Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004
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Who is *really* ready for אחדות in 5783?
It’s a big week ahead. The timing shouldn’t be lost on any of us. We’re on another eve of Temple destruction anniversary. We’re on another eve of Knesset voting the judicial reform issue. Will the labor unions strike again? Is the IDF really at risk of falling apart? Will Bibi’s new pacemaker slow the pace…
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Unbalanced
It’s not the end of the world, because nothing ever is. Maybe it’s eventually the end of my world, or yours. More likely, it’s a transition into a different world, one where… one where a lot of fears become reality, where others don’t, where things we never imagined happening do happen, where things we hoped…
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Koala update: fourteen years
Someone told me the summer between ages 14 and 15 is the one where things really kick off for a teenage boy. I’ll let you know if it’s true, but here’s what I already know: Body image… is a thing. A big one. In boys. I should have known; I should have remembered (I have…
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Zooey update: seven years
The highlight of my last year with you is watching you take what you want and leave behind what you don’t. That’s not to be taken for granted with everything that comes with starting school, developing new friends, navigating new skills, and of course… being the youngest of four. The highlight of my highlight was…
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Aliyah is a million cuts.
When you’re 22 and pick up and move to another country with a minimum 9-hour flight time, you’re really not thinking about 18 years later when the other shoe drops. The first shoe dropped when you had your first kid, and realized how hard it is to have added yet another family member to the…
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Bebe update: twelve years
A lot of people don’t know how to make choices. I don’t mean the right choices. I mean, how to go about choosing. Not only do you relish in making choices, you know how. Or it’s innate, at least. It comes easy to you. Whatever is going on in there is an actual thinking process.…
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To my bat mitzvah.
I could choose to roll my eyes at having to come up with another dvar torah related to one of my kids’ various Vayikra parshas – just a year later – but instead, I’ll leave the korbanot and the cohanim behind. Really, we have one word to focus on – look no further than the…
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Nettles update: nine years
I spent a lot of this last year thinking about wiring. The way our brains are wired. What does that mean? Yeah, it sounds weird, I know. Not like wires, what’s running around the office desk or what you pick up and randomly turn into some art project. It’s more the way our minds take…
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Naturally insatiable.
Why are we so hungry all the time? Why are we hard coded for never enough, never satiated? Is it evolutionary? Survival? So we constantly have something to live for? Is that when we start to die, when the hunger disappears? When we do these hikes, and I turn back to look, for one luxurious…
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Undressing Israel.
A set of giant concrete blocks that serve as guard posts at the checkpoint near my house now has a fancy sign on it: עמדה 2 Things here have always felt concrete – heavy, burdensome, temporary but permanent – but they’re getting more and more more concrete over time and experience and murder and terror…
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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 –…
Questions? Comments? Advice?