From stray cats to straying Katsav
SIDRA KRANZ MOSHINSKY
I EMERGE from a Temazepam-induced sleep feeling remarkably refreshed. It’s my first day in Israel after a 15-year absence. I draw open the curtains of my Tel Aviv hotel room to reveal blue skies, a remarkably still sea and what remains of the Dolphinarium disco after a suicide bombing nearly 10 years ago (which people seem to be passing by with barely a second glance).
I decide to walk the length of the beach, from Yafo in the south to the relatively newly developed port area in the north. Where else can one start at the ancient harbour from which Jonah set sail and end up at an ultra-modern precinct, replete with Birkenstock and Diva stores, craft stalls, stylish restaurants and a farmers’ market? From here I make my way past the apartment where I lived for a while. I’ve never before had the experience of visiting a place I once knew so well after so much time. The notion of taking a walk down memory lane takes on a whole new meaning: each step unlocks images, conversations and experiences.
A friend is going to a wedding and is unsure what to give as a gift. His quandary is solved by the iPhone app “Kamah Kesef?” (How much money?), which calculates how much cash to give based on answers to questions on the nature of the event (wedding, bar mitzvah, birthday), number of guests, closeness of relationship, month, day of week, location, salary.
It is bright in Jerusalem, light reflecting off the stones, bouncing everywhere. I spend hours walking through the different, distinctive parts of the city. A feast for the senses, but too long in the sun and I have a massive headache by the end of the day.
Awake from 3am as I’ve sworn off the Temazepam. It’s going to be a long one. First day of the course at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and we’re taken on a tour of the campus. The multiple layers of the city and the institution are opened up through various vistas, texts and symbols. We end up with lunch at the Frank Sinatra cafeteria (also the site of a suicide bombing), where I eat and look rather nostalgically at the stray cats feeding on the scraps and rubbish bins in the vicinity. When I was 10, my family spent six months in Haifa on sabbatical and the stray cats were my first friends. I’ve felt a sense of gratitude to them ever since.
The diversity that can be
experienced in one day
never fails to amaze.
The newspapers are full of analysis of the Katsav verdict, with many commentators and letter-writers seeing the decision as a triumph for Israel’s judicial system. It is, but I also find myself in agreement with the journalist who asks what would have happened had Katsav had been found innocent. Would that have meant, conversely, that it was a dark day for justice? I’m fascinated by the mix of articles that each daily newspaper brings: Israeli neo-Nazis; joint Israeli-German research about the uniquely human capacity to shed emotional tears; a review comparing two books published to mark 100 years of the kibbutz movement.
We visit a Muslim girls’ school in East Jerusalem. It’s an eye-opening visit in many ways. Humbling too, in that it’s from this poor and in some ways quite confronting place that I learn a lesson about how to show visitors true generosity and hospitality.
Another school in Jerusalem and I observe a literature class in which students are discussing the myth of Narcissus in the context of a unit about the nature of love. I taught the same story last year. How many students in how many continents over how many centuries have analysed this one text?
The diversity that can be experienced in one day never fails to amaze. A drive out of Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea reveals the beauty of the Judean desert, and the very basic conditions in which Bedouin clans live; it reveals natural wonders, as well as an almost Las Vegas-like scene in which a constellation of five-star hotels emerges on the horizon. No lunch to be had at what looked like a promising Bedouin village on a website, but we are compensated by great food and drinks at a pulsing tavern in Arad, in which every inch of wall and ceiling is plastered with soccer paraphernalia.
Outside the Prime Minister’s Residence is a vigil for Gilad Shalit, reminding Bibi and Sara of how many days the soldier has been in captivity. I watch as days 1649, 1650, 1651, 1652, 1653, 1654, 1655, 1656, 1657, 1658, 1659, 1660 and 1661 tick over.
Walking along the street someone stops me to ask the time. A brief exchange, in Hebrew, then we politely continue on our ways. Funny how even the most trivial of encounters can dissipate, if only momentarily, the insider-outsider divide.
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky is head of Jewish studies at Bialik College and a freelance writer.