January 7, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-06

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. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...

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I wake up in the middle of the night. I realize that I need to buy some music that I had tagged before I went to bed. It isn't a BandcampFriday this month, but one of the records, featuring one of my favorite vocalists¹ is only half-price through the end of Friday, and I don't know which time zone that means.

Keeping within my monthly budget, I also get an album of choral music by one of my teachers from decades ago,², an album of music about women of the Bible by an artist whose Hebrew tattoo on the cover had stood out in a listing,³ an album of compositions and improvisations by a bass-clarinetist I've enjoyed and a Quiet Music Collective,⁴, music by a percussionist whose book on Steve Reich is worthwhile,⁵, and one of music for ensembles by a composer I've never heard but which is showing up on everybody's "Best of 2023" lists.⁶ I'm listening to that last one now. I like it.

I keep myself to a 200-shekel limit (about fifty US dollars), always purchasing on the first Friday of the month. I'll get other things at other times, but only if they're three dollars (or pounds, or euros) or less, or are marked "Name Your Price," for which I tend to pay two dollars (or whatever).

In the morning, as I lift my hand from the bathroom sink, I feel something cold and spongy on my arm. I instinctively flick it away. It sticks to the wall. I look closely. It's an even smaller slug than I had seen before, about the size of an apple seed. Its antenna wave about as it tries to regain its bearings. It's alive. Good.

Later, I look at the wall again. It's nowhere around. I wish it a fruitful life (assuming that it eats fruit) with fewer traumatic moments.

On a members-only Facebook group for immigrants, someone asks if there are morning prayers on a particular run of a cross-country train during the work week. Yup. Someone else gives details on groups on two different cars, and offers to hook him up with their WhatsApp groups. Someone even brings a Torah scroll on board on the appropriate days for them to use.

On another group, someone tells of having had to be in the hospital for a minor emergency today. A non-profit group shows up with a lavish Shabbat lunch for two hundred people. Lots of them are talking, singing, and praying. And, I hope, healing.

In the park on the way to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, three boys, teenaged or possibly younger, hang out on the swings. One is playing an odd game: another boy throws a soccer ball at him. As he swings forward, he kicks it. The other boy runs and catches it, then returns to throw it again.

My family and I get to talking about the story of Moses. Today's Torah reading starts his story. It's a weird text. Sentences seem out of order. Plot threads launch but don't play out. We wonder how the story came to be written down in the way that it was.

Since I've written several pieces about Moses in The Book of Voices,⁷ I'm comfortable spinning fictionalized hypotheses about what's going on. But just looking at what the writers would have had available at the time is trickier.

Each of us is going to do more research. This will take us back into, among other things, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ⁸ a book we've loved since high school (or maybe before).

They ask me if there's been any critical news. On Shabbat, they don't watch any or check their phones. Nope, nothing much. More rockets than usual in the north, with the usual amount of saber-rattling. Members of our cabinet are yelling at each other. So it goes.

They send me some news articles when I get home. I'm a bit lost reading them. I think they assume knowledge of aspects of either religious details or recent history that I just don't understand.

I flip through more articles, but can't focus on them effectively. I still have to make dinner, pull together my laundry, and do more mundane things for the work week. I'll have to put off punditry until tomorrow.

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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 at that Las Vegas address, 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.