January 10, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-09

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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A message from the Cinematheque announces Shlishi b'Shleykess. That's 'Tuesday in Suspenders.' Senior citizens get into any movie for ten shekels (about US $2.50).

I'll be there, wearing my usual suspenders, but I'm too young for the deal. It doesn't matter. I won't need it. I have my year-long pass. Wings of Desire awaits, on the big screen.

My family at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers tells me that one of the evacuees staying there has been praising the House when speaking to her own family. She can feel how warm and welcoming the House is.

They tell me of a recent celebration at lunch in the dining hall. A man walks in, with a rollator, but without a caregiver. The staff comes to him singing the local equivalent of "Happy Birthday" and places the customary crown of flowers on his head. He has turned one hundred years old. He walks around the dining hall handing out candy bars.

The back and forth that everyone says isn't a war continues to the north. An airstrike yesterday, which we won't say was from us, kills one of the enemy's top commanders.¹ One of their drones hits a base in one of our towns, further south than they usually go.² Outside the funeral of the commander killed yesterday, anpther strike kills the commander responsible for their drones.³

To our south, across the border, six of our troops were killed yesterday while setting explosives to blow up a tunnel. A tank fired a shell that hit an electricity pole, which triggered the detonating cord half an hour early.⁴ That was also when the TV star was injured. Reports now say that he has awakened and is responding.⁵

The young Cinematheque worker who I met at the last film greets me again when I arrive. We and other workers talk about Wim Wenders. He has only seen the first half of the film. If he heads in and watches when his shift ends, he'll catch the rest. I tell them that they have to see his mammoth Until the End of the World. They tell me that Wenders' latest will be playing at the end of the month. I'll be there.

Even though tonight has the cheap tickets for senior citizens, the small audience is almost entirely young. A soldier in uniform sits in the back row, his gun slung in front of him.

I had forgotten that most of the movie is not in English. The bulk of the dialogue and voiceovers are in German. One key character speaks in French. I'm startled several times by lines in Hebrew. I had studied a bit of each in junior high and high school, but that was some fifty years ago.

The subtitles are in Hebrew, but zoom past too quickly for me to understand them. The film becomes melts into relatively abstract images and sound. It's quite beautiful that way.

There are a lot of images, though, of Berlin after World War II. Much of it is in ruins. People walk through and across the rubble. The camera pans along what appears to be a row of dead children. Those shots, and even overhead shots of the rebuilt city, rhyme in my head with images from across the border. They now have a resonance that they wouldn't have had three months ago.

When I get home, I check my collection. I have a copy of the film, with English subtitles. I think of rewatching sections of it after I post this, but it's gotten late. When I have time, I'll have to watch the whole film again.

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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.