I’d like to join in the chorus on this one. Since my arrival on the shores of this beautiful but troubled country over thirty years ago, the awareness that Israeli society was raw, immature and unstable was one of my first and lasting impressions. I remember writing to my father about the last elections won by the Labour Party after the Yom Kipur War: “The walls are all cracked, but they...
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Yes I know, I’m impulsive and prone to let me emotions carry me away! Despite my growing maturity (I am already 54 years old), and my conscience effort to balance my emotions with my reason, those who now me know it isn’t always so easy. Maybe it’s because I care so much? More likely because I never learned how to “manage” my emotions until very late in life, and hence the “tools” others...
It was a bright sunny morning this morning. I woke early, before the alarm. Five AM. Matti was already up, showering, dressing, packing his back pack. The same back pack I bought him over six years ago to use when he travelled back and forth from Yeshiva High School. I often offered to buy him something newer, but modest Matti felt it a waste of good money. Why buy a new one if the...
Last week, having hitched a ride into the city I was a little lateand needed to grab a cab on order to make my 10:30Am class (nothinglike having 25 students waiting for you to make you feel responsible.Also Murphy’s law probably dictates that none of them will be late onthe day the instructor himself is!) I was standing at a corner ofTzafra Square (what used to be Zahal Square before somebody becamepolitically correct). A...
Whenever people learn that I’m a convert to Judaism, they inevitably decide that I must have been influenced by some charismatic Jewish role model. When I’m asked about the Jewish friends who must have obviously “influenced” me, I always think of Michael T. and of his mother. It must have been around grade five, maybe six, when I was attending the Prince of Wales Public School when I met Michael. So far as I...
I don’t know about you, but I hate fasting. Every time I have to abstain from food and drink for any extended period of time, I always end up trying to understand why this act is relevant to me here and now! Here we are, how many millenniums since Esther fasted three days and three nights before throwing herself at the mercy of the ruler of Persia? Why was her act necessary? To plea...
