Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004
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A lot and nothing to say
What has changed in a year? I don’t even know how to share this part of myself – I’m drained, I’m exhausted, I’m surrounded by exhausted people, exhausted communities, exhausted institutions – but it’s important to try, so I’ll try. Survival mode is relative to what we’re each surviving; some people are surviving the ultimate…
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Time to face facts: It’s a grey world we live in.
To the non-Israelis who aren’t grasping the context of Bibi Netanyahu in 2024. It’s day 331 since October 7. I still occasionally hear how some Americans revere Bibi as a security hero, the ultimate leader for this time, etc. And to be fair to some more self aware folks, I hear some putting it as:…
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The children weep openly
Look around. The families are different. Your family is different. My family is different. Some sons walk around with ghosts in their eyes now. Some daughters know more than their generous spirits can handle. The children weep openly at this Memorial Day ceremony. (Memorializing what? Yesterday’s names?) My family is different. Yours is too. Look…
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Kaddish everywhere.
“It’s different this year. Every year it’s sad, but this year, it feels different, like, I get it now, you know?” From the mouths of Israeli teens. I’m 41. I’ve been never-forgetting my entire life. I saw these images and watched these videos and heard these testimonies from Holocaust survivors standing in front of me…
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Well I just had a fucked up weekend abroad
I don’t want to talk about it right now though. What I will say is… the returning home is always something. Every time, it’s a weird breath of relief. As uncomfortable (on a technical level) as I may feel here in Israel as an immigrant, it’s a discomfort I’m naturally comfortable with because it locks…
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Mirrored.
If you keep watchful enough you’ll see it. The people… have become posters. Glazed, 2d, the way a memory alters the view; an extra height to that building, a wider hall than it was. An embrace that was just a hug. The realness slips away… like what death does… it distorts. Grief is the journey…
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Sons
What Israeli mother at some point doesn’t silent cry while watching her sleeping teenage son breathe in and out, the way she did when he was just under 3 kilo and ignorant of everything but wanting to live? Who doesn’t softly weep after pulling herself into bed next to her boy, now taller, now stronger,…
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Horse pills
“Together we’ll win” (יחד ננצח) is lovely wartime morale propaganda but we’re so far from together and the fact is getting more true and more painful and I have my own 2-part prescription for the country after we volunteered on a horse farm today for a woman whose been managing on her own since Oct…
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Strawberries
Every week you miss the strawberries; the strawberry guy’s truck is still there by the time you haphazardly show up after two, but there’s only apples, small melons, maybe some citrus left. Oh well next time, you smile at your teen who you’ve once again asked/requested/implored to jump out the car to inquire about longshot…
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100 days into hell
It’s an ugly time. A time of nightmares coming true, a time of mourning and imagining and planning for the worst, constantly. A time when things you couldn’t bring yourself to say out loud a few months ago are now regular topics. I’ve learned a lot about us. I’ve learned that the ugliest things are…
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Better to have loved and forgotten
There’s a glitch in my programming, or maybe it’s a bug-by-design. I’m a good reader – good in that, I can read anywhere (hours of car rides on family trips were no problem), and good in that, I enjoy reading so very much. Good in that I read with open ears and open mind. The…
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Uncomfortable
Before the ceasefire, I had a thing that on days I had to leave my town for the merkaz, I’d wear comfortable shoes. You know… just in case. That faded as the explosions quieted, the sirens halted, the Hostage Release Reality Show stole our attention. Today was a day I should have worn comfortable shoes,…
Questions? Comments? Advice?