Lizrael Update

Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004

  • Bebe update: Twenty three months

    Hi B. We discovered tea parties this month. You’re a natural… Not sure how you already knew to pour so well. You must get that from your father. It’s all in good fun, even when you’re smothering your guests with your ferocious love. Or tenderly picking flowers and crushing them in your tiny hand. You’ve started…

  • For now, at least.

    Aren’t older brothers… …the best?

  • Universe.

    Sometimes we ask the Universe for something and we don’t even realize it. Sometimes we actually do realize. Sometimes we actually get it. And then sometimes you struggle so much with the reception, until you acknowledge it’s what you didn’t want to want but needed very much. So, thanks Universe.   (Also, Rolling Stones.)

  • Fifty-Two Frames: Night

    It’s been a rough few months for me. In my head. When Purim came I knew it was time to get out of it. So begins the March-April-May roller coaster of Israeli holiday life. And festivities. And sunshine. Not like there’s always that choice, but here I am. Time to get up. Week 9: Night…

  • Jerusalem Marathon: Crossroads, crossing cobblestone roads, and more

    Success all around! Running the 10k for charitable fundraising was a great way to put a new spin on something I’ve done three times before. And my peeps managed to more than double the sponsorship amounts from what I initially pledged. Thanks so much to the friends and family who supported me in supporting Crossroads!…

  • Fifty-Two Frames: Minimalist

    Yes, I love my bug close-ups. This ladybug was a trooper, and by the end a mangled trooper, while crawling up and down our arms during our nature walk last week. I’m sure it had hoped for a more minimalist morning. Week 8: Minimalist All you need on a sunny day. 

  • I see what you did there, Anwar Sadat…

    Oh, you know, just minding my own Zionist business at the IDF museum in מתחם התחנה in Tel Aviv (gorgeous area, go sometime), when in a room about Israel’s generals I notice a photograph symbolizing hope, future, and cold peace… Ho hum, just having a grand time with my ex-arch enemy. What’s that? The pattern…

  • Fifty-Two Frames: Love

    After a mock wedding at kindergarten where my son was the groom, we all met up at the library afterwards and he ran off with the flower girl… Week 7: Love sneak a hug.

  • Fifty-Two Frames: Levitation/Mid-air

    This was a tough week for me. Not as much photographically as philosophically. What is photography for you? Is it life observation or is it digital art? Is it both? What counts, what’s ‘cheating’? We know it’s all subjective, but is it all artificial? Is cropping/positioning the same caliber of ‘editing’ as shifting objects around…

  • Bebe update: Twenty two months

    Yesterday, during our morning cuddle routine, you did something interesting. Actually, I’ve noticed it before, but on that morning, in the still-dark room of the very-early wake up, in our deliciously-cozy bed, you took that something up a notch. I’ve always thought it pretty powerful that when you don’t like something, you tell us ‘enough.’…

  • Help an orphan, help the world: Donate to orphanages in Israel

    You know, we don’t think about this much. I think for too many people, orphans and orphanages are plot material for Broadway shows, TV or 19th century literature. How often do we actually give deeper thought to what it means to be an orphaned child? Who cooks their hot meals? Who supplies them with clothes,…

  • Aaaaand my daughter ate a crayon.

    I look up from the table. Bebe bounds towards me, Buddha belly first, emanating tubby tummy joy. “Heeyy!” “Ima!” “Hey!” “Cracker.” She’s pointing to her mouth which is covered in… “What? What is that? There’s no crackers here…” It looks like chocolate. “Did you go into my special cabinet?” I ask her, with a suspicion that foreshadows…

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