Category: 400 thoughts
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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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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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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…
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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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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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Me at the Gun Show: An exercise in human connection
Last month, abroad in the United States, I had the opportunity to experience something I’d only seen mocked on satirical TV news shows: a good ole American gun show. Well, since I’ve written this, clearly I took up the opportunity. It was eye-opening – some things were expected, some other things not expected at all…