Let me start this week by attempting to be as gracious as I was ungracious last week. It is now (or will be now: now as in when I publish this post, rather than now/then as in when I wrote it – writing a text that represents my thoughts at a particular moment while keeping in mind that they will only be read by their intended audience some time, often a day or two, later seems to place me increasingly often in an environment where time takes on a curious fluidity)…anyway, as I was saying, it is now almost exactly a week since Bernice and I landed back from our 10 days in England.

Before we left Israel, we spent some time discussing how we expected this to be our last trip back to the old country. From all that we had read of Britain in the last couple of years, we expected to feel very alien and far from comfortable there. In addition, many of those we go over to see visit Israel from time to time, and we can see them here even more conveniently.

It is also true that whereas, when we first moved to Israel, we had a list of items that we always brought back when we visited Britain, these days, between what no longer interests us and what is easily attainable online, our shopping in the UK is less and less. On this trip, we bought little more than brown socks (why are they unattainable in Israel?), mixed spice (for apple crumble) and children’s books (for you can guess who). Yes, of course you can buy children’s books online, but Amazon is not The Bookshop and Secret Toy Shop in the High Road, Loughton, with staff who know and love every book on their shelves, and such treasures as genuine Waddingtons playing cards (in packaging unchanged from 50 years ago) for the born-again bridge player in your life.

As a measure of how uneasy we felt, I should mention that we spent some time discussing, before we left Israel, and canvassing opinion in England, about whether I should wear my kippa on the street, and whether a baseball cap is now nothing more than a sure indicator of a Jew who is trying to pass. In the end, I wore my plush beige flat cap almost everywhere (Can you honestly picture me in a baseball cap?) and, given the good weather we enjoyed, felt rather self-conscious.

We also discussed, on our El AL flight over, what our policy was going to be if we were asked where we come from. In the end we settled, idiotically, for Greece, a country Bernice has never visited (whereas I was in Athens on business once for almost two days), whose language we speak not a word of, and whose citizens we could never pass for.

In the event, this was more of a private joke between ourselves. When people waiting to board an underground train stood aside to let disembarking passengers get off first, we remarked to each other how differently people behave in Greece. When someone actually asked Bernice where we lived, she of course immediately said: “Israel”, with no unpleasant reaction following.

In Swansea, we saw one Palestinian flag and a banner outside a house.

Having completed our ‘last-ever trip to Britain’, we are now enthusiastically planning the next one. Apart from catching up with the family and friends that we simply couldn’t fit in this time, we also want to enjoy again the amazing hospitality of our oldest (in the sense of longest-standing) friends and our closest relatives, maybe even for just a little longer next time. In all four centres, we were treated right royally, and were free of the pressure to be constantly rushing to see things and do things.

We did, of course do some things: we spent two separate hours shopping;  we visited the newly redesigned and opened municipal museum of the London suburb I grew up in, a museum that includes a display of Jewish life in Ilford that references, among many other familiar scenes, my late father’s grocery shop that was a central part of the community; we visited the cemetery where Bernice father and other relatives, and my parents and other relatives, are buried; we tried to visit the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, but cost-cutting has sadly restricted opening hours; I was able to look around the beautiful renovation of my brother’s shul in Chigwell.

Other than that, we sat, talked, ate, drank tea, reminisced, caught up, and, over the Shabbat, celebrated our great-nephew’s barmitzvah at another vibrant, and considerably younger, London Jewish community, in Borehamwood. After the exertions of the Shabbat and the party (I hope that my brother’s successful attempt to get me to dance Yesh Lanu Tayish with him is captured on video), our trip was rounded off by a day and a half doing absolutely nothing in rural Surrey at the lovely home of Bernice’s brother and sister-in-law. We are both agreed that European woodland is, increasingly, one of things we miss most in Israel, and here was a parcel of it on our doorstep.

Even the heavens shone on us, literally. Determined to travel light, we packed clothes suitable for a disappointing British spring, and enjoyed an almost uninterrupted run of sunny days, with temperatures in the mid-twenties. While the authorities were issuing warnings not to venture out in the midday sun, the weather was, for us, pleasantly comfortable, and the English and Welsh countryside certainly looked its best.

So, let me take this opportunity to thank all of our generous and considerate hosts and hostesses for conspiring to wreck our plans to make this a farewell tour. We love you all.

This week, as I sit here pondering which path to follow in this week’s post, I can almost feel, under my feet, the eggshells starting to crack.

Bernice and I are now seven days into our ten-day four-centre holiday in Britain. From Heathrow, last Sunday evening, we took the coach down to Swansea, where we spent two nights with the closest of friends. Back in London on Tuesday, we traversed the city to stay with my brother and sister-in-law in Chigwell. On Friday, we all went over to North-West London for my great-nephew’s barmitzvah.

Tomorrow (which, by the time I publish, will be yesterday), Monday, Bernice’s brother and sister-in-law are picking us up to spend one night with them in their newish home that we have never seen in Surrey. This will be our last leg, at the end of which we may well feel on our last legs.

My problem, of course, is that almost all of these people, and the cousin of mine that we met up with in London, constitute about 20% of my readership. The chances that I will be able to write about the last week without offending at least one or two of them are, to be honest, fairly remote, So, on the whole, I think I need to choose a topic that does not directly involve any of them.

Friday was Lag b’Omer, which may need just a little background. Over the seven-week period between Pesach and Shavuot, religious Jews count the Omer. The first four-and-a-half weeks of that period cover a time when the students of Rabbi Akiva were struck by a plague that killed 24,000 of them, representing the mass of the cream of Jewish learning. On the 33rd day of the Omer, the plague stopped, and no more students died. Rabbi Akiva decided to immediately gather new students and resume teaching. From this body of students emerged the rabbis who were responsible for codifying the Oral Law, which was responsible for ensuring the continuity of Jewish practice.

For this reason, the first 33 days of counting the Omer represent a period of semi-mourning, one aspect of which is that men do not shave. (In modern times, in Israel, many religious men, myself included, elect to shave on Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Independence Day.) On Lag b’Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, the tradition is to resume shaving. End of background.

So, I planned to resume shaving on Thursday evening, as soon as Lag b’Omer began. To this end, I had brought my electric shaver to Britain. However, I had noted, the last time I shaved before Pesach, that my shaver was low on juice. I decided that, rather than charging it before we left Israel, and have it sit unused for a week, I would wait and charge it in Chigwell, on Thursday. You can probably already see where this is leading.

Amid all of the excitement of arriving in Britain and reuniting with long-unseen friends and family, all thoughts of Lag b’Omer and flat batteries flew out of my head, and it was not until I was about to go to bed on Thursday night that I remembered that I needed to charge my shaver.

“No problem,” I thought, with the level of clear-headedness that I usually display after a long, stimulating and exhausting day. “I’ll plug in my phone charger” (because, after a long day, my phone needed charging overnight, we only had one socket adaptor each, and Bernice also needed to charge her phone). “Then, when I get up to go to the bathroom during the night, my phone will be fully charged and I will be able to replace it with my shaver. My phone alarm will then wake me in plenty of time to shave before going to shul on Friday morning.” You must, by now, see where this is going, although I defy you, at this stage, to work out how it gets there.

We have to pause here for a little more background. In Israel, I daven in a minyan that begins at 7:00 on Sunday–Thursday mornings, and at 7:30 on Friday morning. So, I have a 6:10 repeater alarm and a separate 6:40 alarm for Friday.

Before we left Israel, I disabled both alarms. When we arrived in Chigwell, I reactivated the repeater alarm, since the minyan in my brother’s shul also starts at 7:00. What I forgot to do was to redefine it to include Friday. As luck, or Fate, would have it, I only woke once during Thursday night, which is unusual, and that was very early in the night.

When I checked my phone it was less than half-charged, so I decided to leave switching to the shaver until my second nocturnal bathroom break. Of course, on this particular night, there was no second bathroom break. In addition, of course, I had no alarm set for Friday morning, and, for the first time since our arrival in Britain, I did not wake just before 6:10, but, rather, at 6:25, leaving me only 15 minutes before we needed to leave for shul.

I sprang out of bed, grabbed my shaver, and swiftly shaved the week and a half of stubble from my left cheek. At that point, the uncharged shaver died. I plugged it in to charge it, but, unsurprisingly, even a quick charge takes 15 minutes, which I did not have. As a result of which, I went to shul feeling that I looked like a comedian about to go stage to perform a one-man double act, presenting his left profile to the audience to represent one character, and his right to represent the other.

The fact that nobody, not even my brother, commented on this I can only attribute to traditional British reserve and respect for the feeble-minded. I was, however, never more pleased to get home from shul and complete my shave properly.I do hope your week has been a little more sane.

Aside from which, and on a serious note, our trip so far has been wonderful, from the flight leaving on time, through reminiscing with multipole generations of very good friends in Wales, spending quality time with my brother and sister-in-law, enjoying a very special barmitzva Shabbat in a wonderful warm and vibrant community surrounded by family and friends. It’s amazing to think that we still have the barmitzva party and two days with Bernice’s brother and sister-in-law in beautiful rural England before we fly home on El Al, the airline that doesn’t stop flying to Israel!

Since the mid-18^th Century, macedonia has also meant a salad, or, starting later in the same century, a vegetable salad, of disparate ingredients. It sometimes appears on menus as a macédoine, although then it tends to cost twice as much. The most likely explanation for its etymology is that the name alludes to the diverse origin of the people of Alexander’s Macedonian Empire. Others believe that it refers to the ethnic mixture in 19th century Ottoman Macedonia. The truth is that it applies equally well to the region known today as Macedonia, which is considered to include parts of six Balkan countries: all of North Macedonia, large parts of Greece and Bulgaria, and smaller parts of Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo.

From a fruit salad, it is but a short step to the word applying to any medley of unrelated things, not necessarily edible, which is indeed the meaning I am using here, to describe another of my occasional posts that offers a mish-mash of topics. So, we now have another word to add to gallimaufry, jambalaya, olla podrida and salmagundi. Not much use for Scrabble, but bound to impress a certain kind of person at a certain kind of dinner party.

There is, in fact, a sort of theme binding this week’s topics together; they are all things I have stumbled across in Israel over the last week. One is of the “only in Israel” variety; another is more “We’re not in England anymore, Toto” and the third is a “state of the nation” moment. Since this third one is by far the most depressing, let’s get it out of the way first.

Or, rather, second. Two weeks ago, I shared with you some of the highlights of what I told you had been an exceptional week. Indeed, I stated that my week “has been so action-packed that I am going to have to leave one entire topic over until next week”. Then ‘next week’ came with its own concerns – burnt-out sockets and heavy-duty furniture moving, you may remember – and the promised topic fell by the wayside. So, before we get properly underway, let me handle this piece of unfinished business.

What happened was that I played bridge. This may mot, in itself, seem very noteworthy, but I need to give you some context.

In my late teens and twenties, I played a lot of bridge…and I mean a lot. Among my circle of friends in Hanoar Hatzioni, we had a regular school. When I spent a year in Israel in 1968-69, for the five months I was based in Jerusalem I sometimes went with a partner to play at the International Youth Centre. When the partnership split up, I went on to play in college, and as part of my not very talented college team, while my partner went on to become an Israeli grandmaster. There’s the story of my life right there, in a nutshell.

In 1973, when Bernice and I volunteered on kibbutz in the immediate aftermath of the Yom Kippur war, I jeopardised our marital stability by playing bridge every evening, late into the night. Subsequently, I managed to get the habit under control, and, after our return to Wales, I taught Bernice, and a couple of much older friends, how to play, and we enjoyed a friendly game most weeks until we came on aliya. Since when – in other words for the last thirty eight and a half years – I have not picked up a card, or played a hand online. I have read the occasional newspaper bridge column, but I knew that I didn’t have the free time, and didn’t trust myself to risk lapsing. “My name is David and I am a bridge addict.”

In addition, of course, not having played since 1986, I knew nothing of modern bidding systems, and didn’t trust myself not to embarrass myself at the table.

However, what is now three weeks ago, I joined a school started by a fellow shulgoer, who had, over the previous year or so, been tutoring some absolute beginners. This seemed like, and has proved to be, a shallow enough pool to dip my toes into, while still being very enjoyable. I am attempting to teach myself Standard American, which seems a very straightforward and user-friendly bidding system.

As for play, I have found, even over the three weeks I have been playing, that my concentration is a little better than it was initially. I can no longer effortlessly remember all the honours that have been played, and how many cards are outstanding in each suit, but I do at least remember what the contract is! I can actually envisage myself improving my memory skills, to the point where they will be able to serve my playing skills, which I sense have diminished less over the years. Watch this space for the occasional update!

On a completely different note: Israel is currently in the throes of a dispute between the teachers and the Treasury over pay and terms of service. The government intended to impose a 3.3% cut in teachers’ pay, as part of pay cuts across the board in the public sector, in an effort to accommodate increases in defence spending. The government further proposed compensation for this cut, in the form of an increase in the number of days’ leave teachers enjoy. Currently, negotiations have reduced this 3.3% cut to 0.95%, a figure which the union has apparently agreed to.

I’d like to say that the dispute was thereby settled overnight last night (Wednesday night, 7 May), but, this being Israel, it is far too early to know whether disruptions have indeed ceased. Since the beginning of the week, some teachers have been ignoring the instructions from their trade union, and taking wildcat action. This has continued, in reduced form, today, with teachers’ rejecting the agreement reached by the union with the government, arguing that other public-service workers have received much more generous compensation. The teachers’ action has been in the form of phoning or messaging in sick at the start of the school day. The action has been widespread enough to force the closure of several hundred schools nationwide, with the accompanying disruption for working parents.

For two short periods, in the first years after we came on aliya, I taught in two different Jerusalem schools. I was very impressed by the dedication and professionalism of the teachers I worked alongside; their loyalty to the schools and their commitment to their pupils were inspiring.

In stark contrast, I am disappointed and, frankly, shocked, by the action of the teachers who are feigning sickness, and, thereby, obtaining money under false pretences. One such teacher was interviewed on radio earlier this week, and made the argument that years of being underpaid and under-regarded have indeed made her feel ill, and, therefore, her claiming sick leave is not dishonest. I am sure that she does not regard this as an argument that holds water; it is merely a figleaf. As one of the radio presenters said, he does not want his children to be taught by someone who is such a brazen liar as these teachers are.

I accept that their sense of grievance is genuine, and, indeed, it is quite possibly justified. However, I find myself asking this: If a pupil handed such a teacher a note from their parents explaining that their absence from school the previous day was because of illness, and the teacher had, in fact, seen the pupil in the mall during school hours the previous day, would the teacher address this with the pupil? And if the pupil argued the moral equivalence between their action and the teacher’s action, how would the teacher address that? If educators set their pupils a personal example by arguing that their subjective grievance justifies lying to their employer and obtaining money under false pretences, what hope is there for the next generation?

As if this were not enough, the reported response from the Treasury was to announce a plan to deduct pay from all teachers who have reported sick since the dispute began. So, we have a public sphere in which thousands of teachers believe that the end justifies the means, and that blatant lying is acceptable industrial action and at least one senior government minister believes all teachers are dishonest. Sadly, this is only one of the cracks in Israeli society today, but, for me, it is a big one.

Moving swiftly on, today and tomorrow the world celebrates the 80^th anniversary of VE Day, the end of hostilities in Europe in 1945. I see from the media that this has been widely and enthusiastically – and with justification – celebrated in Britain. The occasion was also marked on Israel radio this morning, with a feature on the news and current affairs morning program. However, unlike in Britain, where, as we all know, having grown up there, the credit for the victory in Europe lies, this feature focussed exclusively on the Soviet army’s advance across Europe, liberation of death camps, and capture of key cities. ‘My truth’ is, it would appear, alive and well, at the national as well as the personal level.

In Israel, as in Russia, many, many proud veterans of the campaigns of the Second World War annually parade on 9 May, proudly displaying their medals.

And finally. I saw a WhatsApp status this morning with the following message (redacted as necessary):

– XXXX Medical Company! Our frontline task is to save lives

Required for military reserve duty

Looking for:

Combat skill level XX and above

Combat medics

Drivers with Hummer and ambulance permits

Good people with a desire to lend a hand!

For details – Oded: Tel: 052XXXXXXX

If you were wondering what ‘a volunteer army’ means in practice, when, for the first time since 1948, a war goes on and on for months and years, now you know.

The passage of a human life can be marked in many ways. One of the ubiquitous ways is beginnings and endings. From the first day at school to graduation from university, from launching a new career to retiring from work, the map of our lives can be seen as a series of beginnings and endings.

At some point in life, it may dawn on you that you are reaching the point where most of your beginnings are behind you, and what lies ahead of you is almost all endings. Please don’t think that I am feeling morbid today; on the contrary, endings can be very satisfying indeed. I still remember with a warm glow the day when Bernice and I made the last payment on our mortgage, although probably, if I had to choose one ending that soared above all others, it would be the day Bernice and I walked out of the kids’ high school one evening, turned to each other, and declared: “That is the last parents’ evening we will ever have to attend.”

It may surprise you to learn that Michael’s relationship with school, indeed his relationship with any institutional authority, was, shall we say, fraught, (arguably more for us than for him) and, for me even more than for his always understanding and always self-assured mother, parents’ evenings were one of the inner circles of hell.

Nothing has quite matched that feeling but there has been another major element in our shared life that has, on occasion, elicited the same kind of emotions as I felt sitting across the desk from Micha’el’s teachers. That is, unexpectedly, our house. Let me explain.

Bernice and I are very fond of our house. We have, over the years, nurtured it and lavished attention on it, and almost all of the time it repays us by being a haven of peace and comfort which accommodates our various idiosyncrasies and our accumulated junk uncomplainingly.

However! Every so often, the house misbehaves. Take last Friday, for example. (It is, incidentally, always a Friday, though not always just a week before we are going away for 11 days.) Bernice had put a wash on, and the machine was ticking and humming quietly to itself, the soothing sound of water lazily slapping the sides of the drum interrupted by an occasional chirp to mark the machine’s steady and serene procession through the various phases of the wash.

Suddenly, this calm was interrupted by the unmistakable buzz of electricity shorting. In a fusillade of short chirrups, the machine switched itself off and on repeatedly. The buzzing and chirping continued for a short while, until Bernice wisely decided to switch off and unplug the machine, which had, anyway, finished its cycle except for spinning, and to hang up the sodden washing.

Our washing machine lives in our utility room. This is a room of which I am immensely proud. It is about 1.80 x 1.70 metres, with a door that opens inwards. A circular vent from the adjacent under-the-stairs toilet is cut into one wall. There are no windows and two electric sockets, on opposite walls. Not long after we moved in, we bought in IKEA some free-standing wooden open utility shelving units, in the form of upright poles and shelves. We were able to buy a combination of units that gave us shelving along two adjacent walls, and a single unit on a third wall. This left a space for standing slightly less than 1.30 x 1.00 metres.

We managed to fit the washing machine between the uprights of the single unit, opposite the door, and, between that unit and the L-shaped unit, a small upright freezer, with a small upright fridge standing on top of it.

The shelving unit holds household supplies, tools, cleaning equipment, our emergency supplies in case of war (the utility room also doubles as our improvised ‘safe’ room, in the event of missile or rocket attack), about 60 beer bottles (sometimes full, sometimes empty) for home brewing, a shopping wheelie bag, laundry baskets, buckets, plastic bag dispensers, our Shabbat plata and urn, and a lot of other stuff…and I mean a lot. The room is a shrine to the efficient use of space. However, there is one drawback.

In order to access the electricity socket, in the event, for example, that it burns out, as it had last Friday, a certain amount of rearrangement of the furniture is required. The socket is 70cm above floor level, behind the stacked fridge and freezer.

So, on Friday, Bernice and I had to empty the fridge, then lift the fridge off the freezer, put it down on the floor, and slide it out of the utility room. This is an exercise made more challenging by the fact that the utility room is only just large enough for two people to stand in, and, when there are two people standing in it, there is no available floor space to put the fridge down. Imagine, if you will, a game of Twister played in a retirement home, with the participants required to carry heavy weights throughout the game, and you will have some idea of what we went through.

When we had eventually extricated the fridge and freezer, we could see the charred socket. It made no sense to put anything back until the socket was replaced, and that wasn’t going to happen before Shabbat, so we then repacked the fridge, plugged it in in the salon, slid the freezer out, left that in the hall, plugged in via an extension lead, and called our electrician and explained the problem to him. Quick as a flash, there I was back at the parents’ evening. He started pointing out how far short of the safety protocol our house’s electricity falls, and how haphazardly it was wired in the years before we moved in. He then castigated us for overloading the system.

Once he had humiliated us in this way, he then admitted that what we would need to do to replace the house’s wiring and upgrade to a three-phase circuit would be prohibitively expensive, and he quite understood why nobody is ever prepared to do it. As if this kindness were not enough, when he arrived on Sunday to carry out the work of removing the burnt-out socket and channelling cables from the junction box to a new four-socket outlet that he mounted in an accessible position on the wall, I was able to show him that I had reformed my ways since his last humiliation a few months ago, and I had labelled all twelve of the circuit-breakers in our electricity box, mapping each to its respective lights and sockets. He was suitably impressed.

Once the electrician had finished, cleaned up, and left, Bernice and I then had another long game of Twister (it is even more challenging in a confined space to lift a fridge onto a freezer than to take a fridge off a freezer), and eventually managed to get the utility room back into shape. Now, we are left waiting for the next unexpected domestic crisis (usually either electricity- or water-based), reminding us, yet again, that our house is capable of acting not only like a non-conformist child, but also like an aging parent, suddenly developing some new system malfunction that requires immediate attention.

It is with a shock that I now realise that, while I was looking in the other direction, I transformed from the son whose parents’ health is an increasing cause of concern into the father whose health is an increasing cause of concern for his children. I suppose that is just another way in which we mark the transition from a life full of beginnings to one increasingly marked by endings. And on that memento mori note, I wish you a good week, untroubled by any health or other issues.