunch of other such folks, and put a lock on his money.

We're not part of the EU, though. He's a citizen here, and put the money in a domestic bank before the sanctions started. Still, the bank, apparently afraid of going counter to the EU, won't let him withdraw it.

Both he and ZAKA are now suing the bank. ZAKA desperately needs the money. Their resources and equipment are depleted. They also are running a new mental health program to help the volunteers deal with the horrors that they've recently seen.

Of course, this smells like a classic maneuver. The oligarch wants to be able to get at his money. He allocates a relatively tiny amount of it for a cause that everyone loves. It looks like the Big Bad Bank is oppressing the recipients as well as the poor little billionaire who is supposedly only trying to do good.

This is some Lex Luthor level scheming. We'll see how it turns out.

Identifying the Dead

ZAKA and other groups are dealing with a lot of new issues in handling the dead. Jewish law is very specific on these issues. Even though most people here aren't what Americans would call Orthodox, they still stick by those rules. It's good to have some sort of certainty, or at least consistency.

An NPR piece a few days after the massacre⁴ took an early look at identifying the dead through dental records and similar information, and at the toll that it took on the workers. As one worker said:

"For years growing up, I thought the world was improving. As a human being, as a woman, I felt like things were progressing in the right direction. I can't think that anymore, and that's shattering."

In an interview published today,⁵ the world expert on Jewish law concerning death talked, within the constraints of what he is allowed to say, about identifying and burying the dead. At 79, the Rabbi is the oldest person to have been called up to the Reserves. He's been working long shifts at the center for handling the dead.

In one novel decision, he had to deal with the many cars from the massacre, in which victims were slaughtered and then set on fire. It's impossible to separate the remains from the cars. His decision: the cars should be buried together. The mound should become a monument to those we have lost.

Anthropologists have also been brought in to identify victims, often from tiny fragments of remains.⁶ They describe, for example, a situation in which they can determine, from a bit of a bone, the sex and age of the victim. Putting that together with information such as whether the fragment was found in a particular family's shelter, they can sometimes figure out who it was.

Another interview last week revealed the existence of a previously secret committee. They determine whether to declare a hostage dead, if no one can get at the body.⁷

The committee of three experts aren't allowed to say how exactly they make their determinations. A lot of the evidence that they see is classified. Their reports only go to top-level people who need to know. But the interview lays out what evidence is not considered adequate. They won't depend on still photographs or just on what released hostages say that they saw and heard, since the photos could be edited, and the witnesses could be mistaken.

Another interview with a different group about a month ago talked about how they had determined that six hostages had died. They seemed to have slightly different criteria. But they agreed that it is a difficult and exacting task.⁸

An expert in the more recent interview spoke of why he had taken on this responsibility:

"There is a Jewish teaching that one of the greatest joys that a person can experience in life is that of resolving doubts. If we have a way to provide that level of comfort to a family in their time of pain, then that is what we need to be doing."

Bracelets and Bags

Across the border, they've been dealing with far more bodies in even more difficult conditions.⁹. As one doctor says:

“When I’m at home, my brain plays the tape of everything I saw that day … in detail. I can’t stop it. I’ve had the most terrible nightmares about these bodies... This is the most harrowing thing I’ve ever been through.”

A report from several months ago¹⁰ says that families "have also started using identification bracelets, writing their names on their arms, or marking their body parts" so that people can tell who they were if their bodies are found.

A CNN report that I had shared before shows the last video from a blogger who was killed, along with her family, in an air strike. She says:¹¹

"We are humans, like everybody else. We had big dreams. Now our dream is if we are killed, we are a body in one piece, so we can be identified, buried in a grave, not body parts in a bag."

Heading home

I walk straight home from work, wondering how I will write about all this. At least the coffee machine early on gave me the opportunity for a lighter opening.

A few other people are also out walking. I pay more attention to the cats, dogs, hedgehogs, snails, and birds I encounter along the way. They're happily going about their business. They don't know or care that there's a world beyond what they can see, hear, and smell, in which other things are going on.

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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.