Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-25
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...
Another patient paces in a perfect square. She walks along the edges of the tiles on the waiting room's floor, making sharp right-angled turns at the corners. Fascinating, I thought that only I would do that, and only if there were no one else around.
The nurse drawing my blood speaks Hebrew with a heavy Russian accent. I can understand her pretty well.
Once, when I miss a word that she says, she repeats the word in English. She has recognized my accent, too.
She compliments me on my Hebrew. When I tell her that I have been here for six years, she says that people that she knows who have been here for thirty years who don't speak as well. I tell her that I study with an excellent teacher every week.
As we go along, she asks me how to say some terms in English. I figure out most of them. I don't quite recognize one. She tries a less technical term: "b'dikat pipi." OK, that's a urine test.
After she finishes drawing the blood, I head down the block to my usual café for breakfast. I've been fasting for twelve hours. I'm ravenous.
I don't have time for the full Israeli Breakfast experience. I get what they call the Orange Breakfast.1 It's like the Israeli Breakfast, but with most of the decisions already made, and a bit less bread.
As I approach the office from across the street, I see an elderly woman trying to maneuver a baby carriage through our front door. Another woman stands behind her. I wonder why she isn't helping. That's unusual here.
After the baby carriage clears the doorway, I see that the second woman is on crutches. Oh. And it's all over by the time that I get there.
I get an email a couple of hours later with a link to the blood test results. I can wait until I see my doctor again on Monday to find out what it says.
An alert from the local news site tells me of a violent incident near the train station. That's unusual. We have close to zero street crime in my town.2
A man had gotten into an argument with a family there. One member of the family stabbed him. Medics got to him quickly. He's in serious condition. The police are looking into it.
At work, in the afternoon, we have a brief celebration of today's minor Jewish holiday. It's Tu Bishvat, the new year of the trees. We have plates of varied domestic fruit, including carob from the bosses' trees.
I love carob. We used to get it as dry pods, imported to the States. Moving here, and picking it myself, I was surprised to see that it grows that way. I had thought that it grew as something juicier, then was dried for transport.
A lot of people don't like it, since they have only experienced it as a fake chocolate substitute. That doesn't work well. But someone expecting to eat carob and getting a fake version made of chocolate would be disappointed, too.
My family tells me that a friend of theirs at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers has passed away. She was 101. One relative had seen her at the Woodworking Club last week. He'll be going to her funeral.
She was born here, long before the state began. Her uncle had served in the Jewish Legion in World War I. She served in the Jewish Brigade in World War II as a secretary in Egypt. A relative writes, "I am going to miss her. It was a privilege to know her."
I leave work when the last other person there has to lock up. I still have two hours until the movie at the Cinematheque.
I try out the Ethiopian restaurant on the way. It's good. I haven't eaten Ethiopian food much since I lived in DC at the turn of the century. I'm out of practice. I give up on trying to pick up the bits of stew with the injera3 and use a fork.
The theater is full. It's the first night of the Japanese Film Festival. The Japanese ambassador welcomes us. Most of the audience is my age.
We see the new Wim Wenders film.4 It's in Japanese with English and Hebrew subtitles. I enjoy it, but think I would have liked it even better if he hadn't bothered with a story.
I think about it as I walk home. It's been a long day. I sit down to complete this post and fall asleep at my desk.
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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.