Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-27
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...
A voice behind me bellows as I stand at Hostage Square: "Gentlemen! You are invited to the minyan1 for afternoon prayers."
I'm off work. I haven't been to the afternoon prayers today. I wouldn't normally seek them out, but presented with the opportunity, I go for it.
I turn around and ask him where they are. He points vaguely. I'm confused. He can tell. He calls out, like a commander giving an order, "After me!" and heads in the direction in which he pointed. Several of us follow.
One of the tents has been set up as an ad-hoc synagogue. There's no ark for a Torah scroll, but chairs are lined up pointing in the right direction. Prayer books and yarmulkes are at the entrance.
Several women in long skirts and headscarves and a boy with a yarmulke and tzitzit2 are sitting in the front row. The leader goes over to them. "Ladies, excuse me. It's time for us to pray." In the most traditional congregations, women and men can't be in the same space during the prayers. They rise and walk out of the tent.
After a moment, one of the women walks back in with the boy. "Excuse me. The boy would like to pray with you. He isn't old enough to count, though."
The leader pats the boy on the back. "Wonderful! To have a boy who really wants to pray is like having ten minyanim!" He hands the boy a prayer book. The woman steps back outside.
I don't need a prayer book. I use one at work, but I keep a liturgy app on my phone just in case. I'm wearing my baseball cap as usual, so I don't have to hunt down a yarmulke.
The prayers proceed pretty much like they do at my office. No two congregations are exactly alike, so there are some differences.
They handle the largest set of prayers in the service, the Amidah, differently. Everyone says them together silently, then the leader repeats them all out loud, with some added sections where the congregation recites additional texts. At our office, the leader recites the first few sections out loud, including one of the sections that gets added, then everyone finishes the rest of it together, silently.
When the prayers end, I walk back out into the square.About half of the voices that I hear are speaking English. A man calls out in a North American accent: "Mizrachi Canada, back to the bus. Follow me!"
The space looks like a cross between a community art project and a street fair. Across from the prayer tent, a larger collection of white tents, like the ones we used in Occupy, have been set up together. Each has the name of a community that was attacked in the massacre that started the war. A circle of white chairs is set up in each. Representatives from that community sit and speak to people who come into the tent about their experiences, and about the captives who were taken from them.
A low platform holds two pianos and a small drum kit. Children climb up and play the drums as their parents take pictures.
Art installations represent the hostages and people's wishes for them. Yellow hearts and ribbons hang from the branches of a set of low trees. Hand painted stones on a cloth on the ground spell out a message in Hebrew. (Writing this, I forget what they say.) Outside the tent dedicated to the memory of the rave, a DJ's equipment is set up, splashed with red paint, representing blood. Strips of tape on the equipment bear the message, "We just wanted to dance."
Several tents and tables sell items with the slogan, "Bring Them Home Now": sweatshirts, t-shirts, tote bags, hats, dogtags, stickers, and other smaller things that I can't identify. Most have the usual black, red, and white design.
One set of posters and sweatshirts have a different slogan, in yellow rather than red: "Vote for the Hostages."
Today is Election Day, at least for municipal elections. That's why we're off work. Buses are free. The Cinematheque is showing films all day.
There's a maddening mess-up at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. For most elections, they set up a voting station right in the building. They haven't today. Instead, transportation has been summoned to ferry those who wish to vote to a nearby polling place.
A minibus arrives, forty-five minutes late. It can't handle wheelchairs. One of my relatives can't go to the polls. My family is furious and complains to the people in charge. It isn't solved by the end of the day.
I vote at my usual spot, a school about four blocks from my house. The usual tables are set up just outside the gates, representing the candidates and slates. I already know who I'm voting for.
The setup inside is more casual than it has been for the national elections. I'm used to going to a table where people check IDs and tell people which room they are to vote in. I don't see it today. I ask a man with a lanyard where I should go. He looks at my ID and the postcard that I had gotten, telling me which polling place to use. He directs me to room 63, to the left.
I wait in line outside the door. When it's my turn, a worker at a table gestures for me to come in. I hand him my ID. He flips to the end of a printout and finds my name. He calls out, "Zitt, Yosef, number 277." A woman further down repeats what he said. She marks my name on a matching printout and enters the number on an app on a tablet. She hands me two envelopes.
I step behind a cardboard partition. There, neatly arrayed, are slips of paper representing the candidates. I put the yellow slip with the mayor's name in the yellow envelope and the white slip with the two-letter symbol for his slate in the white. I step out of the booth and place the envelopes in a blue box. I'm done.
The rest of the day is free. I go wandering. I see Oppenheimer at the Cinematheque in the evening. Good movie, though I have trouble telling the characters apart. Too many middle-aged clean cut white men in identical suits. Even the two main female characters look confusingly similar. That's history for you, I guess. But seeing it on the relatively big screen is worth it, if just for the sound design.
I stay for all the end credits. I'm the last person to leave. A long-haired man sweeping up sees me and says, in English, "Impressive film, right?" Yep.
I get out quite late. As I come up to the City Hall plaza, a woman asks me how to get down to the theater. The day's last showing of Dune Part Two is about to start. The words for directions get scrambled in my head as I try to think of them quickly. I point to the ramp.
I get a burger to go at the place I like in the shopping district. I sit down at my desk to eat it and write this. I fall asleep partway through the burger and the post. I'll finish writing in the morning.
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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.