Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004
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Eat up, the menu got bigger
I was thinking today, while doing my barbell clean/overhead press reps, <record scratch> Wait, what? Ok so here’s the thing. A lot of people hit there 30s and figure out they should ‘get into’ certain things – healthy eating, mountain biking, pottery, running, you know the types – and people call this a mid-life discovery,…
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Canaries, frogs – get used to the coal pot.
Somewhere along the way we forgot that no one owes us anything. In 2003/4 when I was gearing up to leave NYC and move to Israel, I wrote this ‘manifesto’ of my rationale for making aliyah. (Wish I could find it, but alas, there was a time before digital hoarding was automated to clouds.) I…
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The ‘end’ is a taunt
I could have shared more, perhaps, over the last two years. But sharing would only be a byproduct of expressing things that hurt so much to express. Pain, sadness, depression, anger. Despair. The visual I’ve put together of what it’s been like is… imagine you’re overboard, falling into the ocean; you look upward and you…
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Balancing inside purgatory
“Shana tova guys! I don’t know how much darker everything will get, but I’m happy to be submerged into the darkness by your sides 🫶” Tongue in cheek new years wishes for my friends but the truth is, it’s the boiled down version of my ‘making aliyah manifesto’ from 22 years ago, which, foresightedly enough,…
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Living history
Never have I been so relieved for the timing of a flight home… Back in Israel after another extended work trip, just in time to be woken at 3am with a warning about a potential attack from Iran. Since, after all, Israel had already started delivering blows to nuclear infrastructure, as promised, for… years. Years,…
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Koala update: Sixteen years
It’s a time of learning to let go. The trick, as a parent, is to know when to release… to release my grip, a reverse squeeze, relax my fingers and watch your teenage palm slip out. To let you figure it out and to trust you and to be ok with your mistakes, that your…
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Grief is the price for loving
Even if you turned the clock back two years, I’d do it all over again… but I now understand why everyone thought it was a big deal I adopted an older dog. I always, always felt burning desire for that kind of connection; at some point it became clear it wasn’t a child-like fantasy thing,…
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Holocaust tired.
Even Holocaust fatigue has changed. Years past, I’d discuss how much we need to evolve our sharing/imparting/including our next generation in what happened to our grandparents in World War II and what it means today, tomorrow, the next day. Last year, we were all in shock – the tekes was packed, the crying was clear,…
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Zooey update: nine years
“Sometimes, I say the F word in my lev… when I’m thinking about Hamas.” We don’t even know the half of it, I’m sure. The half of what is in your heart, the other half of what is in your heart, your daydreams, your nightmares. But what I do know, what I can see, is…
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Bebe update: fourteen years
There’s just this very very delicate thing. It’s a girl, between girlhood and womanhood, opening her eyes and slowly learning what it’s going to take to navigate adulthood. As this thing unwraps, crinkling like cellophane around a new mascara, you get to see how many layers there are. How to dress, how to perform, how…
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Nettles update: eleven years
Standing over me, as I help with something on your computer, and I turn to you and ask you a question, all business you are, and you pull your hair back and twist it around, the way I do when I’m thinking, and you hold it there, and focus on the screen, thinking, your face…
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Invisible grief
By now, who among us doesn’t recognize the devastating countenance of Yarden Bibas or Eli Sharabi? Sometimes their eyes are glazed, faraway; sometimes their faces are fixed, determined. Sometimes all you can do is look upon them and know you’ll, hopefully, never even be close to that level of grief and pain. You feel for…
Questions? Comments? Advice?