Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2025-01-19
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...
Apparently, no one has told the Houthis that the war is supposed to be ending. Or, more likely, they don't care. At 10:18 AM this morning, we hear a fresh set of sirens. Another missile is on its way. At least they had the courtesy to wait this time until most of us were awake. I don't know if they've noticed or cared that it's Shabbat.
In the lobby outside the synagogue here at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, people are eating a snack after services have ended. Everyone heads for the shelter down the hall. One person is in a wheelchair. Someone rolls him to the door. There's a small step down. Several of the caregivers quickly organize to lift him over the threshold.
The overhead speakers announce the alert, in case people haven't heard the sirens, and tell us to get to sheltered spaces. I step out into the reinforced hallway. So do most of my neighbors.
The sirens stop after a few moments. A neighbor saunters past us, telling everyone to ignore them. We ignore him. The more confident he seems in his appraisals, the more likely he is to be wrong.
We've been told repeatedly to wait ten minutes after the alerts before emerging from the shelters. It takes that long to be sure that the last fragments from interceptions have fallen. You don't want to be outside when that happens. We've seen video from a few weeks ago of part of a missile in the next town plunging straight through a car.
The CEO of the House glides down the hall, followed by two staffers. It's like a benign Darth Vader coming through. She isn't all that tall, but with her implausibly perfect posture and long straight hair, she has a "Don't mess with me" strut.
Several neighbors have drifted out to under a skylight. She orders them back under the concrete ceilings of the hall. They comply, at least until she is out of sight.
At lunch, folks tell me that she had been seen in most of the other hallways of the House at pretty much the same time, doing the same thing. I don't doubt it. I have seen enough instances of her and other top personnel getting between spaces more quickly than walls should allow. I don't doubt that they might have short-range hyperspace transporters in their pockets. The tech folks off to our west come up with the darnedest things.
The afternoon is quiet. I follow the news headlines. Things seem to be set for a ceasefire tomorrow. We'll see.
ADDENDUM: I’m still writing and recording demos of new songs in Hebrew each week. I’ve reorganized the playlist so that new songs go at the top. For most, lyrics, both in (revised) Hebrew and in English translations, are in the YouTube video notes. Give them a listen! If you haven’t heard them before, you might find them quite different from the music that you’ve been used to hearing from me. And they should be fun even if you don’t understand the lyrics. I’d be eager to hear what you think.
https://bit.ly/zittdemos
Enjoy!
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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.