February 27, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-26

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 head downstairs from my office to the supermarket to harvest my lunch. I'm in a grumpy mood. Documents that I may or may not have written are appearing and disappearing on the computer system. I may have a lot of work to do. I may not have to do it. I may have already done it. And I'm not sure if the information in it is right.

Once again, the fridge of cold drinks in the market doesn't have the soda I want. No one I've asked is sure who determines what goes in there. It may be the corporation. It may be the manager. It might be whoever stocks it. So there's no one to ask that they stock what I want.

The prices of the red peppers keep changing. Last week, they were five shekels per kilo. Yesterday they were twice that. Today, they're back to five. Maybe they ran an anti-sale for the weekend.

I notice that the single-serving containers of humus that I like are exactly the same price as containers holding twice as much. I could save a lot by getting the larger ones, but then I would have to navigate eating only half of it at first, saving the rest, and eating that the next day. Much less convenient. Since we eat at our desks, there's a limit to how complex things can get. And I suspect that the containers that are twice as large use twice as much plastic, so there wouldn't be much of an environmental difference.

I may try the larger container for the next two days at work, but I'm dubious.

I decide to indulge in a small pastry for dessert. There's a sort of bakery in the back. They only bake prefab items. The pastries are out on trays, with tongs, small paper bags, and a scale.

I pick one up with the tongs, put it in the bag, and put that on the scale. Usually, the scale is set to the right item already, so it automatically weighs it, calculates the price, and prints out a sticker with a bar code.

Not this time. There's a menu on the scale's screen. Names of pastries are on small, blurry buttons. The only names I recognize are ozney haman, which are what I'm used to calling hamantaschen. This item isn't one of those. But other than that, I have no idea what the pastries are called. One of the buttons is probably for a generic pastry, but I don't know which one. I have a hunch that almost all the things that aren't hamantaschen are rugelach, but there aren't any buttons saying that.

I snare a worker who is going past. I tell her, with a little Hebrew and a lot of pointing, what's going on.

She looks inside the bag. "Is this chocolate?" Yep. She pushes the button for chocolate hamantaschen. It prints out a price sticker. So be it. She puts it on the bag and hands it to me. "Bon appétit."

The self-checkout has buttons for red or yellow cherry tomatoes. The ones that I have gotten are bright orange. I stare at it for a while and decide to ring them up as yellow.

I have no problems or questions with the persimmon. Miraculous.

The news over lunch has more about Eurovision. The star who will perform for us loves the song.¹ The organizers don't want to allow it because of "political" lyrics. Our organizers say that if we can't do this song, we won't go. Our president (one of the few sane people high up in government, though without much power) says that it's important that we be there.² We'll see whose ears blink first.

Despite everything, our country is having a record crop of avocados this year.³ We eat a lot of them and export a lot. We supply about 25% of the avocados eaten in Europe.

Because of the war, though, we're shipping fewer of them out. Much of Scandinavia has cancelled their orders, as have many importers in France. We may have to fill one of our stadiums with guacamole near Passover and let all who are hungry come and eat.

We're having even more problems shipping out other fruit. According to one exporter:

"We were more affected by failed exports of citrus fruits because of the Houthis. There were fruit shipments on the way and they had to return, causing us significant damage...

"Our greater fear concerns the export of dates. The Ramadan month is the peak season for dates in foreign markets, with most of the demand coming from the Muslim community. Today, because of the Houthis, we are shipping fruits bypassing Africa, but only resilient fruits, which affects the quality and durability of the fruit, in terms of its shelf life."

Ramadan starts around March 1ith.("Around" because the Islamic calendar is even slipperier than the Jewish one.⁴) It's going to affect a lot more than fruit exports. There are concerns about trouble on the Temple Mount, possibly made worse by our extremist ministers. And it will complicate shifting populations and fighting across the border.

The Houthis are causing even more serious troubles with communications. As one of my family had predicted a while back, they've been attacking undersea cables.⁵

According to an exclusive story in Globes, "This is causing serious disruption of Internet communications between Europe and Asia, with the main damage being felt in the Gulf countries and India." Repairing them could be slow and costly, and would involve putting workers within range of further attacks.

Several sites have obituaries for a founder of the Israeli Black Panthers, Charlie Biton.⁶

The group wasn't affiliated with the American Black Panthers, but adopted their name. In the 1970s, they fought for the rights of Israelis of North African and Middle Eastern descent in their struggle for equality. Biton served in our parliament in the 1980s as a member of the Communist Party.⁷

High-level members of the current government have posted comments on his passing. One member of the War Cabinet (who may be our next prime minister) tweeted that Biton "didn't just pursue justice - he was justice."⁸ Our president said that he "made sure to make the voices of the unheard heard and acted for a significant social change in our country." And the head of a major religious party tweeted his condolences "on the passing of my long-time friend... the man who inspired everyone in his social struggles."

The articles about him, particularly the first one to which I’ve linked, are worth a read.

None of what I've been working on becomes any clearer by the time I leave the office. Walking home, I encounter a group whom I almost always see, almost always passing me at the same spot, no matter what time I get there. A very old, very short woman walks with one hand on a cane and the other on the arm of another woman, who is much younger but equally short. A very tall man follows them, along with a small, scruffy dog whose fur is a shade of ruddy amber that I rarely see.

They never seem to notice me, even when I say "Good evening." That's OK. I'll see them again. If there's ever a need for them to notice me, I suspect that they will. But I don't expect that that will ever happen.

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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.