June 7, 2020. It started off like this:
השעה עכשיו 3 בבוקר שאחרי ההפגנה בת"א
נתניהו וחבורת הפושעים שלו מדרדרים את ישראל לרמה של מדינות מפגרות כמו ארה"ב.
צפו בוידאו הזה עד הסוף, כדי לדעת לאן הם גוררים את כולכם:
Tania said:
Much worse here. I wouldn’t compare public response here w there. Watch for November vote. The USA corrupt have publicly disconnected from Caligula administration. They have defected and ratings are steadily dropping. Here, not a murmur about yet another cold-blooded murder of an Arab whether developmentally disabled or not. The right wing only strengthens its fascistic rule.
SO, without comparisons, I agree w you totally. My head is in the best of Jewish history, literature, innovation, humanities. And people. I can’t include you because you disown your Jewishness. So you’ll be among my best born-Jews only :)
I said:
Born-again Atheist! Hallelujah!!
"Hozana, hozana!!! (Hey JC, JC, won't you smile at me...")
Just woke up after a sleepless night.
What is USA Corrupt?
Cheers,
Avner E.
Tania said:
born-jew only implies nothing jewish after birth.
"Hozana, hozana!!! (Hey JC, JC, won’t you smile at me...")
reference? u know more USA pop culture than i ever will. nerd, here. pointy head, too.
sleepless from rage? despair? heat? bad dreams?
I said:
Actually, this is British. "Jesus Christ Superstar", by Lloyd-Weber I think.
Hosanna = הושע-נא
I woke up at 2am, didn't even know that they beat the photographer. Then I read all night.
Netanyahu started really to scare me. I haven't been so scared since... (my last job interview actually). No seriously, since my military service.
Tania said:
Hate musicals w rare exceptions… operetta really Three Penny Opera (Kurt Weill, etc.). Yes, Lloyd-Weber.
HOsanna I know from Sukkot since childhood and a big deal for christians on Palm Sunday.
Same thing w a reporter in Mpls. The storm troopers shoot and trample any creature in their way. Killer instinct. Horrifying.
Why now scared… Netanyahoo? Same monster as last week. And same small-brained Israelis who believe rak Bibi as he buys another toy and screws them royally.
I said:
I HATE musicals too!!
JC is a "rock-opera" (first came across this term with Poogie = Kaveret. Best Israeli band EVER).
Of course, there is Seinfeld on this: (same note as "There is a Gemara on this" - so we don't need to argue anymore...)
Tania said:
This proves it. I’m an idiot. Neither recall this episode and certainly don’t get it. Other than the Grand Wizard Klan-looking clown.
I said (June 16):
Come-on! You are one of the brightes women I know.
It's OK to forget.
But was it funny or not?....
Tania said:
Not funny because I didn’t get it. And, when a joke has to be explained… not worth explaining.
What have you been up to? Reading, hiking, even sailing? Job hunting? or Job doing?
I’m still loving lockdown and leave to feed the cats and walk to the sea usually w a friend before sunset. WONDERFUL setting. People seem so happy there, and the dogs, too.
I said:
Job doing, at last...
It's temporary, but there is a chance for extension. Let's see.
How nice the lockdown is! But I've had enough. It's nice to work again (and get a sense that I'm of value and use to somebody, something...)
Enjoy the 2nd wave!...
Tania said:
I’m happy for your Job doing no matter the duration. Always another job or assignment around the corner or under a rock :)
I can’t get enough lockdown (now, it’s voluntary!) Too busy filling up on wonderful ebooks, books, online classes.
As for getting —
“a sense that I'm of value and use to somebody, something..."
I totally hear you. I am the same way. My volunteering in the African asylum-seeking community is I hope as important and fulfilling and useful to my friends as it is to me. For example, this week, I've been working with a friend prepare his application for his and his family's immigration to Canada. Very important every word, every nuance. Then, I’ll resume helping him plan and outline his end-of-year papers and reports, and then review, discuss, and edit drafts until the material is smooth as butter (in the sun!). He is one of the smartest and wisest people I know. Yet writing papers and all that IHE jazzz is new since he did his BA and next month completing his MA at IDC. Plus, English is not his native language. Not to mention the racism spilling out from every source…
Most Israeli Jews — politicians, clergy, etc., morally inferior to those I have known, worked with, and learned from in the USA. You and I have had this convo several times. Nothing left to say, I reckon. I understand why you say you are not Jewish or something like that. I’m moving to that end of the continuum. Yet will always adore learning Jewish thought, history, texts. Just ordered the ebook in English translation by Amos Oz on Agnon. A real page turner though every idea I must ponder slowly.
I said (June 21):
Good for you for doing all this wonderful activity!
Just came back yesterday from shvil Israel, and can hardly type on the keyboard... My legs were killing me yesterday.
Amos Oz - if you are referring to the book called in Hebrew "The silence of the heaven",
שתיקת השמים - עגנון משתומם על אלוהים
then I read it many years ago. A real gem. To, me, the best book by Oz (of whom I could tell you something not very nice that I think of him... anyway). But he was a GREAT literature teacher.
Tania said:
You are amazing… following your bliss (see Joseph Campbell)! I admire you who is a person with a both-sides brain. RARE.
Indeed, the book is שתיקת השמים… in translation.
For decades, I have wanted to understand Agnon — his works, who he sometimes is and sometimes is not. And, how he plumbs the depth of Jewish sources/sacred texts/customs/beliefs/ magic/nonsense/neuroses and leaves us guessing, mostly, on truth (which jesting Pilate, when asked what is it, “would not stay for an answer”). While reading Silence of Heaven, super-slowly, I download Agnon ebooks Amos Oz cites.
About something not very nice on Famous Amos, unless he is a Nazi or Bibi supporter (borderline same thing), it’s OK w me that something not very nice happened, said, or done. As an immature person (often today, too, sadly), I insisted on perfection. This sickness is a self-fulfilling disaster on all fronts.
I told you I took a course w Amos a year before he died, right? Thru Beit Ariella and delivered at the Cinemateque perfect hours… daytime? You want copies of what I recorded?
I also took courses w AB Yehoshua and now Haim Be'er in the same framework. I told you all this already, I think. Losing my mind in the great State of Lockdown.
Last, I imagine that your son who worked as an unidentified marshall on El Al flights and earned good money and saw much of the world has found other work since the company all but shut down. While mourning our losses is essential, moving on is life. Easy words, not so simple to internalize. My neighbors have been at home since… she is an El Al senior flight attendant and he a pilot.
I said:
Thank you again. You are way overstating.
Sure, I'd like to listen to Oz teaching. This book by him makes one understand Agnon so clearly... relatively, as much as he can be clear. There are other interpretation of course.
Agnon is one of the only Hebrew writing authors I could read and really enjoy. Something about the Israeli culture in general, maybe.
And he is such a non-orthodox, in his unique Orthodox Jewish way! And his irony - he redefines this term.
"Define Irony - Bunch of Idiots dancing on a plane, to a song made famous by a band that died... in a plane crash"... a quote by one of my favorite actors, Steve Buscemi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnSTDdWjmJA
My older son Ben is really unemployed (this makes 3 of us, in our 4-members family...) from El-Al, but no, he needs this job back quickly, or they will not approve his Mashkanta. I hope that he'll be back. He doesn't have another profession that pays that much - he is going to become a Looser (oops, sorry; a teacher, in Israeli standards). And nobody pays for the skills of a Company commander in the Air Force rescue unit.
Tania said:
You write,
Agnon is one of the only Hebrew writing authors I could read and really enjoy. Something about the Israeli culture in general, maybe.
I respond, as a Sabra-born American whose experience of Agnon is less as an artist of the Israeli culture than of Eastern European and and global Jewish cultures. Of his relation to or with Israeli culture I feel it’s sentimental harking back not to the Begins and the whole lot of pre- and post 1948 names and events and catastrophes but to religious, mystical symbolism and associations with the Land and some of its people’s cultural baggage… oops, I mean heritage.
I wonder what you think of my associations of him.
His irony is Divine! I love reminders that we don’t know, there is nothing to know, everything is known. Paraphrasing Oz in “Silence of Heaven”— Agnon is a trickster: A believer, or a heretic? Life is fair, or unfair? The mother loves, or hates? her child. WE don't know. Usually, both answers are correct.
About THAT video linked. Wow! You sure are a cult fan. As am I but of Nicholas Cage, far more handsome, sexy than the pig-faced speaker :)
About Ben. Indeed, this time is terrifying financially, especially for people who are young, middle class, old, and unrecognized humans called refugees with zero x financial backup. QUESTION: Would another airline or international airport love to hire him? Or can he parlay his vast training and experience to related fields? A friend’s SIL (chatan) continues here and globally w search and rescue missions.
About teaching, an honorable profession in my book. Losers are people who chase money and more money only. Think about Ronni Someck, not a loser cell in his body. Similarly, Famous Amos and all the professors (a version of teacher) you respect highly and deservedly. Beware, feeding into the trashing of teaching and education brought about by frauds, incompetents, and rotten buddies of corrupt pols. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good (paraphrase of Donald Winnicott’s, “good enough mother”).
How is the j-o-b?
Agnon is one of the only Hebrew writing authors I could read and really enjoy. Something about the Israeli culture in general, maybe.
I respond, as a Sabra-born American whose experience of Agnon is less as an artist of the Israeli culture than of Eastern European and and global Jewish cultures. Of his relation to or with Israeli culture I feel it’s sentimental harking back not to the Begins and the whole lot of pre- and post 1948 names and events and catastrophes but to religious, mystical symbolism and associations with the Land and some of its people’s cultural baggage… oops, I mean heritage.
I wonder what you think of my associations of him.
His irony is Divine! I love reminders that we don’t know, there is nothing to know, everything is known. Paraphrasing Oz in “Silence of Heaven”— Agnon is a trickster: A believer, or a heretic? Life is fair, or unfair? The mother loves, or hates? her child. WE don't know. Usually, both answers are correct.
About THAT video linked. Wow! You sure are a cult fan. As am I but of Nicholas Cage, far more handsome, sexy than the pig-faced speaker :)
About Ben. Indeed, this time is terrifying financially, especially for people who are young, middle class, old, and unrecognized humans called refugees with zero x financial backup. QUESTION: Would another airline or international airport love to hire him? Or can he parlay his vast training and experience to related fields? A friend’s SIL (chatan) continues here and globally w search and rescue missions.
About teaching, an honorable profession in my book. Losers are people who chase money and more money only. Think about Ronni Someck, not a loser cell in his body. Similarly, Famous Amos and all the professors (a version of teacher) you respect highly and deservedly. Beware, feeding into the trashing of teaching and education brought about by frauds, incompetents, and rotten buddies of corrupt pols. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good (paraphrase of Donald Winnicott’s, “good enough mother”).
How is the j-o-b?
I said:
I wonder what you think of my associations of him.
It's interesting, but different. I think more of his relation to Jewish faith, injustice in this world, misery. He is one of the best Jewish bitter-funny story tellers, but with depths of cultural "baggage" as you said. So, I enjoy reading him, albeit all the cultural and time distance between him and I - which I cannot say about contemporary Hebrew literature.
About THAT video linked. Wow! You sure are a cult fan. As am I but of Nicholas Cage, far more handsome, sexy than the pig-faced speaker :)
This pig-faced is my favorite actor, and a great Mentch. He is intelligent and funny.
Losers are people who chase money and more money only.
I always get misunderstood on this point. I never said that teacher ARE losers, my point is that the whole Israeli society treats teachers as losers, who didn't make it in the race for money and fame. I don't care and I don't want to hear any fake and cliches about how noble this profession is - words don't matter, only actions matter. On the action realm, the Israeli society fails big time to honor its teachers.
How is the j-o-b?
It's very nice, I enjoy it. But there's no guarantee that it will continue. Let's see.
