A glance at the calendar this week confirms that, whichever side of the Judeo-Christian alliance (or, if you prefer, divide) you stand on, you’re liable, if you’re not careful, to be within range of the season of giving presents this week. It may be doughnuts or mince pies you’re committing to limiting yourself to one of. You may be delaying until the last minute any attempt to clean the year-old wax off the chanukiya or a year’s accumulated dust off the synthetic tree. Either way, you’re almost certainly failing to come up with one good present idea…or, alternatively, eight.

Personally, I never find buying gifts for someone else easy. By the time you know the recipient well enough to be confident about what they would like, you have already probably bought them all the things that you are sure they will like. As thinking of a suitable gift gets easier and easier, it gets more and more difficult to find something you haven’t previously thought of.

One would expect that this is one of the areas where artificial intelligence would be able to help out. Feed in the name and ID number of the recipient, define an acceptable price range, and AI should be able to come up with a surefire suggestion or two for the gift that will light up your loved one’s face in delight, surprise and gratitude.

You might have thought that you would need to provide some background information about the recipient’s hobbies, interests, taste in music, books, jewellery, cars or real estate, depending on your budget. If so, you either don’t possess a smartphone or you really haven’t been paying attention these last couple of years.

For it has gradually dawned on the rest of us that our device has, for some time, been serving not only us. Unwittingly, we generously carry around, at all times, a sophisticated piece of eavesdropping kit, which records, it would appear, every keystroke we make.

It can’t have escaped your notice that, if you check out, say, car rental deals, or model figures compatible with Lego, or bluetooth speakers, or, indeed, anything, then, starting immediately, and for what seems an unconscionably long time afterwards, your phone will present you with advertisements for the same or similar items. It seems that your phone passes on the information about your internet habits to interested parties.

It must now be 20 years since I first, at work, heard talk about the fact that the real winners in the race to make big money from technology were going to be the people who “owned the eyeballs”. If you controlled what people saw on their phones, companies would beat a path to your door to pay you for ensuring that what people saw on their phones was what those companies wanted them to see.

These days, it’s even worse than that. You, like me, have probably noticed, more than once, that it is not only what you look for and look at online that ‘prompts’ what adverts you are fed; it is enough, these days, to mention a topic in conversation, on the phone, or in person. Your device is always listening, and always, it appears, relaying what it picks up. That highly sensitive inbuilt microphone is listening out for you even when you are unaware of it.

All of which is stunningly, and frighteningly, clever. And yet…and yet. There is one respect in which AI seems totally artificial and completely unintelligent. As it happens, I have, in the last week, encountered a classic example of this.

In the last couple of months, my electric shaver has been playing up. It has been growing more and more noisy; it does not shave as closely, and the shaving experience is significantly less comfortable than it used to be. I could possibly have simply replaced the shaving head, but I decided, instead, to treat myself to a new shaver with integral sideboard, moustache and beard trimmer.

While this sounds painfully bells-and-whistles expensive, it actually was very reasonable, nestling close to the bottom of Braun’s range of shavers, a range that reaches, in the heights of Series 9, an eye-watering four-digit price tag, while offering a shave that, according to Which consumer magazine, is not significantly closer than that offered in the humble foothills of Series 3, where you will find me.

So smooth is the shave I now achieve that the only person not impressed is Raphael, who still finds me much too tickly when I kiss him.

The point of this story is not simply the hope that Braun will reward my careful product placement by offering me a lifetime supply of free replacement heads. No, the real point is that, since I made the purchase online, my phone has not stopped bombarding me with adverts for electric shavers, and, specifically, Braun electric shavers. I can state, with absolute confidence, that the single product that I have absolutely no inclination or need to buy at this point in time is an electric shaver, and, specifically, a Braun shaver.

You had probably already guessed that, and you might have expected that the cumulative genius of the algorithms of AI might also have guessed it. Curiously, I take a little comfort from the knowledge that the system is, as yet, far from perfect. However, only a little comfort; I’m well aware that the intelligence gap is closing exponentially.

Mind you, having struggled for over a day to think of a topic to write about this week, the prospect of my blog being taken over by AI some time soon looks less worrying and more attractive that you might have suspected.

It’s not that I don’t want to write something profound about the situation, you understand. It’s just that I don’t feel I have anything useful to add to the mountains of commentary on Syria.

Is it a good thing that a sadistic and brutal tyrant has been forced out of office and into exile in a matter of days? Of course it is.

Is it a good thing that, overnight, the Syrian airforce, navy, and miliary capability were eliminated before they could fall from the wrong hands into potentially wronger hands? Another no brainer. (No need to thank us, world, but if you could avoid accusing us of genocide in Syria, we would appreciate it.)

Is who is going to replace Assad and what is going to replace his regime going to turn out to be an improvement? Ah, there you have me. You see, I think it’s still a tad early to be making predictions, especially, as they say, about the future. There’s a couple of big questions we need answers to first.

Can the Al-Qaida leopard change his spots? You will, I am sure, understand my scepticism.

Is the artificial construct known as Syria, sketched on a map in haste by a couple of outsiders, when the world was a very different place, a thing of the past? Are we looking at its breakup into several smaller states?

Just how far does Erdogan’s dream of the new Ottoman Empire stretch?

Whoa. Some heavy stuff there. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to wait for just a little more dust to settle before making a fool of myself. Safer all round, I reckon, to write about nothing in particular this week.

Take, for instance, the definition of the word “word”. My Oxford English Dictionary (admittedly vintage 1972, but I really don’t believe the definition of “word” has shifted significantly in the last 52 years) offers a definition which I shan’t bore you with in full, but which basically boils down to “a sequence of sounds constituting the basic unit of meaningful speech” and “represented in writing as a sequence of letters flanked by spaces”.

So, it’s rather a shame that the Oxford Dictionaries, as a body, did not consult the Oxford Dictionary, as a resource, before deciding that their word of the year was “brain rot”. Or, as we say in English, ‘their phrase of the year was “brain rot”’. Clearly, the “language experts” from Oxford who compiled the shortlist of six from which the public voted the winner not only proposed “brain rot” but also suffer from it. Words, dear reader, fail me… as they seem to do them.

Passing swiftly on. Men, as we all know, are from Mars, and women are from Venus. In conversations recently, I have been made aware that one of the fiercest battlegrounds of modern life on which that difference is thrashed out is the dishwasher. Apparently, I am not the only man who has a scientific method for arranging the dirty dishes in the washer, nor is Bernice the only woman who hasn’t the faintest idea what her husband is talking about.

It’s beyond my wit how she can’t see what is perfectly obvious from the topography of the space and the array of the racks. It is beyond her wit why I attach any importance to this. I’m now trying to decide whether I find this reassuring or disturbing. On balance, I think, despite momentary petty frustrations, vive la difference! I am reassured by the knowledge that it will all come out in the wash.

While we’re on the subject of diverse opinions within a marriage, one of those questions that never seem to appear on the questionnaires prospective couples are sometimes encouraged to fill out before pledging their troth, in order to determine their compatibility is the question of the temperature of fruit. Nothing, to my mind, compares with the first refreshingly chill bite of an apple or orange straight from the refrigerator. Bernice, however, prefers her fruit chambré (with the room, as the word suggests, preferably being in the South of France, rather than the South of Wales).

To complicate matters further, Bernice enjoys summer fruits when they are not yet fully ripe (or ‘rock hard’, as I put it), whereas I prefer them ripe (or ‘edible’). In the brief peach season, to take one example, this can prove taxing, since I have to hide some of the fruit, so that Bernice doesn’t eat it all before I have even started.

Of course, I can’t hide it in the fridge, because that is the first place she will look. This means that, when it is, to my taste, ripe, it is at room temperature. What we need, I have come to realise, is a microantiwave, that can bring a piece of fruit from room temperature to 6^oC in 30 seconds. Yes, I know it is a first-world problem, but that’s where, most of the time, I happen to believe I live.

While I’m feeling not particularly gruntled, let me vent about another of the world’s petty injustices. Several months ago, while Esther’s car was parked outside their house, a neighbour smashed into it. (This, incidentally, had the wholly positive effect of pushing the girls over into seriously looking to move, which quickly yielded a wonderful result. It is, as they don’t say, an ill wind that has no silver lining.) While the insurance claim was being processed, Esther, following the insurer’s instructions, had the car repaired at her own expense and submitted the receipts with her claim.

Negotiations with the insurance company were rather protracted. In fairness, this was in part due to the fact that the insurance company customer is myself, rather than Esther. (Esther’s car was originally ours, and the insurance premium stayed lower if we kept the policy as part of my package of policies with the same company.) This meant that there was a certain amount of juggling, explaining, and passing on of codes sent to phones to be done every time Esther tried to expedite the claim.

Eventually, the insurance company was ready to settle. This happened while we were in Portugal. We transferred to Esther the amount of the payment that we were due to receive from the insurance company. (No need for her to wait while they dragged their heels.) Meanwhile, I checked our account every day for the transfer from the insurance company. About a week later, I received an email from the company, informing me that they would be sending a cheque to me within a day or two. Those of my readers who are of a certain age may remember cheques from the last century.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have fumed at the weaselly method of posting a cheque (through Israel’s decrepit postal service) rather than electronic transfer. As we all know, the extra few days’ interest that the insurance companies enjoy on the millions of shekels they delay paying out cumulatively fund their annual bonuses. However, in this case, I was much more furious at the fact that, when the cheque did arrive in our postbox in Maale Adumim, it would sit there for days or weeks while we languished helpless in Penamacor.

When we did return home, I nipped down to our local mall to pay the cheque in through our bank’s ATM. (To pay in across the counter, you need to make an appointment in advance, and you are charged for the transaction.) I wasted 20 minutes, attempting to pay in the cheque by machine, at two different machines, but each time the display informed me that it was unable to read the details. This was, needless to say, a cheque filled entirely by machine; the print was as crisp as it could possibly be.

It was only after we returned home that Bernice remembered that cheques can also be paid in online through the bank’s app. This proved ludicrously quick and simple. In my defence, I will say that I cannot remember the last time I received a cheque, so this all seemed like very new territory to me.

A couple of days later, the insurance company wrote to ask me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. I must admit I derived a certain satisfaction from venting my wrath at their antiquated and devious reimbursement method, even though I knew my rage would crash against some completely unsympathetic manifestation of AI   If they were really smart, the insurers would write and ask me to complete a survey stating how satisfied I was to complete the customer survey. It was very much a therapeutic exercise.

Well, thank you. I feel a lot better having got all that off my chest. You will gather that there are ways in which life here sometimes seems to be returning to something that occasionally feels close to normal, although, of course, it can’t really.

It can’t, while 100 hostages, dead and alive (many, one fears, barely alive) languish in Gaza. It can’t, while tens of thousands have still not returned to their homes in the North or the South. It can’t, while a whole population of schoolchildren have still barely known a normal educational experience. It can’t, while thousands of family men (and some women) are only now beginning to be able to focus on attempting to rescue their stalled businesses and careers, and find again the rhythm of their family life. It can’t, while some ten thousand are still undergoing physical rehabilitation of some form or other, and who knows how many thousands are receiving, or should be receiving, psychological rehabilitation.

And then, of course, we read the International section of the paper, and know that we couldn’t possibly live anywhere else.

I promised you two weeks ago an update on Micha’el and Tslil’s plans. So here, only one week late, it is.

Part of me – and it’s the part that I really strive to nurture – embraces the excitement of being Micha’el’s father. One of the traits that best characterises Micha’el is the enthusiasm and commitment with which he embraces new initiatives. When life’s measuring spoons were being handed out, Micha’el got only the one-cup spoon; he is incapable of doing anything by half-measures.

This can, naturally, be wonderfully thrilling and exhilarating, although there sometimes comes a point where I, personally, feel ready to come off the roller coaster and spend a little time on the roundabout. However, at the moment, a moment which looks suspiciously like the start of a ride on a whole new roller coaster, I am really looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

For some time now, Micha’el and Tslil have realised that their original hope that they would be able to commit themselves full-time to developing their piece of land is not realistic. A combination of circumstances have compelled them to adapt to a changing situation: two young sons at home full-time; COVID’s effect on international travel preventing an influx of short-term visitors to share work on the land in return for bed, board, and a taste of working the land; the vagaries of Portuguese bureaucracy.

Currently, Tslil is teaching some frontal and some online yoga classes and Micha’el is teaching English online. However, these endeavours are not enough to generate surplus income that can be invested in developing their land and they are not prepared to take the time away from parenting that would be necessary to earn enough from this work to provide that income.

In parallel to their exploring a business proposition with the potential to generate that needed revenue flow, Micha’el in particular has been going through some fairly drastic lifestyle changes. A couple of months ago he finally managed to quit smoking, in its various forms, and, at the same time, started a regime of physical exercise and a protein-rich diet designed to get him back in shape and build up his muscle.

The effect was instantly noticeable when we arrived in Portugal five weeks ago, both in Micha’el’s shoulders and upper-arms and in his energy first thing in the morning. He is very happy with the changes that he has made and is determined to keep it up. While we were staying in the house, Micha’el lost his exercise room (our bedroom) and had to exercise early every morning in the backyard. Now that the bad weather is coming, he will, I am sure, be grateful to have got his ‘gym’ back.

A few months ago, Micha’el and Tslil agreed on a suitable project which ticked all their boxes. If successful, it has the potential to generate the income they need. It could at the same time make a significant contribution to the community life in Penamacor, something in which the kids are very invested. The project represents something they both believe in and are very willing to pour their energies into. It also gives both of them an opportunity to play to their individual strengths.

After that build-up, you are doubtless curious as to what this multi-box-ticking idea is. [Pause for a suitable drumroll.] It is to open a health-focused bodyweight gym. Don’t think arrays of expensive machines, or even, initially, weights, but only minimal simpler equipment such as rings, and with the emphasis firmly on body weight exercises. These will include, but eventually not be limited to, calisthenics, yoga, Pilates, and martial arts. Both Tslil and Micha’el will be teaching classes, and also functioning as personal trainers, a role for which they are formally qualified, as well as both having very much the right personality.

They have pitched their proposition to the local municipality, who have offered to provide the use of a suitable hall for three months, rent-free, and to cover the utility bills. This trial period will allow the kids to make an informed judgement as to whether their business plan is viable, with minimum investment, before committing themselves by moving to permanent premises in which they can, we hope, grow their business.

Since there is no gym less than a 40-minute drive from Penamacor, there is a sizeable potential market. The kids have carried out informal market research, which has been very encouraging. As well as producing a thorough business plan, they have developed a website and publicity materials; they will be advertising in the mainstream media in their catchment area, which is the towns and villages in the administrative area of which Penamacor is the principal town, as well as social media.

If all goes well, then the long-term plan is for them to be able to generate sufficient revenue to employ one or two personal trainers, and for Micha’el to focus on running the business. They hope that this will leave them both able to devote time and money to developing their land.

The other major project looming is the question of Tao’s education. The Portuguese authorities require children to be in an educational framework from the age of 6, so next academic year Tao will be starting school. The state system in Portugal – and certainly in the rural region where the kids are – is fairly formal, and the one certainty at the moment is that they do not want him to attend state school.

They are seriously considering home-schooling, which is legal in Portugal, but which is fairly closely monitored by the Education Ministry. There is an official curriculum that must be followed, including, obviously, Portuguese language and literature, and Portuguese history and culture. The kids would, naturally, need to employ a tutor to cover these subjects, while between them the kids would be well able to cover the other subjects. They are currently exploring a number of options, including possibly sharing the cost of the tutor with other parents in a similar situation.

While we were in Penamacor last month, Tslil picked up some tahina from an Israeli couple who own land nearby and who import the tahina from Israel. One reason I did not offer to make the one-hour round trip was because they live at end of a dirt track and, having once got our rental car stuck in the mud of such a track, I am now considerably more wary. The other reason is that ‘picking up some tahina’ is fairly simple when it is a one-kilo tub; this, however, was a 20-kilo bucket.

While she was there, the seller excitedly told Tslil of a development in local education. Apparently, the Portuguese Ministry of Education has just granted a licence to the Clonlara School, to open its first campus outside the United States. Clonlara is an American initiative started in 1967, to provide an environment where students’ interests and curiosity guided their curriculum. Starting with a campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it has grown into a global learning community offering campus, off-campus and online programmes for students in over 70 countries. You can learn more about the community here.

The campus that Clonlara plans to open in Portugal, for which a licence has just been granted, and for which a contract was signed in 2022 with the local council, for the provision of a building for the project, is actually, and amazingly, in Idanho-a-Nova, the town 25-minutes’ drive from Penamacor, where our favourite supermarket is. I don’t yet know when the school will be opening, and whether it will open with 1^st grade, but the kids will, I strongly suspect, be exploring the possibility of enrolling Tao in the program, whether on- or off-campus.

All in all, 2025 looks like being a big year in the saga of the family’s life in Portugal. There will undoubtedly be several big decisions to make, and life in Penamacor may look significantly different when I am writing my blog a year from now. It’s fair to say that, with the advancing years, I have lost some of my own enthusiasm for embarking on new adventures, but I still enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching the next generation build its family’s life.

In the last few weeks, I seem to have been taking an additive with my normal diet. This additive is marketed under the brand name ‘My Words’, and here I am eating them again this week. You may remember that last week I cavalierly wrote (not having learnt my lesson from two weeks previously) “Incidentally, all being well, I plan to share with you next week details of one of [Micha’el and Tslil’s] projects”.

Well, I’m afraid that you’re going to have to take a rain check on that. Something much more urgent has come up. Not urgent as a topic for this week’s post; rather, a task for me to complete today. This week’s post will have to be a brief explanation of why you are being short-changed.

I mentioned last week that Ollie does not find our departure from Penamacor easy. In the couple of weeks after we left in the summer, every time he sensed an injustice being visited on him by his parents, he would call for his Nana to rescue him. Being a younger child, injustices were, he felt, being visited on him at fairly frequent intervals. (I can sense all the younger siblings among my readers nodding sympathetically, and all the older siblings wondering what I am talking about.)

This time it is my turn to feel guilty for having deserted him. I received a voice message from Tslil and Ollie yesterday, in which he initially would only say “Grandpa”, and left it to Tslil to explain his request, which was for me to record and send to them a rendition of all the songs that I regularly sang to Ollie over the month we were there this time. After Tslil had finished, Ollie burst in, with cries of “Grandpa. Sing songs with Ollie”, almost breaking down. It was a heart-rending message, and it took me some time to recover from hearing it, I can tell you.

As I mentioned last week, Bernice and I had fully intended to record such a recital, and, to that end, I photographed the contents pages of the nursery rhyme book Ollie insists on us singing from. However, since our return, life has rather intervened, and we haven’t yet got round to recording.

Looking through the list of songs after receiving the message yesterday, I realised there were several that I did not know by heart. (Do you know all four two-line verses of Mary Had a Little Lamb? I always thought it ended with ‘to see a lamb at school’.) I began to wish that I had focussed more on learning my lines and less on dramatizing my rendition over the month.

So, I shall have to devote considerable time today to locating and printing out the lyrics of sundry nursery rhymes. Bernice and I had never heard of the following, for example, before we encountered it in the book. I find it charming, with ample opportunity for varied characterisation, and a suitably violent, though unbloody, conclusion:

Mrs. Mason bought a basin,
Mrs. Tyson said, What a nice ’un,
What did it cost? said Mrs. Frost,
Half a crown, said Mrs. Brown,
Did it indeed, said Mrs. Reed,
It did for certain, said Mrs. Burton.
Then Mrs. Nix up to her tricks
Threw the basin on the bricks.

Then, Bernice and I will hope that we are able to live up to our reputation as ‘one-take’ recorders, and not repeat our performance while recording a video message for Esther’s birthday, when we managed to break down in uncontrollable laughter three times before finally managing to get all the way through ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

All of which is a long-winded way of explaining why you are being significantly short-changed this week. I truly value your interest and loyalty, dear readers, but I’m afraid you can’t compete with a two-year-old’s tearful request for his Grandpa. Normal service will, we hope, be resumed next week.

As writing desks go, the one I am currently sitting at (which, I hasten to add, I am renting, rather than having bought it) is pretty expensive. That’s because it is attached to a Boeing 737, and is currently cruising at several thousand feet above the Mediterranean. It’s either 8PM or 10PM on Monday evening, depending on whether I have switched my watch back to Israel time yet, or more correctly 9PM, since we are currently off the Spanish coast. All of this means that publication time for this post is a slightly intimidating 11 hours away, so I had better get cracking.

A little under eight hours ago we kissed the kids and the grandkids goodbye, calculating how long it is until our next trip – probably only two-and-a-half months. Leaving is always hard. Micha’el and Tslil are able, while we are with them, to devote more time to their various joint and separate projects than they usually can. Our departure means, for them, a return to full-time family and household duties. (Incidentally, all being well, I plan to share with you next week details of one of their projects.)

As for the boys, Tao is now old enough to understand what we mean when we start talking about ‘going back to our home in Israel’. That doesn’t necessarily make it easy for him, but at least he knows what to expect when our last day in Portugal arrives. For Ollie, on the other hand, however much we talk about it over the last few days, our leaving comes as a shock. Needless to say, this makes saying goodbye even harder. Thank goodness we have the option of video calls to soften the blow.

Also designed to soften the blow for Ollie is a job Bernice and I have set ourselves. Several years ago, we gave Tao a book of nursery rhymes – all 74 of them – which has now become Ollie’s absolute favourite. The book is illustrated with lively watercolours, full of charming and often humorous detail. These illustrations are clearly part of the appeal of the book for Ollie, but his main enjoyment comes from the songs, to which he listens, and with which he joins in, albeit selectively, with rapt attention, Throughout this latest visit, it was only rarely that Bernice or I could escape without singing or reciting every single rhyme and song in the book, and there were days when we were each reciting it three or more times.

Before we left, I photographed the Contents pages, and we plan to make a video in which we share working our way through the entire book. Micha’el will then be able to set it up on a loop for Ollie. No substitute for seeing Nana and Grandpa live in concert, but, we hope, an acceptable second best.

As I have often remarked, part of what makes our stay in Penamacor special is that it is nothing special; instead, we become part of the daily routine and rhythm of family life. However, we seem to have adopted two traditions which we try to honour on each trip. The first of these is that the two of us get a ‘date day’, when we go out by ourselves. I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about this romantic rendezvous. This time, we visited a hypermarket and Decathlon in Castelo Branco, hunting for various items of clothing, household goods and toys, on a shopping expedition for which the boys would not have had the patience.

After a successful morning, we retired for lunch to our usual vegan restaurant, where the regular ritual was observed. A waiter who has started work since our last visit asks us whether this is our first visit to the restaurant. I wittily point out that we go back further with the restaurant than he does. He then explains the lunch ‘concept’ of the restaurant: a soup, a main course consisting of a tasting platter of four dishes, the exact nature of which is determined by whatever was ready to harvest at the restaurant’s smallholding that morning, and a choice of three desserts. As always, the vegetable soup was delicate, subtly seasoned and excellent, the mains (in this case, a burger, a hot cabbage dish, couscous with pomegranate seeds and a lettuce and melon salad) were all very tasty, and offered a range of textures and flavours, and the desserts were, I’m guessing, all rather over-sweet and lacking in texture. However, the vegan espresso was much better than I anticipated. In all, the food, service, ambience, and smooth jazz soundtrack were all very much to our taste, and the bill was no less pleasant for being less of a surprise than the first time we went there.

Our second outing is a day out with the boys. This time, an online search for local activities suitable for families with younger children yielded a pedagogical farm, curiously located in Fundao, a large town about 40 minutes’ drive from Penamacor. Tslil phoned the day before to confirm that the farm was indeed open for individuals, and so, one day last week, off we set, arriving at the farm at 11. It’s fair to say that our expectations were not overly high, not least because Talil had established that admission was free for children under six and 1.50 euros for adults (1.50 each, I hasten to add).

On our arrival we were greeted by two women, one of whom spoke better English than she had indicated on the phone. She chatted with us, and particularly with Tao, who explained that he was trilingual, having acquired Portuguese in ‘school’, and that he had lived in Penamacor since he was a baby. Her colleague, she explained, runs the onsite bakery where, I believe, they use their home-grown wheat, milled in their own watermill, to bake their own bread. The farm apparently offers group workshops that explore this process in depth. A few minutes later, another employee, whose English was very good, arrived. He took my money (such as it was) and explained that the farm is laid out on a circular route, which we were free to walk around by ourselves.

Meanwhile, the boys had been playing in the small playground, despite the slide having been soaked from the previous night’s heavy rain. Fortunately, the weather that day was bright and sunny. We collected the boys and set off on our adventure. Over the next hour, we stopped at various small animal enclosures, housing in turn, a horse (“Big!”), a donkey and a long-haired pony (“Aaaah!”), two goats, two pigs. A much larger enclosure contained a couple of sheep and, rather incongruously, a deer and an ostrich, who was singularly displeased with our presence. We also saw dogs, rabbits and geese (also less than delighted to see us).

A largish pond featured a quaint wooden bridge and two artificial fountains. The stream feeding the pond powered the watermill (or, more accurately, didn’t power it while we were there.) In all, there was enough to keep the boys very engaged for a good hour, at the end of which we drove to a nearby park that we had visited a couple of years ago with Tao. The park boasts an excellent jungle gym playground, where we were struck by how Tao has grown in confidence in the last year. Ollie is still very much at the very young end of the playground’s age range, but he still thoroughly enjoyed himself.

After all this walking, running, climbing and sliding, we were ready for lunch, and went to a nearby vegan restaurant that we had visited once before. The owner was very ready to accommodate the boys’ needs, and they in their turn were very patient during the inevitable waiting time. Bernice and I have always said (since our own children were toddlers) that it is wonderful if you can take children out to a restaurant confident that they understand the difference between being at home and being out. Our grandsons certainly do.

The two boys slept soundly on the drive home. Grandpa would have been happy to join them, having scaled the heights of the spider’s web rope frame at the park, determined not to be outdone by a five-year-old. Fortunately, Nana was on hand to make sure Grandpa stayed fully alert as we wove our way home through the countryside.

And there you have it: the highlights of our month. Time to go home, make our month’s absence up to Raphael (and his parents), catch up with friends, reimmerse ourselves in the madness that is life in Israel, and recuperate, gathering up strength for our next trip. As I may have mentioned before, Bernice and I keep reminding each other that we are truly blessed.

News from Israel continues to be overwhelming. However, truth to tell, we don’t have the time here in Penamacor to immerse ourselves in it as we tend to do, if we’re not careful, when we are at home. By the time I walk Lua in the mornings, it is past 10 AM in Israel, and the morning program I usually listen to has finished. I often listen to, or at least dip into, the archived previous day’s broadcast. I also use this time to listen to Daniel Gordis’s podcast Israel from the Inside, on the days when a new edition is available.

Beyond that, we read our thrice-daily WhatsApp feed of the news round-up, and one or other of us will sometimes read a story in more detail in other arms of the mainstream media. This is arguably a healthier news diet than our routine when in Israel; it leaves me feeling rather out of things, but there are times when that certainly feels like an improvement.

All of which is a long-winded build-up to the statement that this week’s post is unashamedly and exclusively devoted to what I’ve been up to this last couple of weeks: when I haven’t been with the boys, that is.

Two weeks ago, I ended my post with the following words: “We are confident that by the end of the second week we will have hit our stride, and be ready to go the distance. Tune in next week, to follow me eating my words.” This observation proved prophetic when I put myself to bed last Sunday afternoon and slept soundly for 90 minutes. Bernice, remarkably, just keeps going, despite firing on far more cylinders than I do throughout the day. But then, she is considerably younger than I am.

There is very little to report from here, other than that spending time with the family continues to be wonderful. Ollie’s appetite for listening to songs is as gargantuan as Tao’s for imaginative play. After Ollie mislaid Tao’s new Black Panther during a walk with Tslil one Shabbat, I found the superhero model in the grass while walking Lua on Sunday morning, and became, fleetingly, something of a superhero myself.

The following day was the 10th of the month, which, conscientious readers whose lives offer them little excitement may remember from our last visit, is the one day of the month when our supermarket senior citizens’ loyalty card entitles us to a 10% discount. So, of course, we went on an outing, and, much to Bernice’s surprise, 10% was indeed deducted from our total bill. These little victories loom larger, somehow, in a foreign language.

Even more remarkably, because totally unexpected, was what happened today (Monday) at the same supermarket. When we reached the checkout, I presented my loyalty card, which was duly swiped, as always. I know that certain items are offered at discount to card-holders, but I have never seen any sign indicating which items these are, and we have never enjoyed such a discount.

However, today, after telling us the final total for the bill, the cashier pointed out that we had accumulated credit of over 14 euros on our loyalty card, and asked whether I wanted to deduct this from the bill. I assume that we have been steadily earning discounts, but that these are added as credit to the card rather than being deducted from the original bill.

To save 14 euros on your bill is, naturally, a very pleasant experience. To do it unwittingly is doubly pleasurable. We left the supermarket (or the ‘super-dooper-market’ as Ollie has taken to calling it) with a spring in our step.

This last week has represented for me something of a mad social whirl, within the constraints of life in Penamacor, obviously. Friends of Tslil and Micha’el, also from Israel, own land about 20 minutes away. The wife’s parents are currently on a week-long visit, for the first time. The parents are religious, and, clearly, careful arrangements had been made for their visit, with the young couple koshering their vegetarian kitchen and buying new tableware and cookware.

On Wednesday, Tslil’s friend called to ask whether we could possibly spare them a bottle of wine, since her parents had not thought to bring any from Israel. (Needless to say, they are not seasoned travellers.)

As luck would have it, on this trip we brought six bottles with us from duty free. Each Shabbat we open a bottle, and, depending on how much anaesthesia we feel we need, the bottle lasts us until after lunch on Shabbat, or dinner on Sunday or Monday. So, we knew that we could easily spare a bottle.

On Thursday, they dropped in to collect the bottle, and the father (originally from South Africa) and I had a very pleasant chat about this and that (cricket, mostly, unsurprisingly). Bernice had been rather concerned that they might not welcome a bottle of dry white wine for kiddush, but, in fact, he seemed very relieved that I wasn’t offering him Palwin No 5 (or Manishewitz, if that’s your side of the pond).

Then, on Sunday, on our regular morning walk, Lua met up with what was clearly a friend, albeit an unlikely one: a little terrier who barely came up to Lua’s ankles. As the two of them raced around together, the terrier’s owner, a woman of Micha’el’s age, and I struck up a conversation. She, unsurprisingly, recognised Lua, and knows Tslil and Micha’el. From her accent, I would say that she had a middle-to-upper-middle-class Home Counties English upbringing.

She told me that she had been living in Berlin, but had grown tired of city life. After Covid, she was holidaying in Lisbon when a friend invited her to visit him on a piece of land he had just bought in the middle of nowhere. After camping on his land for six weeks, she decided to stay. Having recently come into some money, she was in a position to buy a house in nearby Penamacor, where she has now lived for three years.

At this point, my companion took the left fork in the path, to loop around back home, while Lua and I were going to carry on into the forest. Lua took a little persuading to leave her companion, but eventually she agreed. Once back home, when I wondered aloud whether my new friend worked or was of independent means, Tslil and Micha’el were able to tell me that she is an artist (so, presumably, she both works for a living and is of independent means), and makes her new home available for various art events.

It is certainly true that chance encounters in Penamacor can lead to very interesting back-stories. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering at the footlooseness and fancy-free-ery of today’s young – and no-longer-so-young – adults. I then reminded myself that, in our mid-thirties, Bernice and I, with our almost three-year-old Esther, moved from Wales to Israel.

I then “Yes, but”ted myself with details such as the financial and infrastructure assistance of the Jewish Agency, our previous history of 25 years of Zionism and the presence in Israel of Bernice’s sister and her and my various cousins and more distant relatives. It’s not quite the same as fetching up in Penamacor, or indeed Berlin, with no prior.

When my social engagements have allowed, I have found the time to do a couple of odd jobs around the house. This is undoubtedly the ideal way to curry favour with your daughter-in-law. Micha’el has a good set of tools, and is a keen and talented handyman, but he tends to be seduced by more major projects, is currently investing most of his time in teaching English online to help the bank balance, and has a less developed sense of the aesthetics of interior design.

Tslil complained one day about the state of the salon walls. The previous owner of the house had a large collection of art reproductions hanging around the house. Many of these were dark and dusty; several were devotional, depicting crucifixion and the performance of miracles. Tslil and Micha’el removed all of the religious ones long before our first visit to Portugal, and, over the years, they have removed more and more of the secular and sombre ones. Silent witnesses remained strewn across the walls, in the form of nails hammered in. These were beginning to really annoy Tslil. In addition, around the internal electricity box, which is a wooden cube sunk into the entrance hall wall, where damp has crept in over the years the plaster has started to crumble.

Enter the father-in-law. Having established that Micha’el did not have the necessary equipment, I set off for the China shop. I needed Polyfilla, and an implement to apply it with. I did not know what either of these things was called in Portuguese. (Indeed, in English, I’m not quite sure whether what I sometimes call a spatula is really a putty knife or a palette knife.) Fortunately, a suitably small (and very cheap) filler knife was on display in the shop, but I could not find any filler powder.

Undeterred, I made my way to the ‘proper’ hardware and builders’ supplies store, where, after a thorough search of the shelves, I still failed to find the powder I was looking for. I had done a little language homework, and was steeling myself to ask about “po, mistura água, preencher buraca na parede”, while knowing full well that my saying this gibberish would elicit, from the affable but non-English-speaking shopkeeper, a burst of response that would leave me infinitely further from my goal. Just then, wonder of wonders, I heard a lady my age conversing in British English with a younger man (her son), who, moments later, engaged the shopkeeper in fluent Portuguese conversation.

I explained my predicament to him. He spoke a sentence to the shopkeeper that contained none of the words I had assiduously gathered up in preparation, and, moments later, I was leaving the shop with a kilo of estuque de acabamento (finishing stucco, since you ask). Two days of occasional work with pliers (levering out the nails) and filler knife (filling in the holes) and Tslil was over the moon with the results.

I have to admit that the job was made considerably easier both by Tao’s assistance with the one or two holes and crumbling pieces of plasterwork that were at his eye level and by the fact that the original wall was finished by someone who clearly had all of Micha’el’s sensibility. We were able to go for a ‘natural’ finish that blended perfectly with the rest of the wall.

So, what with one thing and another, it’s a wonder I’ve managed to find the time this week to write a post. Join me next week for what promises to be more of the same, in my last post from Portugal. (Even though, by the time you read next week’s, we should be back in Israel…and asking ourselves where those four weeks went.)

There are weeks when I struggle to find a topic to write about, and others when I feel spoilt for choice. However, never can I remember a week when I felt there were at least three topics that I simply had to write about. Never, that is, until this week. In the end, I have decided to write about something else entirely, but before I do, let me give you the blogging equivalent of speed dating, with a couple of one-paragraph summaries of the last seven days’ ‘in other news’. Our personal ‘news’ from Portugal, such as it is, will be held over until next week.

US election. Here’s my takeaway. If you lie for months to the American people about the mental capacity of the sitting President, then, with no open selection process, replace him with someone whose major qualifications are her sex and race, rather than her personal suitability, then attempt to appeal to the key black undecided voters and the undecided wives of Republican voters by patronising both groups, all the time mocking the rival candidate rather than presenting coherent policies, and peddling woke attitudes which you tell the nation to accept without offering a rational explanation as to why, you’ll lose the election. It will be interesting to see whether this is a lesson too hard for the Democratic party to internalise.

On the same day as the Democrats reaped what they had sown, another, for me bigger, story broke: Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant, and his replacing of him with Yisrael Katz. I can’t address this story in one paragraph. For the moment, let me say that, horrifying and saddening as it is, I cannot find an explanation for the timing of this act that is not connected to Netanayahu’s struggle for political survival. Given the military background and experience of Gallant, his relationship with his American counterparts, and Yisrael Katz’s almost total lack of experience in this field and singular unsuitability for the position of Defence Minister, I can only see this as an act of betrayal of the nation by Netanayahu. A dark day indeed.

But what I really want to write about is this week’s Torah portion, and, in particular, the story of the Akeda, Abraham’s binding of Isaac. The apparent significance of this story is that it is a test of Abraham. Is his faith is Hashem sufficient for him to be prepared to sacrifice his son to Him? This is, of course, a test that Abraham passes, and, at the last moment, he is told by an angel not to sacrifice Isaac.

I have long struggled to understand this story. Our sages teach us that Abraham grew up in a traditionally polytheistic and idolatrous home, in a society that favoured child sacrifice. Independently, by observing the world and its blessings, he came to deduce the existence of an omnipotent and loving God. God then made himself known to Abraham. How is it conceivable that Abraham could for a moment believe that God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac? If he did not believe that, then the test was an empty test.

A further problem I have with this story is in understanding why it occupies the place it does in our liturgy and the way it is presented there. The Biblical account of the Akeda, in its entirety, is recited every day as part of the preliminary morning service: all 19 verses. Clearly, the sages believed that the story has an important message for us. The account in the liturgy is then followed by a prayer that begins: Master of the Universe, in the same way as Abraham overcame his mercy in order to do Your will wholeheartedly, so may your mercy overcome your anger towards us. This suggests that the key message is not that we should behave mercifully, but that we should not act impulsively and emotionally, but rather should master our passions.

I heard this week another explanation of the significance of the Akeda story: an explanation that curiously brought to mind Wilfred Owen’s First World War poem The Parable of the Old Man and the Young:

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

In stark contrast to Owen’s description of parents sending children to war in defiance of God, Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, one of the most influential Orthodox Jewish figures of the late 20^th Century, in conversation with Daniel Gordis, discussed the significance of the Akeda in the reality of Israel in 2024. “Emil Fackenheim said one of the great lines of modern Jewish theology. He once said… every parent, after the Shoah, every Jewish parent who has a child and… chooses to be a Jew after the Shoah is as great, as heroic as Abraham, because the peak of Abraham’s life was that he was willing, out of faithfulness to his mission, to his covenant, to his God, to take his child and bind him to the altar. Well, every person who has a Jewish child knows that they are binding not just their children, but their grandchildren. Grandchildren of Jewish grandparents were persecuted and killed by the Nazis.”

Rabbi Greenberg went on to explain that he was always upset by the idea of the Akeda as a test of Abraham and that he now views it as something totally different, as God’s full disclosure, God’s admission that to join this covenant is to take on risk, to take on danger. The fear of losing one’s child is surely the greatest risk a parent can take. And yet, he pointed out, the Jewish people, far from backing away, has taken it on. He acknowledged that he did not know how the Jewish people would get through the next year or two, given the inevitable great danger and heavy losses. But he declared his belief that that the past record gives us good reason to believe that the Jewish people will come through again.

“If the Holocaust didn’t break them, October 7 is not going to break them. If the past tragedies were overcome by life and by love and by all these things, we have every reason to believe this is, too. Given the past record of the Jewish people, I think this should be a moment of sadness and of pain, but also of hope and of real expectation. I say, again, I can’t wait. I look forward to it… After the Exodus, the greatest revolution of our history, out of that experience came the Bible. After the destruction of the Temple, the greatest destruction of our period, came the Talmud, the second greatest creation of Jewish people.

Now I say to myself, in our time, we have an exodus, the state of Israel, greater than the biblical, and we have a destruction, the Holocaust greater than [previous persecutions]… What’s going to come now? I hope it’ll be greater and more transformative for the whole world than ever before.”

My final update last week referenced “a journey that could hardly have been smoother”. Before I get on to this week’s real topic, let me explain the significance of that ‘hardly’.

When we first began our thrice-yearly migrations to Portugal, we hired a car from the airport. In Lisbon airport, this is very convenient. The car hire reception counters are a one-minute walk from the arrivals hall, and the car pick-up points are a further three-minute walk.

However, when car hire prices rose steeply a couple of years ago, we discovered that the premium we would have to pay for this convenience was very substantial. There is very little parking space available for car hire at the airport. The few companies that take that space pay a hefty rent for it, and pass that cost on to their customers. There are, in addition, a host of other companies that offer a shuttle service from the airport to their offices and car parks, a five- or ten-minute drive from the airport.

So we began using an off-site company, Klass Wagen, whose service is, I must say, excellent, in all respects (other, of course, than the fact that you may have to wait 20 or 30 minutes for the shuttle, and off-site pickup therefore adds the best part of an hour to your journey).

I was therefore very excited, when I was booking a car for this trip, to discover a company, Flizzr, that offered airport pickup at an off-site price. I should have been suspicious: as Bernice pointed out after the fact, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I should have known better than to trust a company called Flizzr, which sounds like a TV dolphin with a speech impediment. I should have wondered about the company describing itself as a ‘Car Rental Provider’. Just what did ‘provider’ mean in that sentence?. I should have wondered about the pickup being from the Sixt desk in the airport. Why don’t Flizzr have their own desk?

In the event, after we took our short stroll to the Sixt airport desk, the clerk told us to go outside the airport while he phoned for a white Sixt minibus to take us to pick up the car. Needless to say, I pointed out that the website had clearly stated that pickup was from the airport, but, of course, the Sixt clerk, who had no interest or investment in Flizzr, wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

After we had waited fifteen minutes outside the airport, I tried calling the phone number on the voucher. However, this was the phone number of Sixt, not Flizzr, and after listening to the available menu items all the way through, I realized none of the options would lead to a resolution, and so I hung up. A couple of minutes later, the minibus arrived, and within seven minutes we were at the Sixt office, where a very pleasant and efficient clerk, who spoke excellent English, swiftly handled our paperwork. He agreed with me that Flizzr’s misrepresentation on their website was outrageous, and assured ne that Sixt were forever telling them they had to change it, but, of course, it was nothing to do with Sixt.

We were soon on the road, in a Peugeot 308 that is a pleasure to drive, with Android Auto working, so that the map display was very easy to read. In addition, the car offers cruise control, headlights that dip automatically whenever they sense traffic ahead or oncoming, and then automatically return to beam, and windscreen wipers that automatically adjust to the presence and ferocity of rain. Every time I hire a car these days, I feel more and more like an optional extra.

All of this meant that we arrived in Penamacor at 10:30 rather than 9:40, as we had hoped, but it could certainly have been worse. We were able to get a good night’s sleep before Tslil was no longer able to hold the boys back from coming into our room, at around 6:15 the following morning.

In the week since then, we have had time to discover all of the ways in which the boys have developed since we left here in July. We of course expected to see big changes in Ollie. The difference between being just two and being two and three-and-a-half months can be expected to be significant. But Tao, as well, has surprised us in how he has matured. We were in the supermarket (of course) with the boys yesterday. When we reached the checkout, I started unloaded our trolley. Meanwhile, Tao said ‘Hello’ to the cashier. In the summer, he would have not felt confident enough in his Portuguese or in himself to strike up a conversation with a stranger, but this has now changed. He is noticeably more outgoing, and, by all accounts, his third language is developing as well.

Of course, in this respect his parents set him an excellent example. For several months, Tslil has been teaching a yoga class in English to a group of local women. She also found a useful arrangement where she gave a weekly private lesson to a Portuguese woman who, in return, coversed with Tslil in Portuguese. She also practices online every day. Last week she started teaching a new class, in Portuguese, and she was very happy with the way it went. Meanwhile, Micha’el recently spent a half-an-hour in conversation with an elderly local man, who asked him at one point whether he came from Brazil.

One day a week, Micha’el and Tslil practise their language skills by speaking to each other only in Portuguese. They certainly sound convincing to me, although it has to be said that I’m not exactly an expert. Also one day a week, Micha’el speaks to the boys in Hebrew. Now that even Ollie is very clear about the difference between the two languages, it seems to me that exposing the boys regularly to a second native Hebrew speaker is a very worthwhile initiative.

However, the prize for language development since our last visit has to go to Ollie. In July, he spoke a few words, always in isolation. He had no difficulty making himself understood with eloquent body language, but he was barely speaking. Nobody was at all worried about this. He clearly understood everything anybody said to him, and his father did not speak until he was well into his third year (and hasn’t stopped since).

When we arrived this time, we were amazed to find Ollie stringing words together like a pro, with ‘sentences’ like “Mummy outside laundry dryer” (“Mummy has gone outside to put the laundry in the dryer”, obviously). Now that his outgoing nature is augmented by sparkling conversation, and given the fact that he has a healthy appetite and is not at all a finicky eater, he is the perfect guest to invite to a dinner party.

Both Micha’el and Tslil are keeping themselves in very good physical shape and eating very healthily. They seem to be in a routine that is working well for them. Lua grows more placid as she continues to mature. Micha’el has trained her very well and I am thoroughly enjoying my daily morning walk with her. Even the weather has been largely kind, with, so far, only a little rain, and plenty of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Shabbat was even warm enough to sit in the sun in the backyard.

In short, everyone here is in very good shape. Even if Bernice and I are on our knees by the end of the day, we get a good night’s sleep, because Ollie is sleeping through the night much better, and we have only shared our bed with him once so far. We are confident that by the end of the second week we will have hit our stride, and be ready to go the distance.

Tune in next week, to follow me eating my words.

I am writing this on Sunday afternoon, 21 hours before we are due to fly to Portugal, and I find myself undecided. All day, I have been thinking that, given the situation in Israel, I can’t really not write something about ‘the view from here’. However, for reasons that I will explain, I’m finding it difficult to summon the necessary inner focus to write such a piece.

Last night, I packed our two suitcases. In what is now a familiar routine, this involved gathering from the various bags and boxes stored around the house all that we have acquired to take to Portugal since our last visit: the various foodstuffs we can’t do without and can’t find in Portugal; the various food and clothing items the kids have requested; sufficient gifts for the boys for four Shabbatot and to leave for Hanuka.

As is traditional, Bernice spent the first part of the evening saying: ‘We don’t really have to take this, if there isn’t room’, to which I responded, as per the same tradition: ‘Don’t worry! It will all fit in.’ The novel twist this time was that, having laid everything out on the sofas in the salon, I was not at all certain that everything would fit in the cases, or weigh in at less than 2 x 23 = 46 kg. (At least, that’s how I remember it. When Bernice read this account, she said: “You didn’t say: “It will all fit in”! You kept swearing and saying it would never fit in.” I believe this is what is now known, in the best of circles, as ‘Recollections may vary’.)

On our last trip out, when we retrieved our cases in Lisbon, one of the wheels on one of the cases had been damaged. We therefore left that case in Portugal – we always travel home almost empty-cased anyway – and bought a replacement in Israel. However, when we got the new case home, we discovered it was a little smaller than its predecessor. Not a good move, given the volume of stuff we take.

However, by the end of the evening, I had managed to distribute the goodies evenly between the cases, with all the breakables swaddled in padded clothing and the two cases fairly evenly matched in weight and coming in at a combined weight of well under 46 kg. We had, if I remember rightly, 5 kg to spare. This morning, I switched some contents around, to take more dense items in the smaller case and more airy items in the larger case, so that the two cases were almost identical in weight. I then managed to add items to each case; there is always a certain amount of settling overnight in the cases, in my experience. Goods compact down. With the expansion unzipped on both cases, all was well. We still have the requisite kilo or so spare in each case to take the cheese I will force in tomorrow (although I suspect that this time, rather than leaving it as blocks, I may have to slice the cheese thinly and pack it flat in the zipped compartment at the front of each case).

Today, at 23 hours and 58 minutes before our scheduled take off, I went into the El Al app to attempt to check in online. This ‘quick and simple’ process, including uploading photocopies of our passports, will theoretically make physically dropping off the bags at the airport laughably straightforward.

Being a literate readership, you will have noted the single quotes around ‘quick and simple’ in the previous paragraph, and will be expecting what is coming next. Even before the site opened for check-in, I had uploaded our passport photocopies onto the app. However, when I tried to check in, I was asked to upload them again. When I tried to take photos of the passports, the app informed me that I needed first to give the app permission to use the camera. I had, of course, already done this, but I checked again to make sure. The app refused to be persuaded. Eventually, of course, I went out and went in again…or, rather, attempted to go in. At this point, I received an error message that the site was down.

Hands up all those who are not astonished to discover that the site was also down when I attempted tp access it from my laptop…and also from the link I was ‘helpfully’ sent in an email from El Al informing me that I could now check in online.

Over three hours later, the site is still down. I could, I suppose, attempt to chat with an El Al bot, or call El Al. I’m not sure I have the fortitude to attempt either of these at the moment, so I will probably keep trying the website over the course of this evening, and then start panicking tomorrow morning.

Of course, all of these efforts could prove to be fruitless if Iran, or Hizbollah, chooses to target the airport sometime tomorrow and we find our flight cancelled.

I will aim to update you tomorrow (which will be yesterday when you read this) as to whether we got away on time, or, indeed, at all.

[Update: Having completed writing the blog, I decided, against my better judgement, to try phoning El Al Customer Service. A recorded message confirmed that the entire El Al computer system is down (I begin to suspect hackers), and offered me the option of speaking to a representative. To my astonishment, within 10 seconds a representative materialised on the phone line. Let me repeat that: within 10 seconds, a representative materialised on the phone line. This beats my last waiting experience with El Al by 3 hours and 23 minutes. The rep was able to confirm that all I can do is keep trying the site from time to time, and, in answer to my question, she confirmed that, if the site remains inaccessible, we will be able to check in at the airport, in person, tomorrow.]

[Further update: After a journey that could scarcely have been smoother (other than a little turbulence over the Mediterranean), I am writing this update from the comfort of our bed in Penamacor, where it is not yet 11 pm on Monday. I do love a happy ending, don’t you?]

All of which, I hope, explains why I am not writing about the situation this week. However, I can offer you someone else’s take on events here.

What I have decided to do is to reprint an open letter addressed to Aryeh Deri. Two weeks ago, in an interview with the newspaper Haderech – the official paper of Shas, the Sefardi ultra-orthodox party that Deri was instrumental in founding and leading – he said the following: “If you look at the budget, each day of battle costs us more than the entire annual budget of the entire Torah world. We believe that every day of study prevents more days of battle.”

Let’s take a moment to digest the full outrageousness of this statement.

He went on to say that: those who were attempting to force yeshiva students to enlist in the IDF were “miserable” and did not understand the power of Torah study.

I believe that the story that is looming larger and larger in Israel today, and that, in a certain sense, may prove to be a bigger issue than the direct confrontation with Iran, the horrifying number of deaths of regular and reservist soldiers in recent days, and possibly even the fate of the hostages, is the question of the Haredi draft bill. If you need a quick refresher course in what I am referring to, this article is, I believe, a non-partisan account of the long history of ultra-orthodox draft exemption in Israel.

If the situation with regard to Haredi exemption does not change, it is a very real possibility that significant numbers of those who have served 200 or more days of reserve duty over the last year, who have seen their families suffer the strain and their businesses face collapse, will decide that they cannot sacrifice any more while an entire section are sacrificing nothing, and will refuse to serve a further tour of reserve duty. It is also a very real possibility that many others, seeing no resolution to this obscene civil inequality, will leave the country.

Dr. Tehila Elizur is a graduate of the first class of the Talmudic Institute in Matan, with a bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University and a doctorate from Ben Gurion University. She lectures at several institutions. She does understand the power of Torah study, and she felt compelled to publish an open letter to Deri. I reproduce it here with no comment. It needs no comment.

An Open Letter to Minister Aryeh Deri, on the Eve of Sukkot 5785

Dr. Tehila Elizur

It’s now the eve of the holiday. Your family is surely preparing for the festival. Here’s what our holiday looks like:

My husband, a 54-year-old doctor, is somewhere in the north, mostly unavailable. Since Simchat Torah 5784, he’s been mobilized for a cumulative eight months—Division 98 in Khan Yunis, Jabalia, central Gaza, and now the north. My son, in a Golani reserve unit, is also somewhere in the north—you surely know that wide sector, as you sit with decision-makers regarding the fronts where my husband and sons are sent. A younger son, a regular soldier in Nahal, has been fighting in Rafah most of the time for the last six months.

He called during our pre-fast meal; they were given phones because a soldier from the armored battalion they’re attached to was killed. That’s the procedure—when someone dies, they pass around phones so soldiers can call parents. My sons didn’t fast on Yom Kippur; you can’t fast while fighting. The lulav and etrog are waiting for them at home.

But according to you, my sons and their comrades should leave the front and sit in yeshiva. After all, a day of Torah study replaces days of fighting. By your logic, you should call on heads of Hesder yeshivas and the entire national-religious public to urge their sons to leave the front and return to their yeshivas. You should call on heads of Haredi yeshivas to open their doors, inviting all fighting soldiers, religious and secular, to sit and study. Invite pilots, drone interceptors, command post staff, intelligence personnel, navy, air force, and ground forces to stop all military activity and enter yeshiva. According to you, we can simply win the war without bloodshed, without casualties, without our sleepless nights. Let’s dismantle the IDF tomorrow and all sit and study Torah.

Clearly, you don’t mean this. Neither you nor any of the Haredi ministers and Knesset members. Not the activists, nor the rabbis and Torah leaders. You all rightly expect air force personnel to face missile attacks from Iran and do everything to intercept drones. You rightly expect infantry, armor, and artillery soldiers to clear Lebanese villages threatening northern settlements, intelligence soldiers to provide accurate information, artillery and navy to cover, transport and logistics to transfer necessary equipment, medics and doctors to accompany everyone entering. Like all of us, you’re horrified by what’s revealed in villages across the border and the thought of what would have happened if Redwan forces had joined Hamas on Simchat Torah 5784. You’re as terrified as we are, expecting the IDF to do everything to ensure a pogrom never happens again in Israel. Just like all of us. With one difference—you’re not willing to take part.

I have no doubt that your family’s Torah scholars in Morocco, like my family’s Torah scholars in Poland, would never have imagined a Jewish state where Jewish citizens refuse to participate in the army defending them. I’m sure your grandfathers wouldn’t have conceived of a reality where a Jew expects his fellow to send his family members to fight and risk themselves for him, while he sits protected and safe, fighting not to take part in the effort to protect lives. Especially, they wouldn’t have imagined someone doing this in the name of Torah. If they had heard of a Torah community shouting “We’ll die rather than enlist,” while its leaders dare to sit in government and send soldiers of their people and country to fight, they would surely have torn their clothes and put on sackcloth for the Torah so distorted.

I ask myself how a Jew can send his brother to war while fighting to ensure he and his children don’t take part. How can Torah scholars ignore the obligation of “Do not stand idly by your brother’s blood,” the duty of returning your brother’s lost property, which our sages taught includes his body, and the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. I’m horrified by what I’m about to write, but I find no other explanation—we are not considered “your neighbor” in your eyes. I wish I were wrong. The burden of proof is on you, leaders of Haredi society, yeshiva students and their families, and there’s only one way: Get up, send your sons to the recruitment offices. Accompany them with concern, love, and tears as we do, and tell them as we tell ourselves and our sons: Fulfill the Torah’s obligation to defend your fellows and your people from the enemy’s hand. If you do this, perhaps we’ll merit the blessing “And grant us the blessing of Your festivals for life and peace.”

Tehila Elitsur, Jerusalem

And now I turn to all the Zionist members of Knesset: My appeal to Minister Aryeh Deri is also addressed to you. It’s doubtful whether Minister Aryeh Deri will read it. It’s highly doubtful whether the Haredi political and rabbinical leadership will do what’s expected of them. Either way, my children and yours will continue to defend, at risk to their lives, him and his children like everyone living here. This is the Jewish, Zionist, and moral requirement we’re all committed to. Don’t lend your hand to a draft-dodging law that legitimizes the Haredi position distinguishing between tribe and tribe, between blood and blood. You can’t be Zionist and support such a law. It’s not about 3,000 or 6,000. It’s not about the IDF’s absorption capacity or even the possibility of maintaining a Haredi lifestyle in the IDF. It’s about lives, about the ability to maintain the necessary force now and in the future to prevent another pogrom in Israel. If there’s no change in Haredi enlistment, we might reach high school senior conscription within a decade. On a moral level, this law is not Zionist, not Jewish, and not ethical. Don’t support it.

Last Thursday night, I lingered outside shul after the evening service marking the transition from full-blown festival to the intermediate days, which are referred to in Hebrew, (rather quaintly, it always seems to me) as Hol HaMoed, which roughly translates as ‘the weekdays of the appointed time’. One of my fellow-congregants mentioned that, when Sukkot is over, he will be making a liqueur from the etrog, the citron which is one of the four species we ‘take’ on Sukkot, to hold, shake, and parade around the shul, echoing the Sukkot ceremony in the Temple. I mentioned that I would be doing the same (although I suspect I will have to freeze my etrog – and any others I can beg from my neighbours – and make the liqueur after we return from Portugal).

I then mentioned to my friend that, always ready to employ a pun, I call my etrog liqueur (which is, unsurprisingly, very reminiscent of limoncello) etgrog, with the same verbal wit that leads me to call the liqueur I make from loquats (shesek, in Hebrew) shisky. I suspected that my friend might understand the pun, because he is a native Dutchman, and I always suspected ‘grog’ came into English from the German. The word has, to my ear, a Germanic ring to it. However, he had no idea what the word ‘grog’ might mean.

It occurs to me that some of my readers might be in a similar state of ignorance, so let me explain.

It can’t have been much fun being a sailor in the Royal Navy in the 18^th Century. Off the top of my head, I can think of several less attractive features of life at sea. The cramped and uncomfortable accommodation; the need to work outdoors in all weathers, from blazing heat to violent rainstorms; the hazards of climbing the rigging or even just negotiating the deck in stormy weather; the lack of fresh meat, fruit or vegetables and the monotony of the diet.

Let’s take a quick diversion. In 1731, Spanish sailors boarded the British brig Rebecca off the coast of Cuba and sliced off the left ear of its captain, Robert Jenkins. This traumatic auriculectomy was used as a pretext by the British to declare war on Spain in 1739, a conflict that is now known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

In 1740, British Commodore George Anson led a squadron of eight ships on a mission to disrupt or capture the Pacific Ocean possessions of the Spanish Empire.

Returning to Britain in 1744 by way of China and thus completing a lengthy circumnavigation of the globe, the voyage was notable for the capture of the Manila galleon, but also for horrific losses from disease, with only 188 men of the original 1,854 surviving. Some 1400 of the men died of scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency.

As fortune would have it, in 1739, James Lind, a Scottish medical doctor, had joined the British Navy. By 1747 he had become surgeon of HMS Salisbury. He conducted an experiment on the crew of the ship, supplementing their diet with limes and lemon juice. Although the value of citrus fruits in preventing and curing scurvy was known beforehand, Lind was the first to conduct a controlled experiment to demonstrate the benefits unequivocally. Within a short time, the British navy had adopted Lind’s recommendation to provide limes and lemon juice to all sailors when at sea. The Americans, for some reason, took over a century to be convinced, spending most of that time burying far too many sailor victims of scurvy, while mocking British sailors as Limeys.

Resuming our main story, I should properly speak about the lack of fresh meat, fruit or vegetables, with the exception of limes, and more limes, and even more limes. I am reminded of the Monty Python spam sketch. I hasten to add that I don’t recommend you follow the link. I find the sketch puerile, painfully drawn out, and utterly stupid. However, I recognize I may be in a minority here, and I offer the link as a public service.

Another dietary supplement offered to British sailors, as long ago as the 1600s, was rum. (I hazard a guess that the rum ration was more immediately popular than the lime ration. In 1740, Admiral Vernon made the already established tradition a formal daily practice. At the same time, concerned for the sailors’ health and ability to function, he ordered that a mixture of one part rum to four parts water be distributed to ratings (the naval equivalent of privates) every day. The amount of rum in this ‘tot’ was about an eighth of a pint.

 Admiral Vernon was known by the nickname ‘Old Grog’ on account of his fondness for wearing a cloak made from a coarse, loosely woven fabric that was a blend of silk and mohair or wool. This fabric was known as grogram. While the ratings may have been pleased that the ration had been formalized as part of Navy regulations, they were undoubtedly far less happy that the rum was now watered down. This ration soon became known as ‘grog’, placing the blame for the watering down firmly on Vernon’s shoulders, together with his cloak.

The rum used in the 1900s was 55% proof. The diluted grog would therefore have been 11% proof, somewhere between beer and dinner wine in potency.

At this point, of course, I have answered the question: What is the origin of the term ‘grog’? However, I am now left with a supplementary question: Why is a coarse mixture of silk and mohair or wool known as ‘grogram’? It turns out that my suspicion that the origin lies in German was very wide of the mark. In fact, it is an Anglicised corruption of the French term ‘gros grain’, which means ‘coarse grain’.

In French, I believe the ‘o’ in ‘gros’ is pronounced more or less as the ‘o’ in ‘so’ and the ‘ai’ in ‘grain’ as the ‘a’ in ‘apple’. So, the sound of ‘grogram’ is not a million miles from the sound of ‘gros grain’. These days, Bernice tells me, the fabric is known in English as gros grain rather than grogram.

While ‘grog’ tends not to be applied to strong drink outside its navy context, the adjective describing the effects of alcohol on one who drinks not wisely but too well – ‘groggy’ – is used much more widely.

One final note. In the 1970s, the Admiralty agreed that the tradition should end, because ships were by then equipped with many sophisticated weapons and other systems that meant the level of hard manual labour was much lower than previously, and that also meant that the risk of being drunk on duty was much greater to the world at large, and no longer confined to the sailor himself. Since then, July 31^st, the date the official daily rum ration was scrapped, has been marked in the Royal Navy as Black Tot Day. On that black day every year, ratings are served a commemorative tot of grog. With apologies to those who were anticipating an in-depth geo-political analysis of the ramifications of the killing of Yahya Sinwar. I really fancied a week off from ‘the situation’. There will still be enough time to file a report from the home front next week, although by the time you read it we should be in Port