April 1, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-03-31

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 bollard¹ that separates the parking spots in front of the supermarket downstairs from work is broken. Its base is still in the ground, but the pole is lying almost flat. Torn-up bricks surround it. A car or something larger probably ran it down.

Many of us who walk there wish that parking weren't allowed. Cars pulling in or out often don't notice pedestrians. Worse, it's right on a roundabout, which makes traffic more complicated. There's a massive parking deck under the building, with an entire floor dedicated to supermarket shoppers. People still park their vehicles on these surface-level spots. They always claim that they're heading in "just for a moment."

If parking weren't officially allowed there, people would probably still do it. Cars park wherever they fit. The street with the bus stops near my house has wide sidewalks, but I have to duck around SUVs parked there. A system of painted stripes on the curbs means something about who can park there, but I'm not sure that people pay attention to them.

Inside the supermarket at lunchtime, the aisles are crowded and chaotic. Workers are rearranging displays and restocking sections. I had thought that this would be done overnight or earlier in the morning. Maybe the later sunrises this week have caused a delay.

Workers fling products onto shelves as quickly as they can. Their aim is good. Somehow things land on the shelves properly faced out. I'm impressed.

In the frozen food aisle, a woman hovers on the edge of a case loading the shelves above it. Her feet are on a thin strip of metal atop a vertical sheet of glass. I wouldn't have thought that it would support her weight. Behind her, a woman in a black headscarf is switching the positions of two brands of hummus. Her hands move faster than an expert dealing Three Card Monte.

The bakery doesn't have the round, zaatar laden flatbread that was there on Thursday. Maybe it was a one-time test. I hope it comes back.

I get my usual fruit, vegetables, and hummus and check out. There are no surprises at the self-check registers. The man supposedly helping people stares at his phone. If he's needed, someone will yell.

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Our city has announced a series of free activities, to run from April to October, as it has for fifteen years.² Its name, "na'im ba'ir," means both "moving in the city" and "pleasant in the city." They'll be having cross-training for teenagers, hip-hop dance for women, and chess for beginners, each at a different community center.

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The Saturday night protests in this city and elsewhere have merged. After squabbling, the hostage families have joined forces with the people who are demanding new elections. They apparently figure that nothing will get done to help them until we have a new government.

In our city, protestors blocked an important intersection near City Hall. A car tried to inch through and bumped a person with a flag.³ No one was injured. Other protestors filmed it and put it up on YouTube.⁴

Down at Hostage Square, the families announced that they won't be holding any more rallies there. They'll be joining with the other protestors. The combined protestors blocked the usual highway and lit a bonfire. The police put it out. They lit another one.⁵

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Taking another view, a journalist who had been a fierce defender of the ruling coalition now says that things have to change -- but not with the kind of overthrow that the protestors seem to be demanding.⁶

He says that continuing the protests and dissension as they were a year ago is "October 6th thinking." He wants us to come together into a new kind of "October 8th thinking," focused on unity and healing the rifts within the country.

It's definitely worth a read, even in the Google Translation, which becomes cryptic at times.

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The Israel Museum has launched a new exhibit, ‘The Dawn of Darkness: Elegy in Contemporary Art,’ inspired by reactions to the October 7th massacre.⁷ Only one piece, a work in ink on graph paper, is new, but the curators have carefully assembled other relevant works in their collection.

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International artists from Eurovision have released a statement supporting a ceasefire, but also demanding the release of the hostages. That's a surprise. Given the amount of hatred that many have spewed toward our country, I wouldn't have expected them to address our pain and concerns.⁸

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The singer/rapper Matisyahu has released a new video, "Ascent,"⁹ which includes footage of the kidnappings and devastation from October 7th. He filmed some of it within buildings burned in the attacks, and sings with released hostages and current hostages' families.

The article on the song contains some of the English lyrics, which helps.¹⁰ He sings in an affected Jamaican accent, though he raps as a native New Yorker. As I recall, a friend used to work with him at the Borders in White Plains.

The Hebrew at the end is from Psalm 126 (to which the title of this newsletter, "as if in dreams" is a reference).¹¹ It took me a while to recognize what he was saying, since he uses an extreme accent used by the Haredi groups of which he was a member for a few years.

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An extended article at YNET profiles researchers who are working with people who were under the influence of psychedelics when the terrorists attacked the dance festival.¹² They were able to reach the people quickly, and to work with them at the moment and then afterward.

As one researcher says:

“One story that resonated with me was a that of patient who described how she hid behind a tree and felt she was communicating with it and that the tree was protecting her. In all that horror, she felt protected and had an enormous sense of gratitude to the nature around her that was protecting her. “

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The National Library has a consistently great English-language blog. One recent entry profiles Janet Opal Asimov, Isaac Asimov's wife and collaborator.¹³ She did a lot of work on her own, but got overshadowed by her husband.

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It's gotten a lot warmer in the past few days. On Thursday, most people I saw were wearing long sleeves. Tonight, on my way home, most are wearing shorts.

A lot of families are outdoors, with and without dogs. The starlings, invisible in the trees, are noisier than they had been. For the first time in a month or so, the hedgehog in our yard has peeked out from under the bushes. One of the cats is nosing a fallen orange across the bricks. Looks like summer is, abruptly, almost here.

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Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.

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.