February 29, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-28

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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During the afternoon prayers, three men stand next to the hallway's floor-to-ceiling windows. It's a sunny day. Their shadows form a framed triptych of silhouettes along the floor.

I take a photo of the floor as they stand there. It doesn't come out well. Since I'm already holding my phone, I record the call-and-response of the chanting of Psalm 130. I would like to use the melodic material in a piece sometime, but I'm not sure how. It may depend on which musicians are available.

At lunch, I crack the problem of eating only half of a larger container of humus. Its diameter is just about the same as that of a pita. I tear a pita in half and insert it in the container, dividing the contents along the diameter. I eat the humus from one side of the pita, then the pita itself. I save the other half of the humus for tomorrow, in the company fridge.

My relative who uses a wheelchair didn't succeed in voting. The race for the mayoralty is a dead heat. Our mayor is behind the challenger by 250 votes.¹ Her vote might have made a difference.

I have overheard that we will have about a thousand double-envelope ballots coming in by the end of the week. That's four times the margin in our mayoral election, so we won't know who won until then.

As I understand it, the soldiers are among the few people (including prisoners and patients in hospitals) who can use absentee ballots. The Army has even figured out ways that the soldiers in the war zone across the border could vote.

They use "double envelopes."² In this case, they write the names of their candidates and the symbol of the party or slate that they want on a form (since having the usual slips of paper for all the possibilities within all election districts wouldn't be feasible). They put the form in an anonymous envelope, then put that envelope in a second envelope marked with their name and district. When the ballots get to the local vote counters, the inner, anonymous envelopes are put among the other anonymous votes, then opened and counted.

The voters' turnout was extremely low.³ One expert had predicted that: "Not just because of the war - everyone’s depressed... Party activists have no energy, and nor do the candidates."

The Times of Israel says that people went to the malls instead.⁴ I can confirm that. I stopped into a major mall yesterday on the way to Hostage Square, thinking I could get lunch at the food court. Nope. The mall, which is right next to an Army base, was swarming with soldiers and teenage girls, including many who were in both categories. I'm still not used to seeing people testing makeup while carrying large guns.

Things are getting worse with Eurovision. The Powers-That-Be have also rejected our second song, claiming that it. too, is too political.⁵ At this point, I think they would even find the Hugo Ball text that Talking Heads used for their song "I Zimbra" to be too political.⁶

In somewhat culinary news, the first Shake Shack in Israel has opened, near the 7-11 that also recently opened.⁷ The restaurant isn't kosher, although the locally-sourced burger patties are. I think I had visited one in Cleveland once, with the crew from the Student Production Office and my mother.

I stop at the usual café on the way home from work for the usual sachlav. I get in line behind a man who is yelling at the cashier. He orders a salad with precise specifications. I hear her repeating them back to him, and see her entering them into the point of sale system. After he pays, he shouts the specifications at her again. I make eye contact with her and roll my eyes. She smiles at me. The receipt prints out. It should have all the specifications on it.

When he is summoned back to the counter to pick up the salad, he shouts the specifications again as he checks if it was made right. It was. He stomps with it back to his table. I think he's angry now that he didn't get to be angry at her again.

I have helped customers like that in the past. I'm glad, in that moment, that, as much as I miss being a bookseller, I don't have to deal with that anymore.

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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.