Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004
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Bleak.
Some make a habit of exaggerating the bleakness of our civil future here in Israel, many many more make a habit of not relating to it enough. The reckoning is creeping even slower than you’d imagine; bursting those bubbles is harder than you think. So tonight was the second in a series of motzei shabbat […]
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The hard way.
At the ‘חוג בת מצווה’ I’m doing with my daughter, tonight’s session was focused on Jewish Israeli women heroes of the last century; this follows six weeks focused on even earlier historical Jewish strongwomen. Posters that hung around the room exposed us to some oldies but goodies – Naomi Shemer, Golda Meir, Henrietta Szold – […]
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Woman, today.
#1 This time was different. I’m not sure why. I guess I am. There’s a weight on my chest. For months, for several years. Like I’m sure there is on yours, at least, maybe. I dunked once and felt like I could see myself in the water. That weight was lifted within the liquid mass […]
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Go forth.
What a weird twist… to be exploring Jewishness and Israeliness and what this peoplehood means these days when it’s appearing more and more difficult to understand the meaning of what’s happening in the world… …during the week we read parshat Lech Lecha. What does it mean to pick up and leave something you know? Swept […]
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Is ‘local’ the answer?
I’ve been thinking about local vs global for a while now. I think there’s a clear crossover between my midlife crisis (five years and counting?) and this growing sense that the most important thing we can do – as individuals – is pay attention to the local vs the global. There seems to be a […]
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On to the next stage of modern teenage development: Looking over your shoulder.
Two days ago was Yom Yerushalayim, or Jerusalem Day – the celebration of the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, where Jews were finally allowed to roam freely in the Old City due to their own sovereignty. It’s a day I really only tend to think about in the context of traffic to my former Jerusalem […]
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To my bar mitzvah.
I’m in awe of Torah reading… getting up close to it… having a physical connection with the parchment… It’s not something I had access to from behind the kind of barrier they called a mechitza where I grew up. (I just realized this week I never even saw tefillin up close until now.) Watching you […]
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Maus and me.
If you’re around my age, we never really had the opportunity to read Maus as young kids; at least I didn’t, I think it was too new or we were just already so exposed to meeting and being related to Holocaust survivors, it wasn’t so necessary. I started it recently; I read the second half […]
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Koala update: thirteen years
Onward teenager! It’s a bizarre time… Gone (temporarily, I promise) are the days of babbling and bright eyes and demanding of the world. In: hooded sweatshirts, always up. Sorting through developing dark humor. Navigating new friends at new school, which involves a fair share of fast food, Marvel movies and midweek sleepovers. It feels like […]
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Zooey update: six years
I’ve spent six years looking at your pretty face, and marveling that there is nothing at all physically resembling mine – you’re a carbon copy, visually, of your dad. Well, there’s one thing – your freckles. We share that. But what I’ve spent the last year realizing is you have something else we share. Or […]
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Bebe update: eleven years
Been trying to remember what it was like being 11. It definitely wasn’t like how you do even 10, to be honest. So mature, so ahead of your time, and still so fun-loving and free and not bothered by what other people think. Let’s start with sister – man I wish I had an older […]
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Nettles update: eight years
You were born a bullet train, and eight years later, this is still an express line. If I hem and haw on a decision, you take it into your own hands (and footstool, and cellotape, and whatever you need to get it done when my back’s turned). You’ll get it done, if you want it […]
Questions? Comments? Advice?