Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2025-06-22
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...
I'm already awake by 7 AM Sunday morning. Flushing my toilet partially drowns out the announcement on the overhead system. It sounds like it's confirming that breakfast will indeed be back in the dining hall. Good.
I only get a moment to look at messages. One relative tells another that Trump has delivered a birthday present.
The 7:25 missile alert sounds before I can find out what that might mean. I throw on the rest of my clothes and head down to the nearer shelter downstairs. I take my apron so I can head directly to the dining hall from there.
The alarm seems uneventful. The sirens sound several times in succession. We don't hear any booms, though people in Continual Care do. The usual array of residents and neighbors shuffle into the shelter then, after a while, shuffle out.
The tables in the dining hall are set normally. No one is in there. I sit outside, alone. The head of personnel comes by and tells me that, despite the announcement last night that the hall would be open, it's closed. The situation has changed.
I go back to my room and look at the news. Yup, things have changed.
The breakfast cart comes by at about 8:30 AM. The House's CEO dishes out various items, including warm scrambled eggs. We haven't had them in a while. I suspect that they had started cooking up a normal dining hall breakfast, then learned that they were switching back to the carts.
A little girl, walking along with them, hands out slices of cantaloupe. She may be someone's granddaughter, but I'm not sure. In a House of a Hundred Grandmothers, everyone belongs to everyone.
The news is the same that everyone sees. The US has attacked Iran. Iran has fired back at us, again. I see reports of impacts, destruction, and a lot of minor injuries in north Tel Aviv and neighboring suburbs, not far from here, but I can't quite tell where. There are no street signs in the images and footage that I see, and the architecture, as in much of the area, is so generic that I can't identify buildings. Some of the fronts of shops and ground-level offices may have had logos and other markers, but they're not there anymore.
Relatives post photos of the trashed apartment of their child's piano teacher. It didn't take a direct hit, but the damage is pretty bad. The instruments are OK. So is he.
I hear in a news report that a large senior citizens' facility in the area had been damaged. It wasn't ours. We aren't large.
Another facility south of here is advertising new apartments on Facebook. I wonder if they're the replacements for the ones that were damaged in an attack there some months ago.
The major municipal library in Tel Aviv announces on Facebook that they have been damaged. Relatives used to work there. The building is closed, but they confirm that online activities, including checking out media via their app, will continue.
I sit in front of the TV and computer and look at detailed news reports. They probably aren't much different from the ones you're watching. Endless professors of constitutional law appear evenly split as to whether the attacks were valid. People argue over whether this side or that has violated some international law or are committing war crimes. Shouting about that during a war is always pointless propaganda. If these questions are ever answered, they're determined by the victors after the war.
People who I think would know better endlessly repost memes based on the ages of the various countries’ leaders. Making these claims against other minorities would be called out by these same people, but blatant ageism is still seen as acceptable bigotry.
Meanwhile, people here are hunkering down to the work of creating safe spaces. We have them by law, and we set things up so that as many people as possible can get to them in time. They aren't evenly distributed, but we're working on that. Our city has placed a large number of portable shelters around town in areas that don't yet have them nearby. They might not take a direct hit from a massive missile, but they're designed to be safe against anything less.
The large new mall, a few stops down the bus line, has set up partitions in its underground car park, so people sleeping in their cars can have more privacy. Their mayor says that he will be sleeping there tonight. Earlier in the evening, a popular capoeira performer will be giving a show for children.
A group of stand-up comics nearby are offering to perform for free in bomb shelters. And a Facebook post has announced a dating app for singles who are looking for love with others stuck in the same underground transit stations.
It takes me longer than usual to pull my laundry together. I'm used to bagging it up and bringing it down just before lunch. Since we're eating in our rooms, that rhythm is off. I still get it to the laundry shelves downstairs in time.
I stop by Continual Care in the afternoon. Not much is new there. Some of the residents, awakened by the missile alarm, had started screaming, which set off a chain of others screaming, too. The staff dealt with it.
I talk with family there and help out a little. The nurses and other workers are now wearing the paper ID bracelets, like the patients.
I pass by the dining hall on my way back to my room. The lights are out. The tables are still set for whatever meal we actually get to eat there next.
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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.
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.