Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-16
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 storm hits. I duck into a lunch joint downtown to wait it out and eat something. I order the mixed grill - the meorav yerushalmi. I sit at a table inside as they prepare it.
The sound system is playing a random selection of classic rock. When John Fogerty starts braying, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" the worker shuts him off.1 He has seen enough of it. So have we all.
The shop has been here longer than I have. Until recently, it was called Someone-or-other's Shawarma. Now, it's Super Mario Shawarma and Meats. Nothing else seems to have changed. It may be under new management.
A worker comes to me at my table and asks what I want with it. I hesitate, not sure who to answer. He switches to English. "Come to the front. You will choose." I've been spotted again. At least he didn't seem to know my name.
I get the usual stuff: humus with tahini and a sort of ground smoked pepper, a chopped salad, another type of salad with onions, and pita. It's good, but I think I like the version at the burger place near me better.
I get to my doctor's office in plenty of time for a followup appointment. Two other patients in the waiting room are busy with their phones. Each phone is set to the same popping sound for notifications. They get a lot of them, out of sync with each other. It sounds like I'm in the middle of a ping-pong match, except there isn't a strict alternation of pops. It's more like a volleyball match, if volleyball were played with ping-pong balls.
The doctor changes one of my prescriptions. I go to the pharmacy downstairs from his office. They're out of it. I go to another large pharmacy nearby. They're out of it, too. They check other branches. The nearest one that has it is too far away to be useful and, on this Friday afternoon, would be closed before I would get there.
It turns out that one of my relatives takes it, too. He has also been having trouble getting it. This is happening increasingly with medications here. The supply chain is showing weaknesses during the war. This isn't a major problem for me, since this new drug is just slightly better than what I'm taking. But my family is facing similar shortages for more critical medications.
Articles that I'm seeing about long-term or "day after" prognoses for what may happen here don't sound all that promising. Almost all of them involve rewarding the terrorists for their assaults and massacres by giving them their own state from which to launch more attacks, which they have promised that they will do. It seems inevitable that they will continue to exist, taking control of the areas, if not by official means, then by continuing with their mafia-like maneuvers.
That thousands of the people across the border have died in the wake of their actions doesn't seem to bother them. They continue to prove the main takeaway from all of this: if you don't care about other people's lives, it's easy to manipulate people who do. As long as they can continue to grab the money that is supposed to help the people there, so that they can live comfortably elsewhere, and as long as they can make us nervous, they think they're winning.
Things in the north seem to be getting worse, too. The people firing missiles at us up there are killing more people and hitting more towns. They're being somewhat careful not to extend too far. But they appear to have the materials to send rockets wherever they want. And unlike the people to the south, they have figured out that it's useful to aim them.
As I leave the pharmacy, I find myself thinking that I should pick up another of those pillboxes with compartments for each day of a week's medication. I have enough of everything (except the new one) to be able to pack up a week's worth and stash it in my computer case, should I ever need to leave here quickly.
When I get to the dining hall at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers for Kiddush and supper, my relative is already at the center of the room, preparing to lead things. A woman whom I haven't seen before is talking fervently with him. She stays up there throughout the ceremony.
I find out later that she is one of the new evacuees who is staying at the House. She disagrees with my relative on how he handles the wine for Kiddush. Her father, most of a century ago, used to fill the cup to the brim, inevitably spilling some. It's related, I think, to the line from the psalms, "My cup runneth over."
We do that for the Havdalah ceremony, but not for Kiddush. (Spilled wine would be more of a messy problem in the dining hall.) It's one of those traditions for which there are as many variants as there are people following them. Judaism has a lot of leeway about these things, as long as they operate within well-defined guidelines.
I often notice this in the afternoon prayers outside my office. Although we stay more or less in sync, everyone does things a little differently. The person who usually leads the prayers adds or drops a few lines that the rest of us say. Some of the people do some of the gestures that I do, and some don't. I had taken one set for granted, learning it either from my father or at school, but no one else does it. And I drop in one word partway through that some former coworkers used to do and which I still like.
People often make the mistake of pulling a line from the Talmud out of context and claiming that it shows what "the Jews really think." It doesn't work like that. The Talmud, like a lot of our more-or-less sacred texts, consists of discussions and arguments. In some of them, people suggest terrible ideas, and other people reply with why they're wrong. Many discussions of what to do in certain circumstances end with agreements that several different options are OK. Others end with the verbal shrug, teiku, meaning that we'll only get a definitive answer at the end of time.
The evacuee and my relative appear to amiably agree that this is another case in which different families have different traditions, and, while one way might seem weird to the other person, both are valid.
When the Kiddush is over, they go their separate ways. As I do each week, I walk up to the table, take the glass that my relative drank from, and return it to his place at our table, at a far end of the room. He takes the large cup and goes around the room from table to table. He pours a bit of the wine over which he had said the blessing into a glass for each person who wants some, and wishes them a shabbat shalom.
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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.
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L'hitraot.