Last week I wrote, you will almost certainly not recall, “… in this week’s post, and almost certainly for one week only, I am adopting ‘war correspondent’ as my profession.” Despite that prediction, I find it impossible to write about anything other than ‘the situation’, and so I will stick with being some strange kind of war correspondent for one more week. William Boot revisited.
I had planned to devote this week’s blog to the other major story of the week: the news of the passing of Alred Brendel, one of the giants of classical piano of the second half of the last century. It is true that he retired from the concert hall 16 years before his death, and that he lived to the respectable age of 94, two facts that mitigate to some extent the blow of the news of his death.
However, he was still, until relatively shortly before he died, an incredibly insightful, as well as a charming, speaker and writer about music, art, philosophy. He was also a living oxymoron. No great pianist was ever more cerebral, yet Brendel achieved, in performance, a depth of emotion that few could equal. Terrifyingly serious, he could cow an audience into silence with a single look, but was possessed of an impish sense of humour. A rationalist intellectual, he had a deep love of Dada and the absurd, as well as kitsch.
He was also, astonishingly, almost entirely self-taught, not a career path normally recommended to classical pianists. I’m guessing the secret is that, if you are going to be self-taught, make sure you get a teacher as insightful, disciplined and gifted as Alfred Brendel.
As if this were not enough, Brendel was an exhibited watercolour artist who also published both nonsense verse and serious poetry. Indeed, it seemed at times that he was all things and everywhere. Yet, he was above all a uniquely crystal-clear pianist, and it is this purity that makes his frequent encore – Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s choral prelude Nun Komm’der Heiden Heiland – a perfect distillation of his musical insight.
If that is too dry for your taste, then search for Brendel playing any Mozart concerto, Beethoven, Schubert or Liszt sonata. (Those links are all suggestions available on YouTube.) His repertoire was confined to those composers who commanded his respect and into whose works he felt he could offer insight. Within that repertoire, he plumbed incredible depths and uncovered truths that perhaps no other pianist has revealed.
Meanwhile, back in Israel, it has been a truly remarkable week, as you may have noticed. Once again, I am going to avoid attempting any profound geopolitical analysis, other than to observe that, whatever else you might say about that Donald Trump, he certainly keeps you on your toes. Those of you outside Israel won’t be surprised to hear that even Israelis who are not, by nature, fans of Trump are acknowledging his contribution, this week, to Israel’s, and the world’s, security.
Incidentally, this is, I think, a reflection of Israelis’ understanding of the nature and extent of the existential threat we face. Too many in the Western world feel so secure in their lives that they cannot imagine a situation in which they could applaud any action of Donald Trump. In Israel, over the last couple of weeks, or days, sworn enemies of Netanyahu, and those who despise Trump, have acknowledged the rightness of their actions against Iran. There is nothing like an existential threat to encourage a pragmatic world view.
On a more personal level, our life has understandably shrunk over the last couple of weeks. We are following orders, and not venturing far from our bomb shelter, except when we have to, of which more later. On all but one occasion, we have been given the 10-muinute heads-up before the sirens sound, indicating that we have 90 seconds to get into the shelter. Indeed, on several occasions, the warning is not followed by a siren, either because the missiles have all been intercepted or because, as they approach, their target can be more accurately calculated, and it isn’t Maale Adumim.
As a result, we have often either been lying in bed, or sitting in the salon, ready to move, listening to distant, or, sometimes, what sounds like not-so-distant, explosions, trying to assess whether they are mid-air detonations of intercepted missiles or explosions of missiles as they hit the ground, and wondering whether we are wise to have such confidence in the accuracy of assessment of the Home Command in determining that we really don’t need to go in the shelter. So far, our confidence has not been misplaced, although as I say that I may sound to you rather like the man who threw himself off the roof of the Empire State Building and, as he passed a 29th floor window, called out to a spectator: “So far, so good!”
Last week I was due to have a minor medical procedure in Shaarei Zedek hospital. After a couple of days of trying, I finally got through to the hospital to confirm that my appointment had not been postponed. As the information clerk put it: “We’ll be treating anyone who turns up.” The following morning, the roads were considerably emptier than usual – at that point, schools were closed and only essential workplaces were open – but the hospital was fairly busy, although not quite as crowded as usual.
I was actually seen to very quickly and efficiently, and we would have been in and out in just over an hour, were it not for the fact that there was an air raid just as we were nearing the end of our stay. Fortunately, Shaarei Zedek, like many hospitals in Israel, has considerable facilities that are in protected spaces, and the department we were in was one such facility. As a result, the air raid did not interfere with the procedure at all.
Last Shabbat, when restrictions were marginally eased, our shul reopened, with provisions to use the shelters in a number of buildings within a minute’s walk from the shul. We personally didn’t return to shul on Shabbat, largely because we live a 15-minute walk from the shul, and would feel rather exposed on that walk. I understand that those who did attend were almost exclusively members (and others) who live very close to the shul.
I haven’t even been attending the shul I normally go to on weekday mornings, which is currently conducting services in the shelter attached to the shul. This is because I have not been putting an alarm on for the morning. Most nights the Iranians interrupt our sleep once or twice, and, even when they don’t, I, in common with most people I speak to, am finding it difficult to get the energy and the focus to do very much.
Having said that, Bernice and I have, this week, tackled the jungle that our front garden had become. Our gardener has spent much of the last 20 months on reserve military duty, and, even though we understand he is currently home, he did not respond to Bernice’s WhatsApp enquiries. So, I have been cutting back the nectarine tree, most of whose fruit this year was beyond my reach to harvest, and Bernice has been trimming and tidying up the bushes, thinning out the undergrowth, and collecting leaves and rotting fruit. We can only work for an hour or two in the morning and another hour or two in the early evening, because of the heat during the day. However, we really got into a routine, and we are currently convincing ourselves that we can handle this routine on a regular basis, and save ourselves a considerable amount of money while keeping fit.
Past experience suggests that this may be one of those plans that sounds good when pitched, but doesn’t always deliver. In addition, gardening in the dappled early morning light of June is not quite the same experience as in the cold and rain of December. However, only time will tell.
I have one more observation to share with you. I have started playing bridge online, on a platform that allows individual players to join an ad hoc table. I have noticed, in the past, that every two or three tables that I joined would contain one other person from Israel. Since we started direct hostilities with Iran, I am bumping into Israelis at the table two or three times as frequently. This is not really surprising, since you can play online bridge close to, or indeed in, your bomb shelter. It did mean that, when I left a table last Friday afternoon, I felt very comfortable wishing my fellow players Shabbat Shalom.