February 4, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-03

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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The rain finally winds down to a vague drizzle. I head out toward the House of a Hundred Grandmothers.

The cats are curled up in the cardboard boxes of their hotel on my landlords' porch. Pigeons peck at the cats' food. The cats aren't happy. They keep an eye on them. I'm not sure that they know that in fights between cats and birds, the cats usually win. Except, of course, if the birds are eagles. House cats don't stand a chance against eagles.

My raincoat isn't too wet when I reach my family's apartment. Still, I hang it on a hook by the door rather than draping it over a chair as usual.

We quickly get into deep philosophy. We get to talking about how we know that events that we haven't seen ourselves actually happened. This simultaneously touches on, for example, the denial of the massacre on October 7th in some popular media, as well as belief in the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai millennia ago.

The way that they describe the giving of the Torah, as portrayed in today's reading, it sounds to me like a classic First Contact situation.¹ The people there would have experienced unusual weather, as well as a booming voice out of nowhere speaking to them. Pretty impressive, and possibly quite traumatic.

They draw on anthropological studies of how stories within cultures often survive, unchanged, for generations. I draw on how memories of massive recent historical experiences, such as 9/11, the Kennedy assassinations, and the beginning of COVID, quickly mutate, as people pop up who claim that they never happened or were faked.

Much of this zeroes in on our religious views. While we had similar early educations, our experiences after that diverged, especially during the decades between their moving here and mine. We all work from Judaism as our moral basis and our cultural vocabulary. But they are quite devout, viewing God as, in their words, a living presence, while I'm much closer to agnostic.

We pause the conversation, which could, and probably will, go on for the rest of our lives, for the Havdalah ceremony to close out the Sabbath. There's one significant difference from most weeks. The mix of fragrant stuff (herbs, spices, and the like) that we breathe in at one point is a bit weaker than before.² This time, no one sneezes.

I head home soon after Havdalah. I have a lot to do.

In the afternoon, I had relaxed and watched a recent documentary on the making of "We Are the World."³ Cooking dinner and putting my laundry together, I listen to a podcast on the making of the documentary.⁴

Flipping through links on YouTube, I come across a patriotic video for our country. A dancer prances in front of a green screen which shows slogans and computer graphics of relevant symbols. The whole thing is pretty cheesy. (I'm not linking to it. It might be best for the people who made it if few people see it.)

Seeing that, though, I realize that they are using some of the same methods and technologies that I'm using in my film project. I look at a clip of a two-minute-long demo of it. I decide to move its status to "Public," so more people can see it. Maybe that will get me working on it again.⁵

A link after the other dance video takes me to another stirring song.⁶ Netta, our Eurovision winner from several years ago sings one of many songs circulating now wishing for people's return. The video has subtitles in both Hebrew and English.

She sings it with four percussionists on an intriguing set. Each of the four sits in a chair on a large wooden box. They perform by stamping their feet on their boxes.

One of the percussionists wears a t-shirt saying "Bring Tomer Home," with a picture of another percussionist who looks familiar. Text on the screen says that Tomer is his brother, who had been taken captive.

I realize why he looks familiar. I remember that the percussionist with whom Netta performs has a brother, also a percussionist, who was a hostage. And I recall that he was one of the three who was mistakenly shot by our own troops as they tried to escape.

I find a link that I have saved to a tweet from Tomer's funeral. Netta sings Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."⁷

I check the weather report before taking my laundry outside to be picked up in the morning. It hasn't rained for a few hours. According to a warning from the national police, dangerous storms will continue.⁸ Just as I'm typing this sentence, I hear thunder again.

I slip on my sandals and bring the bag of laundry up to my landlords' porch. I leave it there when there might be rain. The pigeons are gone. A single cat stands guard. The others must be out prowling somewhere. I hope they get back in time. They can't stand the rain.⁹

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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.