[We were unable to get a visa for Iran for more than an overnight stay because of the crush of the Asian Games which were occurring in Teheran. It id not matter very much to us; we were nervous about being there anyway, and could use the rest from stress. We were grateful that Iran permitted flights to Israel at all. MB 18 June 2002.]
This is our last day in Asia. Tomorrow we will be in Israel. For some reason or for many I look forward to this with happy anticipation. Asia’s strangeness and foreignness has been fascinating, exciting, interesting, never dull. But often it has been difficult, tense, and demanding on our patience and resources.
Israel too I expect to be foreign but in a more familiar way. We do not speak the language, the customs are certain to be non-American, even the "Jewishness" not the brand we are used to. Yet it is Mediterranean, more European ... yes, Jewish. We have the names of people to meet there, some we have met and others only heard of and we do not know what kind of greeting or hospitality or difficulties wait for us—these are the uncertainties—but we have been coping with uncertainty since we began and somehow those that face us do not seem as threatening as those we have met and survived.
The memories of our trip are vivid in my mind: pleasures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes; the feel of hot rain and sun and sweat; the people, buildings, animals, countryside, cities, cars, buses, taxis, hotels, children, all jumbled. It is a natural turning point and I feel light hearted awaiting new experience.
15 September Sunday Teheran to Tel to Aviv
There is something about being Jewish that sets us apart. It is something I have always been taught to feel and as a minority in a Gentile world, it often becomes quite vivid. The sense of identity has always been present. Sometimes that sense makes one aware of the faults, at other times there is pride, but always the consciousness of a difference, whether it is "racial," cultural or religious.
Going to Israel gives a peculiar thrill, mixing all of the elements together, and this we felt in our anticipation of going, and feel it more as we sit in the Teheran airport from 4:30 to 9:30 a.m. waiting for El Al to come, and for security, extra special because Israel is apart from other nations. At the airport we met and instantly became entangled in a political argument with an old Israeli man; it is familiar in style and tone and peculiarly Jewish: we love to argue. When we land, we notice that the signs are in Hebrew, bringing back memories of my youth— happy days spent in play and joyously hating Hebrew school because it set me apart.
[The morning at the airport was a story in and of itself. The El Al security was meticulous, and very cautious about us. We had to go through a gauntlet of higher levels of security men, each interrogating: why were you in Afghanistan? Why going to Israel? Where have you been? Has anyone asked you to bring anything? We were shown our bags, told they had been examined, asked to examine them again closely for anything we did not put in. Finally satisfied, they ushered us to the El Al portion, separate from all other airlines. We waited in a big room with others, including men praying with tallith and tfillin. Long past the scheduled departure time, we were told that the plane had been delayed. They took all of us for a breakfast compliments of El Al.
Back in the waiting room, we were suddenly told "Now is time to board." Everyone was rushed and jammed into a long tram, guards with Uzis inside, to the military area where Iranian air force jets and jeeps with machine guns, Iranian soldiers guarding the shining El Al blue and white jet.
Off the tram, on the tarmac, on the plane.. A lot of very tall Israeli guys boarded last. Taxiing, seat belts, and in the air in a whoosh.
Later we were told that the delay was for security—it was the last day of the Asian Games. There had been demonstrations, China refused to play the Israeli basketball team. They feared a Munich; they were the tall guys who left with us.
Teheran to Tel Aviv should be a very short flight as the crow flies. Our plane went way out into the Mediterranean, over Cyprus and circled around so as not to cross any hostile Arab air space.
On the bus from the airport to town, Bea sneezed a few times. A man seated behind her warned her to take better care of herself. We looked at each other. We felt right at home. MPB 5 June 2002]
We got a hotel and went to Am Ex, got only three letters. At the hotel we called Marko’s brother. His wife Pnina answers; Yaakov is in Jerusalem. When he returns, tonight, maybe we will go out to dinner. We had not known what to expect from all the people we were told to call but were led to believe that each one would be lavish in their welcome, that we would have a place to stay, to eat, and they would show us the sights. We half looked forward to this, to save money; in the other half, we were uneasy about the imposition, discomfort, lack of freedom. This first response was not so gracious.
We then walked to the street where Bea’s father’s friend, Binem Cukier, lives. He met us, parental people and very friendly, the food quickly on the table in the Jewish manner—and offer to stay with them, though they are far from rich—at least, dinner tonight and Rosh Hashanah. We demur. "My uncle" we expect will return and invite us. Back at the hotel, there was still no response from Yaakov. At 8, I called. Yaakov is still away. Eventually, we fell asleep without eating dinner.
16 September Monday Tel-Aviv
Yaakov arrived at 10. He is strained. He drove us around town and around Jaffa and to the tourist office. He advised a tour—four days to the Dead Sea and Negev. It cost $250 and he insisted it was the best price. He would call later and maybe we would go out for dinner.
We decided to take the Cukiers up on their offer to stay at their apartment. We went for lunch at 2 and met another of Bea’s relatives. All the conversation was in Yiddish and there was much good humor and food. We went to the hotel to sign out, but because we would have to pay anyway, decided to stay one more night. We returned to Bea’s relative’s house, called Yaakov. Pnina asked to take us out to dinner. Bea’s relatives and their children offered to take us in and to drive us to Jerusalem. We had more food.
Yaakov came and took us to his apartment and a family dinner. I called my mother collect. We discovered the reason for Yaakov and Pnina’s initial reticence: they have not been thrilled with their past guests from the US (including some of my cousins), who have been takers and demanded a lot of effort without much appreciation or willingness to do for themselves. They were cool to us. We decided that tomorrow we will go to the Cukiers and accept their more hospitable generosity.
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| Binem, Anja, Bea, Danny Rachel, Cesia |
Binem and Anja Cukier took us in with them. Binem and Bea’s father Morris were boyhood friends in Radom, Poland. In 1935, Binem, then 21, emigrated to Palestine where he had relatives. Morris stayed until the Nazis chased him to Russia. After the war, they corresponded and did so for 30 years until Morris visited Israel three years ago. Now the elderly Cukiers, though eking by in semi-retirement on inflation-slashed pensions still offer what little they have to us. Yaakov has not called today. We are being fed to the point of being stuffed on heavy Jewish food. It is impossible to say no to a woman who cooks all day for you.
We spent the evening with Danny and Rachel, daughter of Cesia, a cousin of Bea’s father. They drove us around, to the beach, Jaffa, and to their apartment. Here young marrieds buy apartments, but prices are so high that many start their married lives deep in debt. Inflation has forced up prices 5 times. A small apartment in a high rise cost 60 thousand dollars. Half must be put down. Danny came from Canada and now works for the city government as a computer programmer. Rachel teaches elementary school. Their dreams are limited—in 20 years they will own their apartment but cannot think that far ahead because war is likely any day, month or year from now.
Tonight we ate again at Cesia’s and then strolled along Dizengoff, the main drag in Tel Aviv, with its outdoor cafés like Paris or Rome. Bea has the trots and I am stuffed. But they keep feeding us.
18 September Wednesday Tel Aviv
18 September Wednesday Tel Aviv
Binem’s wife, Anja, is a real Jewish mother, a little dynamo of energy, cooking, cleaning, always urging food on us and always with a smile, a laugh and a friendly warm heart. On her forearm are the numbers of Auschwitz.
She was a young girl when the Nazis marched into Radom. She was taken with others to be a servant for the Nazi commander. For years, she washed, cleaned, and kept her eyes open. She heard and saw unspeakable things. Later, she was taken to Auschwitz. For three months, she waited her turn for the gas chamber. But she was strong and was kept barely alive to work in the arms factory. Just when it seemed it was over, the Swedish Red Cross was allowed to take a few thousand of the sickest to Sweden by some Nazi officer who knew that judgment would come and hoped to make a gesture.
When the war ended, Binem found she was alive and said she was his wife to get her to Israel. Now she is a frail old lady with hard black eyes that peer through her thick glasses and a stomach that rejects food she cannot be sure is safe.
Two years ago she was taken to Germany to testify at the trial of the Radom Nazi commander. He had ordered 30,000 deaths. She is proud of her strength and memory.
He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
19 September Thursday Tel Aviv to Beersheva
20 September Friday Beersheva to Eilat
21 September Saturday Eilat to Sharm-e-sheikh to Eilat
22 September Sunday Eilat to Tel Aviv
19-22 September
We have been exploring Israel for the last four days. Yaakov talked us into the bus tour, seemingly in an effort to satisfy his obligation and get rid of us at the same time. The cost was outrageous— $30 a day, far more than we wanted to pay. It was four painfully bumpy and long days on a bus. But despite all, it was a fascinating experience.
On the first day we went from Tel Aviv on the highway to Jerusalem which is bordered by forests of trees planted from all those supposed contributions to "plant a tree"; turns out they actually did plant them, by the thousands. On the way are the wrecks of armored cars, memorializing the Israeli soldiers who died in ‘48 to open the road.
We then rode through Jerusalem, noting the borders as they existed before the city was "united" in ‘67 in the Six Day War. We continued through land "liberated" in ‘67; Samaria, burnt brown hills with occasional Arab families tending herds on a road that was American built for Jordan. The highway goes to Jericho, the longest continuously inhabited town in the world on one fork. On the other fork, the road goes to the Dead Sea, the sight of several superlatives: the lowest spot on earth, and the highest salinity of any body of water.
We stopped and swam in the Dead Sea. This is not really swimming, since to get the salty water in mouth or eyes is sickening and dangerous; rather, you float on your back because it is impossible to sink. Your body gets covered with oily film. The natives claim this is good for skin diseases. But the feeling is like being covered with Italian dressing.
We also visited Massada, the mountain fortress built by Herod and used by Jewish rebels until 73 CE, when they were surrounded by 1600 Romans outnumbering the 1000 men, women and children on the mesa. When they saw the Romans gathering, surrounding them and for a two year period building ramps to attack the fortress and that they were doomed to die or be enslaved, they all committed suicide. To the Israelis of today, this symbolizes Jewish courage and they draw a parallel to today’s situation: 3 million Israelis surrounded by 100 million Arabs. But if the parallel is carried through it would lead to unthinkable results.  |
| Masada |
Eilat is on the Red Sea—the Gulf of Eilat. The next day we drove down the coast between yellow mountains through the Sinai to Sharm-E-Sheikh at the southernmost tip of the peninsula, all this land "liberated" in the Six Day War and defended in the ‘73 Yom Kippur War. Israelis insist it is imperative to keep it so Eilat shipping is safe. They swear never to part with Sharm, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem; their existence, spiritual and physical depend upon it.
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| Solomon Cave |
We swam in the Red Sea at Sharm which was salty and not red. In this invincible, blazing hot, waterless place the Israelis expect to build a resort. That night we toured Eilat seeing all the architecture designs they are experimenting with to live in the desert climate.
The next morning we swam at Eilat and shopped, then returned on the bus for seven hours along the Jordanian border, then through Bedoin country and potash and chemical factories and a few miles past Dimona where the nuclear plant is located and where Israel’s first atomic weapons were built.
The trip was long and at the end our asses were sore, but it was a valuable lesson into the Israeli character, arrogance translated into determination; the application of intelligence and planning and boundless optimism with realistic foresight. You wonder what could be done if 60% of the economy wasn’t spent for defense and the manpower wasn’t spent and energy not wasted to defend the desert against Arabs who have had it for 1000 years and did nothing with it.
23 September Monday Tel Aviv to Haifa to Ramat Yishai
The trip to Haifa by train was short and mostly dull. When we arrived, we called another of Bea’s father’s cousins, named Mendel Kirzenbaum, who we had been told owned a large farm and was very rich. He had shown Bea’s parents all over the north of Israel—including the Golan. When we called the response was immediate: he was expecting us and would drive in and pick us up in a half hour. Again, we did not know what he looked like, but he found us instantly. Just as Binem Cukier had recognized her father in Bea’s face, so Mendel had no doubt that she was Moishe’s daughter.
Once again, the table was the meeting place. We were fed as soon as we arrived. And told stories. Mendel had come in 1950, worked as a butcher, came to work in a local slaughterhouse and was given a few acres of land to work and live. He and his son were both in the ‘67 war, both wounded. His son bought nine sheep during the war. They now have 90 sheep, three cows, some chickens. They raise the sheep for slaughter. Mendel still works in the slaughterhouse. With the income from the sheep he is building a house for his son. Then he will sell all the stock. The work is becoming too hard.
At 12 midnight, one ewe struggled in labor and with Mendel’s midwifery, gave up two skinny lambs. The ewe licked them and nosed them to stand, which they soon did. But she would not let them nurse because she was too weak. It was her first birth and she did not understand what was expected. Mendel and his son had to hold her and put the shaky lambs to her teats. Soon they were chasing her round the enclosure on wobbly pins. Mendel was satisfied but not as much as if they had been males and could be sold for slaughter at a younger age.
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| Ramat Yishai family |
The rest of the morning we spent in languid boredom fighting flies and mosquitos and the mother, Lola, who continued to try to kill us with cholesterol. Later we were driven for a quick tour of Haifa and Carmel. Back at the farm, Mendel was upset. Another lamb had been born, but a twin had died. Mendel blamed himself: he had gone to sleep and did not help; the fetus was a breech birth and strangled on the chord. Later, we learned the depth of this tragedy: a ewe carries for five months, fed and pampered. The lamb would have been worth 500 Israeli pounds in three months on the market. In the evening, after yet another big meal, we played rummy. Lola won, displaying an intellect not immediately observable in her daily role in the family.
25 September Wednesday Ramat Yishai
We spent another languid summer day lying around the farm. We have been listening (Bea listening, I just hearing) the incessant jabbering of Max Rosensweig, an 80 year old bachelor and cousin of Bea’s family from Paris. He talks all day long without stopping; in French and Yiddish, usually about himself. He repeats stories which he forgot he told yesterday and many are non-sequiturs, not relevant to the current conversations. Some have no start, some no end. I am thankful I do not understand French so I need not participate.
On the other hand, it is uncomfortable to be in a house full of people and be able to communicate only with grunts and shrugs. Today we were given a light meal before Yom Kippur. Bread, kreplach, chicken (which was killed yesterday).
Tonight we went to synagogue, walking with the other townspeople along a dirt path to the small, simple temple. I was thinking, as the congregation mumbled the ancient prayers and went through the ritual that is thousands of years in repetition, that this was a poor Jewish congregation within the community. Then with a flash of insight, I realized that this is Israel, and not a ghetto or a minority, but the people in their own land, hard working, strong, simple and rough.
I imagined that this feeling is what must be felt in every town in Iowa on Easter morning, when everyone puts on their best clothes and goes from farm to church to meet and talk and pray and be together.
26 September Thursday (Yom Kippur) Ramat Yishai
This is the holiest day in the Jewish year, a day when you are supposed to fast and pray in the synagogue, remembering the dead, asking forgiveness for your sins of the past year and praying for a good year to come.
Never again will Yom Kippur be the same for Israelis. Last year on this date the Arabs attacked without warning. Catching the Israeli army somewhat unprepared. In the first few days hundreds were killed, wounded or captured. It took a month to regain the advantage before the uneasy truce could be restored. Now, everyone expects the war to resume. They listen to each news broadcast hourly and when phones ring in homes where fathers and sons are soldiers on call (which is virtually every home with men 18-55) faces stiffen with anticipation.
Here, while Mendel and the other men spent the day in the synagogue sentries guarded against terrorists, raid, or war. Ramat Yishai is not a frontier town, being only 20 km from Haifa. But the pioneer feeling is here. There is a strong sense of insecurity in the night when you cannot see the other side of the hill and the dogs in the neighborhood begin to bark together. You are reminded that last year, mortar shells came whistling from over the hill, from the Arab village not far away.
Tonight we broke the fast and took a picture of the family, then watched a TV documentary about the Yom Kippur War.
27 September Friday Ramat Yishai to Haifa to Tel Aviv
We escaped this morning relatively unharmed by the four days of attempted murder by means of kindness. The hospitality of these people is heartwarming, but also heartburning! They go beyond kindness and smother you by insisting you accept their offerings. It is all done to make you happy, but they overdo it. As a result, you eat food you really do not enjoy, do things that bore you and you are not happy. If you refuse as graciously as you know how, they become unhappy, and so you give in because they make you feel guilty for refusing what you didn’t want in the first place: as a result, you are also unhappy.
It was a relief to be away from this kind of stifling warmth. This morning our escape was narrow. They wanted us to stay and it took repeated howling by Bea to get them to agree to our leaving without taking it as an insult. Then they wanted to drive us to Tel Aviv, but we would have had to wait until the evening. We wanted to go earlier so we could get to Am Ex before closing. They delayed, fed us, offered money—it was as bad as the badgering of the Indian beggars! — finally they drove us to Haifa and we got the train and arrived too late for Am Ex anyway.
Note: on the way back, Bea told me that Lola had remarked to her that I was a "nice, quiet Jewish boy." Lola had this impression because I neither speak nor understand any of the languages at the dinner table: Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, French, Russian— and they spoke no English. Because I was so limited they concluded that I was either very stupid or very quiet and nice. Being charitable, they concluded the latter, but I am sure they feared the former.
28 September Saturday Tel Aviv
We spent last night and today with Danny and Rachel. Bea has a cousin on her father’s side, a woman named Cesia who came from Poland in 1958. She has two daughters. The youngest is a law student married to a medical student. They recently left for study in Florence. We never met them here but judging from her bridal portrait she is quite beautiful. Those photos are misleading, though. Israeli photographers have a genius for converting "meeskite" daughters into sepia toned goddesses. The other daughter, Rachel, is a case in point. Her photo shows off high cheek bones and sparkling eyes, not her misshapen, pointy teeth and its sheath of red gums or her typically Israeli-overstuffed figure. She is a schoolteacher and is married to Danny, a "newcomer." Danny says he is from Canada but speaks English with a Jewish accent. He has family here and visited several times before settling. He is tall, dark with black eyebrows and blue eyes, which add to the aura of strangeness about him. His conversation is shallow and witless and he is socially awkward and uncomfortable. Rachel is outgoing, generous and giggly.
We spent the day with them, at the Tel Aviv beach and at Cesia’s apartment. Then we went to a film with them. It was Spys a jumbled anti-spy comedy. We said good night to them, thinking it not likely that we would ever see them again and not too disturbed by the prospect.
29 September Sunday Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
I am actually writing this Monday morning at 8:15, after spending a nearly sleepless night in the noisiest hotel room we have had on our trip, including the one in Kabul where the radio blared all day and the loudspeaker called prayers at 5 a.m. Below our window sherut drivers shout to each other and to passersby in vulgar voices in Hebrew and Arabic. Cars, motorcycles and busses snort by, their engines screamingly reverberating off the buildings in the narrow street.
Sunday morning, after a more comfortable night at Cukiers, we arranged our flight out. We wanted to go to Egypt, but none of the airlines we contacted could tell us how to get there from here. We then booked flight on El Al, the earliest we could get, next Monday. We did this at the El Al office after Pan Am with their usual shoddy discourtesy and carelessness couldn’t get through to El Al, whose office was three blocks away. I then put my watch in a repair shop. Anja took us there; the guy is from Radom (judging from how many Radomers we have met, it seems half the Jews of Europe lived there). Because of this coincidence he gave Trukenberg’s daughter’s husband a discount . We then boarded the bus to the central bus station and got another to Jerusalem.
We were happy to be on our own again, free to make our own choices, eat where we choose, or not eat. But after last night, I am not too sure about the cost of this freedom.
30 September Monday Jerusalem
This was the 60th day of our journey and in a way the most moving. We went to Yad Vashem, a memorial built as a reminder of the genocide, what the Israelis call "The Holocaust." We decided it is not an apt designation. It connotes to me a natural, rather than man made, disaster. But perhaps it is meant to be ironic. Through my own family’s experiences, I have lived with the telling and retelling of the stories of that period, complete with films of the camp victims dead and barely alive, told by survivors I have known (tattoos burned into arms and hearts as proof) and have thought much about it from many angles until it became, at times, an annoying cliche, just another means for the imposition of "Jewish guilt."
Yet, walking slowly through the "museum" viewing the display of documents proving the incomprehensible, the photos, the testimony, the "tombstone" with its numbing numbers: "children: 1,500,000" ... and the familiar names: "Kirshbaum, Greenberg ..." The effect of sadness created is overwhelming and real. It is odd but it moved me to tears as the visions of misery in Calcutta did not. Certainly that "live" experience was more "real" and perhaps more relevant because it goes on today. But somehow I felt detached from it, while this is more a part of my being. The parallel of inhumanity caused by men is there, but maybe it is unrealistic to throw them together.
As we walked out, Bea said: "My God, they really planned to kill all the Jews!" It was a shocking emotional reaction to a historical fact known but not until now felt and understood. She also observed angrily that the memorial should be in Burbank, not Israel, if it is to have impact. She speaks the truth.
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| Dome of the Rock |
2 October: We have spent the last two days in a time machine pulsating back and forth into history. We walked to the Old City through Jaffa Gate and along the winding narrow streets until we reached the Via Dolorosa which is the path Jesus took to his crucifixion. We followed the street, now paved and lined like every other with shops, up the incline to the Church of The Holy Sepulcher which contains Jesus’ tomb.
The Church itself is a labyrinth of churches of many Christian denominations. It is Gothic and dark and echoes in shadowy incantations that its walls have absorbed over the centuries. Emerging, we were back in the timeless world of commerce. Leather goods, religious articles, cloth, rugs, food stores selling Arab sweets, butcher shops with lamb carcasses hanging, cafés selling sweet Turkish coffee and Coke.
Later, in the same maze but in another corner, we entered a courtyard which is bordered by the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of Solomon’s Temple which thrived 500 years before Christ walked. Above the wall is the Dome of The Rock, a Moslem mosque which contains what they believe to be the rock Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac upon. Mohamed is said to have ascended to heaven from it. Just beyond the wall on the next hill is David’s Tomb where King David, of Goliath fame, is supposed to be buried. The city was first made famous under his reign. All through the city are churches going back to when the Crusaders "reclaimed" the city for Christ after slaughtering Moslems. Right near these churches and all around are sites where battles took place in 1948 and 1967. Tolstoy calls history "The unconscious life of humanity in the swarm." Here it is certainly the core of the hive for western civilization.
I came out with an eerie, disquieted feeling that I find difficult to describe. The past is like a shadowy concept I cannot grasp. It scares me, reminds me of classes I had in math or other subjects where I suddenly realize the material had gone beyond my comprehension, whether because my concentration failed or because of my lack of capacity to understand.
[Letter to Ron and Laura, dated October 1]:
... We are in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is nice—an example of how people of every religion can live together and pray to the same God—Money! We went to the Old City and shopped at the many markets there, probably some of the same ones that Jesus shopped at on his way to his crucifixion – today they accept Bancamericard. In fact, we walked the Via Dolorosa, the actual path He took. But we had our own crosses to bear – the shopkeepers hawking their wares.
We also visited the wall everyone talks about, which is so important to Jews. The history is a little cloudy to me but from I could gather it seems it was built just after The Flood by Noah about 4000 years ago. When the waters subsided, it exposed all the fish and sea mammals on the dry land. Noah was told by God to build a great wall and hang the large fish there to dry. Noah I:42: "And the Lord sayeth Noah – build a great wall and hangeth the fish to dryeth ..." This Noah diddeth and they had fish and blubber for many years to come. The wall still exists and to this day is known as "The Whaling Wall" as I’m sure you know. Yesterday we went to Yad Vashem ... a lot of fun, too.
Today is the holiday of Sukkoth which storekeepers celebrate by making "sukors" out of the tourists. Israelis love holidays. Most stores are closed Friday night and Saturday (Shabbat) and every holiday, including Tony Curtis’ birthday, which is marked in synagogue by a rabbi doing a bad Cary Grant dovening: "Boruch, Atah, Judy, Judy, Judy ..." The stores make up for all the closures by charging high prices when open.
We are looking forward to leaving this land so we can spend a week on a fat farm in Istanbul. Israel is called the land of milk and honey but it should be amended to land of cholesterol and fat. We also saw the Hadasah Hospital which has an entire wing devoted to research into incurable heartburn (known worldwide as the "Boiled Chicken Wing"). Last week they made a breakthrough: a man had an enormous stomach tumor which when removed turned out to be an 80 pound kreplach. Seriously, everyone here has a heavy heart—and heavy legs, arms stomachs, noses ... the typical Israeli man is built like our Uncle Al—hairy, barrel-chested with some slippage of the barrel. They wear tight shirts buttoned to the belly and tight waist and butt flare pants. The women unfortunately look exactly like the men... Love, Mort and Bea.
3 October Thursday Jerusalem
We talked last night about the possibility of going home before the year is out. It has always been our concept that though the trip is structured for one year, it was within the realm that we would stay longer if a set of circumstances made it possible and also, that we would cut and run if the situation called for that.
We anticipated inflation cutting our savings to ribbons, deflation of enthusiasm sapping our wanderlust in time, and restlessness urging us to end this interlude and "get back into the business of life" as some friends and relatives wanted. It now seems that all of those problems, though present with fluctuating importance according to our mood and experience, are giving way to three other problems which may conjoin with the others to impel us homeward.
A lack of energy (which reading this journal, I think, explains); just plain homesickness (missing friends, familiar surroundings and concretely, a permanent home and work); and illness. The last seems, recently, the most annoying. I expected a reasonable number of colds, stomach upsets and even an injury or two, natural during the course of a year, especially in travel. But now I have another head cold and Bea had awful cramps last night and winter is yet to come.
4 October Friday Jerusalem to Tel Aviv
I had an interesting night last night. My most recent cold broke out in full flower causing me to wake before light, snorting and sneezing for breath. Trying to be quiet I lay awake for a long time, dozing and breathing with effort. During this time some thought process of association that I was not conscious of and cannot now trace, brought out the idea for a story about Papa Hymie and Grandpa and I have been thinking about it since.
At 7:30, Bea finally awoke and we took a sherut to Tel Aviv. We picked up mail: the car material finally came from Esther, and her bank statement that with the retirement check we had $13,000 in the bank. We bought flowers to go with the vase we had bought for the Cukiers and I picked up my watch from the repairman.
At night, after supper, Pnina called and invited us out to eat. We went and though it was Friday night, they found a place that not only served hot food but pork (euphemistically called "non-kosher steak") and another place for brandy and tea, a bustling outdoor café. Again we were made aware that if they wanted, they could have showed us a very good time.
5 October Saturday Tel Aviv
We passed our last Israeli shabbat in uneventful languor. I suffered from an annoying head cold and Bea from an earache caused by Anja and Binem’s nagging about her smoking too much. We read, and I continued to write a little. Bea repacked and I sneezed a lot and drank gallons of tea. Late in the afternoon we napped and were awakened by the arrival of Danny and Rachel with whom we went for a walk around Dizengoff and Ben Yehuda for the umpteenth boring time and found an open pharmacy and bought our pills. Still later, Bea called her parents as they had requested in their letter.
6 October Sunday Tel Aviv
We spent our last full day in Israel mostly as we had spent many others, sitting, reading and listening to our elders’ advice, eating and a little sightseeing.
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| Dead Sea Scrolls Museum Dome |
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