If we had not been off to Portugal, this is a post that I would probably have published a month ago, shortly after the mass Haredi demonstration against universal conscription in the Jewish sector, a demonstration that brought much of Jerusalem and sections of the country’s main traffic artery to a halt for several hours. Sadly, the intervening weeks have not made what I plan to say less relevant; if anything, the reverse.

Before I address the issue that concerns me today, I have to acknowledge the extraordinary developments of the weeks we were out of the country. That all of the remaining living hostages, and the bodies of all but three of those murdered and held by Hamas, have been returned to Israel and to their families is wonderful news. I confess that, as I stated repeatedly over the last 25 months, I was not able to envisage any scenario in which Hamas would agree to return the hostages. (So, if you follow me for my geopolitical expertise, you can stop now.) Of course, for the three families who have not received their loved ones for burial, the nightmare is as intense as ever, and the nation continues to work and pray for their release from their personal hell.

To work and pray: two fundamental human activities. Taken together, they reflect the attitude that, if you wish to see a particular outcome, you have to do what you can to ensure the desired outcome is achieved, and you also have to accept that it may not be within your power to achieve this. For some of us, our prayers are to the all-powerful deity in whom, and in whose beneficence, we believe; for others, ‘prayer’ represents the hope and the belief that the desired end can be achieved. (Faith comes in many forms.)

Both elements are essential. Without hope and belief, nothing will be achieved. As the (possibly atheist, and certainly secular) Herzl famously wrote: ‘If you will it, it is not a dream’. As the national anthem declares: ‘As long as Jews look towards Zion, our two-thousand-year-old hope of being a free people in our homeland is not lost.’

At the same time, hopes and beliefs and will achieve nothing by themselves. They need to be backed up by action.

He (Rabbi Tarfon) used to say: It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it (Pirkei Avot – Ethics of our Fathers – Chapter 2:16).

All of which is a long and rambling way of reaching the conclusion that the majority of the rabbinic leaders of Haredi community are not teaching their students true Jewish values. These Rabbonim teach the Yeshiva bocher that his Torah study is the most valuable, indeed the only truly valuable, contribution he can make to the future of the Jewish people, and that it is his Torah study, and that of the tens of thousands like him, that is winning the war, and he accepts this. They declare that nothing is more important than his Torah study, and that, as long as he devotes himself entirely to Torah study, he can then rely on Hashem to act in the best interests of the Jewish people, and he accepts this.

The brutal fact, of course, is that the security of the state, and of all its inhabitants, requires that all of its inhabitants also contribute to that security by personal service, in one capacity or another. Israel has been involved in a just war, a holy war, an existential war, and to serve in that war is not only a national but also a religious obligation.

Implicitly believing and following all that his Rabbi tells him, the Haredi in the street genuinely believes that his Torah study, and the religious faith that it represents, will protect him from physical danger. We saw in the mass demonstration against Haredi conscription, tens of Haredim climbing onto the canopy over the pumps in the petrol station at the entrance to Jerusalem, or climbing onto, and sitting on, the arms of cranes tens of metres above street level. These are the actions of men (and they were not just teenage boys – who, by definition, tend to regard themselves as immortal – but included many adult men) who believe that Hashem is personally protecting them from all evil. That they can continue to believe this after the disastrous collapse of the stand at Meron is a measure of the intensity of the belief-system they live in.

And what of the leaders of the Haredi community? They are the ones who devote energy, time and resources to wielding political influence, wheeling and dealing in the corridors of power, organising campaigns that include demonstrations, posters, media appearances, appointing rabbis to serve as members of Knesset and government ministers.. They are well aware that Torah study alone does not guarantee any outcome. They recognise that the process of changing the world for the better is a partnership between man and God. While we may believe that God is the ultimate power in the world, we also must recognise that God created man to be a partner in the ongoing process of creation.

Which brings me to the other side of the counterfeit coin that is so much of Israel’s public life in 2025. With a blind devotion that rivals that of the Haredi community to its Rabbis, much of the Likud party, in the Knesset and in the country as a whole, has abrogated all personal responsibility to Bibi. Whatever Netanyahu says and does is, in their eyes, a priori right. They do not behave as adults responsible for their actions and beliefs, but as unquestioning followers of King Bibi. They willingly give up their right, and their duty, to test the value of Bibi’s words, beliefs and actions against the benchmark of their own intelligence and experience.

As for Bibi, his weakness, it seems to me, is that he has failed to recognise that our work on earth is to be partners of a greater power. For the practising Jew, our partner is God, and the purpose of our Torah study is to help us better understand how we can most effectively play our part in this partnership and continue the work of creation on a daily basis. For a secular person, the partner is a set of moral, ethical values, and the responsibility is to define and understand those values and then to devote one’s life to following, nurturing and promoting those values.

For Bibi, it increasingly seems, the supreme value is not a moral and ethical worldview that is outside of, and greater than, himself, but, rather, his own survival. In his certainty that he, and he alone, knows what is for the best, he places his own continued political survival above all else, and, in so doing, puts the entire Zionist endeavour in jeopardy.

The true Jewish way is not the self-effacing retreat from the world and its problems, nor the placing of self above values, and an over-weening arrogance in one’s indispensability. The true Jewish way is:

It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.

Our future as a Jewish, democratic country may well depend on all of us recognising the timeless truth in Rabbi Tarfon’s formulation.

As we pack the few items we are taking home, and prepare ourselves, and the boys, for our departure from Penamacor tomorrow (Monday) morning, it seems like a good idea to try to get this week’s post written tonight, before tomorrow’s long day. We plan to leave the house at 12 noon, and are scheduled to land in Israel at 2:30AM on Tuesday, which means we will probably turn up at Esther’s flat in Zichron around 5:30–6:00, which will seem to us like 3:30–4:00. Just what part of this seemed like a good idea when we planned it escapes me for the moment, but I’m sure it makes sense in some universe or other.

I thought I would start this week by responding to the one or two of you who have asked me how the kids’ business, their bodyweight gym, is going. I’m pleased to say that after a slow start it has, over the weeks we have been here, just started to gather a little momentum. They have acquired about fifteen regular customers. Tslil has attracted more students to her yoga classes, and has added a new pilates class, while Micha’el, in addition to having new members training in the gym, is planning to introduce two new classes: in martial arts and an introduction to bodyweight training.

Having started by concentrating their publicity on social media, they soon realised that this was not sufficiently focused. While their campaign generated a fair bit of interest, some of those who responded were based in Lisbon or other similarly far-flung locations. Since the kids started a poster and flyer campaign that is much more locally focussed, their results have been starting to translate into actual feet walking through the door.

They are, of course, in the middle of a learning process, and, with each new customer, indeed with each new prospect, they realise more about what their target customers need to be, and how best to reach them and attract them. This understanding can then help to inform their promotional materials. Each new advertising initiative is producing more useful results.

There are advantages to being based in a small community. First, there is no local competition. Gymacor is the only game in town. In addition, in a small place like Penamacor, where everybody knows everybody else, one satisfied customer is likely to generate more interest from among his or her circle. For example, the high-school student who contacted them this week might easily represent a way into a new market segment.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. The kids are still very much at the beginning of their journey, and they have a long way to go before they can say that their idea is viable. However, they have, in the last few weeks, seen enough positive signs to make even an old Eeyorean sceptic like me believe that they may well be able to build their idea into a business. We do hope so, because they have certainly invested considerable effort in getting to this point, and they both firmly believe in the quality and importance of the service that they can offer.

Beyond that, there really isn’t much to report. The major feature of the last week has been the weather. After a mild and dry first two and a half weeks of this trip, the last week or so has been very wet and fairly cold. We have not, yet, experienced the threatened thunder storms. They did reach Portugal, but seem to have hit Lisbon and the Algarve worst, and not to have travelled as far inland as Penamacor. However, the rain has been more or less constant: presenting a rich, and unrelenting variety of precipitation. We have had days of soft rain and days of driving rain. Low, swirling cloud, and cutting wind; dank mist and a quiet stillness.

Lua, who, as a local breed, should be well used to this weather, was very unnerved by the change in atmospheric pressure that preceded the change in the weather. However, the actual rain, however fierce, does not bother her at all. So, I have been very grateful for the good hooded raincoat that I have out here…and I have made a note to myself to dig out the wellington boots that I never wear in Israel and bring them out next time. Fortunately, the kids have a tumble dryer, which means that I can get through a day that is punctuated by two rain-soaked walks on two pairs of jeans and two pairs of shoes.

One plus, for us, of the colder weather, has been the magic of a wood-burning stove. I have, finally, mastered the art of starting a fire, and the evenings are much cheerier basking in the radiated heat of eucalyptus logs. The new load of wood that the kids took delivery of a week or so ago is from a supplier they have not used before. He, thankfully, cuts his logs shorter than their previous supplier, so there is no longer a struggle to wedge logs into the stove. There are also more thinner logs, which are useful when starting the fire. Now, if only there were underground access to the woodshed, so that bringing in an evening’s supply of logs did not necessitate braving the elements, life would be close to ideal.

Today has seen the start of our preparations to leave. I have left loaves and chocolate ice-cream in the freezer, and there is a good supply of my granola in the kitchen. Nan made scones for Shabbat and for teatime today, with cream and jam. We did our last supermarket shop today, leaving the house well-stocked. The empty gas bottle has been exchanged for a spare full one. Both Grandpa and Nana read the bedtime stories this evening. One of our carry-on trolleys is packed inside one of the cases, and the few things we are taking back are packed in the other. The last big laundry has been washed, dried, folded, and put away for next time.

And so, another trip has come and, before we know it, gone. The boys are still young enough for us to see some change even within one visit, and certainly from one visit to the next. Early childhood is such a fleeting time. We are lucky to be able to catch as much of it as we do.

It has long puzzled me exactly what the nature is of the unfailing attraction that puppet shows (as they are called by Nana) hold for the boys in Portugal. Every day, both Tao and Ollie ask Nana for a puppet show at least ten times, and, being Nana, she agrees to provide one at least five or six times.

These puppet shows have evolved over the years, and, indeed, the number of puppets (or, more accurately, models) is now approaching the number of cast members in the English National Theatre’s epic 1982 production of Nicholas Nickleby.

Although the shows always follow a very familiar format, the cast list has grown over time, as the kids acquire new Playmobil, Lego and other people and animals, and the boys have, recently, started handling one or two of the characters themselves, although Nana carries most of the burden of the narrative on her broad shoulders.

Blogger’s Note: At this point, I wanted to insert a cast photo. However, I am experiencing technical difficulty uploading the image to display on a laptop (it seems to display on a smartphone)), but I still want to include the legend for the image, to give you an idea of the rich tapestry of characters.

What puzzles me is that the storyline of these shows is very mundane. The characters all live in a small, quiet, town, and a typical show might involve Jackie and Cat going for a run in the park, while Woof and Lion have an argument and Mister Policeman needs to talk to them about getting along together. Increasingly, Tao attempts to hijack the narrative. He might take charge of the character of Vampire, who is a newcomer to the cast, and who has an evil streak that his neighbours have not yet managed to educate him out of.

So far, Nana has managed to steer the narrative flow away from the threat of death rays and zombies and back to such questions as what Mummy is going to make Little Boy for his tea. Remarkably, Tao succumbs to subtle grandmotherly direction, and the storyline almost always stays firmly rooted in the everyday.

It was only this week that it suddenly struck me that these puppet shows are the kitchen table equivalent of the television soap opera and clearly hold the same attraction for the boys as East Enders does for millions of Britons. The familiarity of the characters and the storyline are their very attraction. It also strikes me (not much of a revelation, this) that the comfort of familiarity also find expression in the boys, and, I suspect, all read-to children, enjoying having the same story  time and again.

Incidentally, having never read Dr Seuss to our own children, I confess that I am appreciating The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham more each time I read them….which, on this trip, has been a lot of times.

We had a video call with Raphael this week, I asked him how he had enjoyed the concert he went to. This was a special, apparently subsidised, children’s concert by a brass ensemble at a fairly local community centre. When I asked him, I had no idea what a torrent of enthusiasm I was unlocking. We were treated to mimes and impersonations of the trombonist and the one-man-band percussionist, and Esther assured us that Raphael had joined in heartily with all the songs he knew, and had applauded wildly throughout. She and Maayan had been concerned that he might be too young for a live show like this, but it seems that he lapped it up. He is a child who has always been exposed to, and has responded enthusiastically to, music, so it is not really surprising.

To have been treated, in the space of a couple of weeks, to watching two children spellbound at a dolphin show at the zoo and a third enthusing over the concert he had seen made this a very special week. May their lives be filled with being excited, enchanted and delighted by all the wonders that the world has to offer,

This week I have had another mystery unravelled. In Portuguese, the more formal greeting and farewell changes with the time of day. However, rather than ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good afternoon’, with their clear transition time of twelve noon, the first two terms are ‘Bom dias’ and ‘Boa tarde’ – ‘Good day’ and ‘Good late’. The question thus begged is, obviously: At what time does one switch from ‘Bom dias’ to ‘Boa tarde’. Every time we come to Portugal, I observe how locals use the two terms. (I get plenty of opportunities, because the supermarket cashiers, and the neighbours I pass in the street when I am walking Lua, all use these two greetings. Indeed, I would estimate that 70% of my verbal interaction with locals (and 95% of the verbal interaction I understand) consists of these two phrases.) Once I started wondering about when to switch, I soon realised that whatever the answer is, it cannot be a single time on the clock. Sometimes people wished me ‘Boa tarde’ at 2:00PM; at other times, I was wished ‘Bom dias’ at 2:30.

When a shop assistant wished me ‘Boa tarde’ as early as 1:10 this week, I realised I had no idea what was going on, and decided I had to understand the logic once and for all. When I googled, I learnt that dias ends and tarde begins at 12 noon. This was clearly nonsense, so, over Shabbat lunch, I mentioned to the kids my befuddlement. Tslil was delighted to offer the explanation, which had been given to her by a kindly neighbour when she wished him ‘Boa tarde’ and he responded ‘Bom dias’, adding, with a smile: ‘I haven’t had my lunch yet.’ So there you have it: a movable feast, as it were. I initially worried about what Portuguese Jews do on a fast day, but then, of course, I realised that on Yom Kippur we say ‘Gmar Hatima Tova’, on minor fasts they can employ ‘Tsom Kal’, and on Tisha b’Av we don’t greet each other at all.

And so we enter our last week in Portugal. With the first week spent in Lisbon, we seem to have reached this point frighteningly quickly. With our 10^th of the month 10% seniors’ discount shop completed at the super today, a winter’s supply of firewood delivered yesterday, and a big bake for the freezer completed yesterday, the kids are well on the way to preparing for us to leave. We have grandparenting duties, including a two-night sleepover for Raphael, waiting for us in Israel in the week we return, so we are planning to recharge our batteries on the plane back home. I tried to write ‘Still, it keeps us young’ at this point, but my fingers couldn’t quite manage it.

Flying to Portugal seems like an awfully long way to travel just to be insulted, and yet that seems to be the emerging theme of this particular trip.

For a long time now, my grandsons have all accused me of being silly, and, to be honest, it is a badge that I wear with pride. Riddled with insecurities, ‘silly’ is one thing I have dreaded being exposed as for most of my adult life, so it is tremendously liberating to be so labelled by grandsons who clearly regard it as an endearing trait rather than a flaw.

A less welcome development on this trip has been the constant admonishment that: “You’re old, Grandpa.” In fairness, it is a card that I play myself fairly regularly, so I can’t really complain.

However, today marked a further development. Bernice and I walked Tao to his Portuguese lesson at school. (Four days a week, all the non-native-speakers in the school learn Portuguese together in one class, and Tao, as a home-schooled pupil, is able to join them.) The school is, very conveniently, only a four-minute walk from the house. However, like 97% of Penamacor, it is downhill from the house, which means, of course, that the walk back is uphill, beginning with three flights of steps, about 25 in all. Ollie had come with us and, as we tackled the steps on the way back to the house, he was heard to declare: “Come on, Grandpa! You can do it!” My only solace is that he followed this with: “Come on, Nana! You can do it!”

Even more painful were the preparations for a game that didn’t actually materialise. Nana and Ollie were, he informed us, to be Mr Happy and Grandpa was to be Mr Miserable. Inexplicably, Bernice found this hilarious. Other opinions differed.

Life has, as you will doubtless have already realised, been very quiet since we left Lisbon nine days ago, on Sunday. Tao returned with a bug, which he then passed on to Micha’el, and Tslil has also not been firing on all cylinders. So last week was uneventful. Happily, everyone is more or less recovered now. Tao was well enough to enjoy a Hallowe’en party over the weekend, Hallowe’en being heartily celebrated in Portugal. For the last few days he has been leaping out at us in his vampire top hat and cape and gruesome face-distorting fangs, which tends to give his Nana what old people like me should probably call conniptions.

The weather has been very kind to us, with the exception of last Friday and Shabbat, when the rain bucketed down unabated for about forty hours. Today (Monday), in contrast, has been sunny and almost warm, so that the boys and Tslil and I were able to enjoy a morning stroll with Lua, which included boarding new fewer than three pirate ships, and Tao and I stayed on with the dog long enough to devise a system of simplified semaphore to enable us to communicate with each other from one mountaintop to another. And all before breakfast.

Supermarket shopping has been as mysterious as always. Two different supers offer a wide variety of bread flour, but both have run out of spelt flour. Is there a world shortage that nobody told me about? The fish counters are devoid of trout, which they always used to feature. Maybe there is some reason behind this, but it certainly eludes me.

Days here are more structured than they have been previously. Now that Tao is officially a home-schooled first-grader, he has a timetable that includes not only his Portuguese lessons at school, but also English, Hebrew, maths and a subject that I think I will translate as general studies, although the Portuguese word means ‘environment’. It includes elements of geography, history, science and civics, and is a core school subject throughout primary school. After 6^th grade, pupils study each of these subjects separately.

The first-grade syllabus does not seem to be too demanding. In fact, Tao was already well ahead of the maths syllabus before he started studying formally. However, almost certainly the most important thing at this stage is that he is enjoying all of his studies, at home and in school.

One last school story. I took Tao to school yesterday for the first time. He had Portuguese for the first two lessons of the day. We walked through the playground and into the building, at which point a short, middle-aged lady in a yellow jacket – obviously an ancillary staff member – aggressively barred our entrance and started remonstrating with me in a stream of unintelligible Portuguese. I attempted to explain why we were there, but it was not easy, given that I still have no Portuguese at all. From her continued ranting, it seems I even failed to convey the fact that I do not speak Portuguese. I’m not sure which of us was more traumatised, Tao or myself.

After a couple of minutes, a member of the academic staff arrived, and calmed the situation. Another staff member – an older man who is, I believe, the co-ordinator of the home- schooling programme – also arrived, and everything was sorted out. I now realise that my crime was to come into the school before the bell had rung. We should have waited in the playground. When the bell rang, the children lined up in their year-groups, and Tao should then have joined the first-graders and gone into school only when they did.

Today, when Bernice and I took Tao again, the same yellow-jacketed woman – who is, incidentally, short of stature (just saying, Napoleon complex and all that) – came over to us as soon as we walked through the gate into the playground, and greeted me warmly with a broad smile and a stream of obviously welcoming Portuguese. Armed today with an explanation – ‘Aula de Português lingua no matera’, which as near as damn it is comprehensible as ‘a lesson in non-mother-tongue Portuguese’ – I was ready to have it out with her, but she was very warm and welcoming (‘simpering’ is a word that springs to mind) and left Bernice and myself with the distinct impression that she had, after yesterday’s encounter, been given a very stiff talking-to by the powers that be.

The other highlight of my week was on the sporting front. Last night, it fell to me to sit with the boys while they had their bath. Bath-time is a major attraction for the boys, and they take their time over their ablutions, which have more to do with bubbles, hydraulics and pouring than with carbolic soap, flannels and scouring. Yesterday, the boys had, in the bath, a sponge ball, and we worked up a very enjoyable game that owed its format, in more or less equal proportions, to the slip cradle of the playing fields of my youth, the squash court of my teaching years and the school brick wall of Bernice’s childhood. The game was a big hit with all concerned, and threatens to become a fixture of the bathtimes that fall to me.

And that’s, more or less, my week. Quite how such slight material can be sewn together into so meaningful a week is one of life’s mysteries, but there it is.