Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004
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Vatika’s vocabulary lesson
Officially twenty years here, and oh how my Hebrew vocabulary and Israeli mindset has expanded and exploded in just one. Words I never thought I’d need, words I figured would take another while to come across. Or words that have completely changed meaning in the course of a day. If I mapped my aliyah in…
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A year that felt like years
One (or, millions) could argue that 2024 started on October 7th 2023 and that that specific year has never ended since. I’m not a sentimentalist for dates, years, counting time. Maybe that’s how I get away with being 40 something and feeling like the world just started (again). A world did just begin, in earnest.…
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Politics is not the point
When you die, you will not leave behind your politics. Neither will I. When we die, what they’ll say at our funerals, if they show up, is the kind of person we were. And then in some people’s mind, subconsciously or unconsciously, it will remain a little speck: were we part of leaving a corner…
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חזק חזק ונתחזק
So after a year, this morning my dog finally let me walk us together around the security road outside our house. Our old route. The last time we did that, just the two of us, was the day before Simchat Torah 5784. Something that happened, since last Simchat Torah, is that I inadvertently and unintentionally…
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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…
Questions? Comments? Advice?