Well, dear reader, so much has happened since last week that I hardly know where to start. If you follow the news in Israel you probably already know the bottom line, but, even if you do, please accompany me down the highways and byways of my idiosyncratic path to that point where we feel we can leave our worries on the doorstep as we plan to direct our feet to the less sunny side of the Mediterranean. (Catchy lyric, no? I think there might be a song in that.)

I left you last week in limbo. Portugal had announced that it was banning Israelis from entering the country, but had not (yet?) issued any guidelines about possible exceptions or appeal processes. We were desperately trying to find reliable information. Let me now bring you up to date.

Last Tuesday, Bernice stumbled, online, across a statement from the Israeli Embassy in Lisbon, simply restating the Portuguese Government’s bald official statement. However, this site included the Embassy’s email address. She suggested that I write to the Embassy and ask whether they knew anything more. I agreed that it couldn’t do any harm, and was better than stewing quietly and doing nothing, and so, more in hope than expectation, I dashed off the following email at 3:42PM (1:42 in Portugal):

Dear SIr/Madam

I understand that Portugal has banned entry to Portugal of all Israelis, other than for  Humanitarian Reasons and Essential Needs.

My wife and I have dual Israeli and British nationality and are resident in Israel. We are booked to fly from Tel Aviv to Lisbon on October 4, to visit for a month our son, his wife and our grandson, who live in Portugal as foreign residents and landowners. My wife and I own a house in Portugal.

We are unable to find any information on Portuguese Government websites about the ban, and, specifically, about qualifying as essential visitors. Would our trip constitute family reunification?

Can you advise me whether there is any way we can find answers to these questions?

I immediately received an automatic reply, acknowledging receipt, and assuring me that I would receive a reply shortly (Yeah! Sure!)

Then, at 3:48 (6 minutes after I sent my email – let me say that again: SIX MINUTES AFTER I SENT MY EMAIL), I received the following reply:

Dear David,

I enclose the wording of the announcement for you.  

If you want to apply for family reunification, please attach:  
   *Passport photos  
   *Flight ticket  
   *Vaccine certificate  

We will try to help.  

Regards,  

Consular Section – Lisbon.

When I had recovered sufficiently to tell Bernice the amazing news, I plunged myself into the welcome busy work of digging out and scanning documents. I also contacted Micha’el, and asked him for proof of residency in Portugal, and some proof of his change of name. (When Tslil and Micha’el married, they took the new surname Orlev.)

Bernice eventually managed to locate his birth certificate. Within a few minutes, Micha’el sent his NIF certificate (the equivalent of a certificate issuing a social security number), his Portuguese driving licence, his Israeli ID card, and the Israeli Population Authority certificate of name change.

With the adrenaline now pumping fiercely, I sent all of our requested documentation (but not Micha’el’s), with the following covering email, an hour and six minutes after receiving the consulate’s reply:

Thanks so much for the speed of the response!  

At your request, attached:  

   * Photographs of 2 passports
   * 2 flight tickets (E-TICKET)
   * 2 vaccination certificates
I also have photographs of our son Michael’s documents: ID, NIF, Portuguese driver’s license, change of name. They are not attached.  

Thank you and [since this was now about 25 hours before Yom Kippur] Gmar Hatima Tova

So, Bernice and I went into Yom Kippur struggling to manage our expectations. We knew that we had to be realistic. With Yom Kippur and Sukkot, there would probably be very few working days before we were due to fly (which was now only two-and-a-half weeks away) when the Consulate was working. In addition, even with the help of the Consulate, there was absolutely no reason why the Portuguese Government should be co-operatively expeditious.

Then, on Friday, at 1:34PM, another email arrived from the Consulate:

Dear David  

Attached is a letter requesting entry to Portugal.  

We would like to emphasize that the Embassy cannot take responsibility for the entry itself, and that the discretion to authorise entry or not rests with the authorities in Portugal.  

Regards,  

Tal  

Consular Section

This was amazing progress. In one bold stroke, the Consulate had given us not only the identity of a real human being (bless you, Tal), but also the following letter (and a similar one covering Bernice).

It may be that some of, you, like me, can remember receiving your first British passport, turning to the inside cover, and reading the glorious copperplate inscription:

Her Britannic Majesty’s
Secretary of State
Requests and requires in the
Name of Her Majesty
all those whom it may concern
to allow the bearer to pass freely…

I don’t know about you, but, my goodness, it made me feel very special that my free passage was being required in the name of Her Majesty.

While considerably more ‘chummy’ (‘I would much appreciate your cooperation’) and less ‘gunboat-threatening’ than the passport (‘requests and requires’), this letter nevertheless gave me the feeling that, just like Her Majesty, the State of Israel has my back.

I was also rather impressed that, on the basis, presumably, of the warmth of both my expression of gratitude for the alacrity of Tal’s response, and my greetings for a positive outcome to Yom Kippur, the Consul felt that he (or, indeed, she) was a good enough judge of character to take my word for it that we have a son who is resident in Portugal.

And so, as we entered Shabbat, Bernice and I were, in discussion with each other, managing our expectations by kicking the can down the road. ‘Even if our claim is approved, the approval is never going to come through in time.’ ‘The greatest likelihood is that we will be able to go some time in November, probably when numbers in Israel have come down and Portugal aligns itself with the emerging EU countries’ position of accepting fully vaccinated or recovered Israelis.’

And then, as I came in from davening at the end of Shabbat, Bernice showed me the message Micha’el had sent – a screenshot from facebook:

Portugal adopts EU decision – Recognize Israeli vaccine certificate starting tomorrow.
Following the report of the EU decision, the Portuguese government approved by government order the recognition of the Israeli vaccine certificate. This will take effect from 18.9 and will apply as of this moment until 30.9 (probably extended thereafter)

This was followed by fuzzy screenshots of 5 pages from the Portuguese Government website.

At this point, Bernice was failing to suppress her inner Piglet’s enthusiasm, while I was channeling my inner Eeyore* (which, if I remember rightly, includes the cochlea, the vestibule and…I forget the third part). The five pages (in Portuguese) were tantalisingly almost legible. I could make out a list of countries, which I thought I recognised, from previous viewings of this page, as countries from which Portugal was accepting visitors. However, Israel was not on this list.

I read the announcement again, and wondered aloud whether it meant only that Portugal was still banning Israelis, but, when it decided to let them in, it would recognise the Israeli vaccination.

Briefly checking on Israeli news websites was enough to convince even Eeyore that, indeed (as I hinted two weeks ago) our superpowers have enabled us to leap mountains of paperwork at a single bound (or, perhaps, that a gentle and companionable hint from the Israeli Consul was all that was needed to nudge the Portuguese Government into line with the EU).

Either way, the skies are open and our trip is on, leaving on 4 October. Wait a minute! That’s two weeks tomorrow!. You can’t imagine what we still have to do before then! And sukkot occupies one of those two weeks (which is why you are seeing this on Monday morning, and not Tuesday morning).

Never mind. I’m sure we’ll manage to sort everything out, and just this morning I received a message. We ordered, for our trip, Sonovia masks (that claim to neutralize over 99% of bacteria and viruses). They were due to arrive on 27 September, but now I am told that they are arriving today. Another item from the list that we should be able to tick off.

Of course, while we are running around here, life in Portugal proceeds at a more leisurely pace. I personally can’t wait to grab some of that!

*See my post of 7 July 2020: Could Be Worse. Not Sure How, but it Could Be.

Travel update (perhaps that should be Lack of Travel update): No official Portuguese site has yet acknowledged the fact that Portugal has closed its doors to Israelis. I have not yet received a reply to my query through the Portuguese Government website. The Israeli Portuguese news website has no update. Facebook is full of questions, but no answers, from Israelis (some of them people who have received preliminary approval of their applications for Portuguese citizenship under the ‘Law of Return’ that Iberia introduced some years ago).

Meanwhile, TAP has cancelled our return flight from Portugal (so we may not be able to get there but at least we won’t be able to get back), and moved us to the following day (a Thursday, which makes preparations for Shabbat exciting, but we feel up to the challenge).

Watch this space for further updates, as, when, and (I increasingly feel) if they become available.

As I grow older, I am increasingly mocked by my close family for the fact that I have lost the ability to act spontaneously. This is a very unfair accusation. I can still be spontaneous….it just takes me longer than it used to.

My thoughts have turned to spontaneity this week because of the Jewish calendar. As I write this on Sunday, we are midway between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, in the sixth day of the period known as the Ten Days of Repentance. This is a period when we are called upon to contemplate our actions of the last year, consider how we have fallen short of ideal behaviours, acknowledge our sins, resolve to do better in the coming year, and plan to make that possible.

While this is a set of activities bound up in Orthodox Jewish rituals, liturgy and traditions over the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, a surprisingly large number of Israelis, secular as well as religious, spend time (particularly on Yom Kippur) conducting some form of heshbon nefesh (literally ‘spiritual accounting’). Clearly (as shown also by the practice in the Christian West of adopting New Year resolutions), taking stock and vowing to turn over a new leaf are activities that speak to humankind. We strive to be self-improving individuals.

Precisely because this is so thoroughly ritualised in Orthodox Judaism, there is a very real danger that the process can become mechanical, automatic, unthinking. The pre-eminent twentieth-century Jewish theologian Rav Joseph Soloveitchik identified some mitzvot (commandments) for which the execution of the mitzvah is sufficient, and some for which it is not.

When we build our sukkah next week, and dwell in it, the ‘mere’ act of dwelling will be enough to fulfil the mitzvah. Even when a Jew is asleep in his sukkah, he is fulfilling the mitzvah. However, when we pray, ‘merely’ reciting the words is not enough. There must also be conscious intent, and it is only through such intent that we fulfil the mitzvah.

Repentance is an example of the second kind of mitzvah. Mere performance of the rituals and recitation of the prayers does not achieve true repentance. It must be a heartfelt process.

This leads some people to feel, understandably, that the rituals, and the formulaic prayers (many of them repeated word for word four times throughout Yom Kippur) actually get in the way of genuine repentance. They feel their spontaneity stifled, and they feel the prayers do not speak to, or come from, their heart.

For me, however, who is not by nature spontaneous, the liturgy offers a way in. I find that reading the familiar words prepares me to be receptive to more personal thoughts of repentance, and creates an atmosphere where I can look inward without feeling self-conscious. The prayer (not every prayer, and not even every year, but at some precious times) is a launching-pad for my own heshbon nefesh.

I am, I know, fortunate, that my Hebrew is good enough, and the prayers are familiar enough to me, for me to understand what I am reading. Of course, someone not so lucky can read the prayers in their own language. However, as I have said before, and will doubtless say again, any translation is, at best, a pale reflection of the original.

Yom Kippur, a day stripped of all distractions – a day when we are not rushing home to eat, and when bathroom breaks are uncharacteristically few and far between – is a day when I can dwell on every word of a prayer, and take the time for it to unfurl within me. These are words that were refined in the mouths and hearts of righteous men centuries ago, and that come down to me bathed in the tears and mounted in the cries of the generations of worshippers since. For me personally, they are words that I sang in the shul choir almost 60 years ago, that have echoed in my ears sung by leaders of prayer in Ilford, Swansea, Gilo, East Talpiot and Ma’ale Adumim. My life is measured out in them.

I recognise, of course, that not everyone responds to these rituals and this liturgy in this way. There are many to whom these things do not speak. I used to think that these were people who rejected ritual and embraced spontaneity. But, increasingly, I suspect that all of humanity welcomes ritual. Both of our children created their own, unique, wedding ceremonies. However, those ceremonies contained many elements that drew on rituals from a variety of sources, and were variations on a clear theme.

I know someone who is very unhappy with synagogue services. He feels unable to pray at his own, considered and measured, pace; the lack of decorum and multiple distractions interfere with his concentration. He therefore chooses to pray by himself, in the open air. However, I know that he has favourite spots that he always goes to, and he has created his own routine.

There may be some people who can, with no pre-determined structure, stop what they are doing and, at any moment, turn to God and speak to him directly. Tevye the Milkman is one such person. I have always envied him his personal relationship with God. For most people, I believe, a supporting framework offers a guided path into the appropriate frame of mind. For me personally, the Orthodox liturgy, annealed in the furnaces and ice-baths of Jewish history, represents my best chance of feeling a connection with God. It does not always – or even often – work, but I firmly believe that if you don’t show up, you can’t win. If I keep giving it a shot, I won’t miss the occasions when it does work.

In the spirit of repentance, I now turn to each of you: if, in the course of the last year, in anything I have written in this blog, or said to you, or failed to say to you, or in any way that I have behaved towards you, I have upset or offended you, then I sincerely ask your forgiveness.

Meanwhile, Tao appears not to be upsetting or offending anyone,

The story so far: Bernice and David booked a month-long trip to Portugal, flying out from Israel on October 4.

Now read on.

Some of my happiest memories of illicit pleasure from 60+ years ago are of being locked with my friend Peter in the bathroom of his home.

I’ve just read that sentence again, and it strikes me that it’s possibly open to misinterpretation, so let me explain.

Peter’s parents, like my own, and like many from the period, regarded American superhero comics as works of depravity and evil, explicitly designed to corrupt young innocent English children. I don’t remember ever discussing with them exactly what it was they objected to. (These were not the kinds of conversations I usually had with my parents.) I suspect it was a combination of what they perceived to be bad English language and inferior American popular culture. They surely could not have objected to the moral virtue of the superheroes’ championing of justice over evil!

If the finer points of their objections were a little hazy to me, the absolute nature of the ban on our buying these comics was crystal clear. My rebellion against my parents consisted of reading these comics whenever I could, at the homes of friends with a greater spirit of rebellion, or, alternatively, more liberal parents. Peter, who certainly had more of Che Guevara in him than I did, took his rebellion one step further, and defiantly collected Superman comics.

This presented him with the problem of where to hide his collection. He came up with a brilliant idea, worthy of the British World War II prisoners of war in Colditz, whose escape exploits we so enjoyed reading about. Peter unscrewed the formica board panel that boxed in the bath, and stashed his hoard behind the panel. When we wanted to read the comics, we would creep into the bathroom with a screwdriver, retrieve a comic, and, with one of us sitting comfortably on the toilet seat, and the other less so on the side of bath, we would escape into the (only temporarily) troubled streets of Metropolis.

I seem to remember one edition that dealt with Superman’s arrival by spaceship on earth as an unaccompanied baby and his discovery and adoption by Jonathan and Martha Kent. That edition included a scene where the Kents first became aware of the baby’s superhuman strength. At that moment, they were overwhelmed by a sense of wonder at such power, and concern over the harm that might result from it.

I feel as though I know how the Kents felt. Having spent months debating over whether to book flights for Portugal, we eventually took the plunge on August 23, and, less than a week later, the EU decided to advise a travel ban on Israelis. There was just one glimmer of hope: the EU’s position was advisory, and individual EU member-countries were free to decide whether to ban Israelis from entering.

And which was the first EU member to make that decision? Why, Portugal, of course. I feel personally responsible for triggering that chain of events, by booking tickets. I now find myself in possession of these incredible powers, and I’m terrified, because I have no way of knowing what will be the consequences of any further action I take. From the decisive action-taker I presented you with last week, I have reverted to being the deer in the headlights…who now, having leapt off the road, finds that he has landed on a railway line with a 1000-tonne high speed train bearing down on him.

It’s even worse than that. If Britain were still a member of the EU, Bernice and would, I believe, still be able to enter Portugal on our British passports. So now I feel directly responsible for Brexit.

I have also discovered that I can add another sentence to the list of things there is no point in saying:

• Don’t tell someone in the middle of a nervous breakdown to pull herself together.
• Don’t tell someone suffering from clinical depression to cheer up.

And now:

• Don’t tell someone who’s just booked a ticket to manage his expectations.

When the news broke a week ago, Bernice and I tried different coping strategies.

She went upstairs, fought back a few tears, took some deep breaths, entered a meditative mood, and eventually recognised how much more terrible our situation might be.

I, on the other hand, wasted an hour on the internet, hunting, with an ever mounting sense of frustration, for details of just what the ban meant. Here is what I discovered:

The Portuguese government has not updated its website advice since April, and gleefully declares that travel is now open to Israelis.

None of the Covid-19 Travel Update links on the TAP website or any Portuguese Government agency website links to updated information.

It appears that there are certain exceptional circumstances, under which individuals can appeal for special authorisation to visit Portugal. One such exception is if the trip is for reasons of family reunification.

This last sounds promising. Unfortunately, we still have several unanswered questions:

1. What family relations qualify? Specifically: Does this include parents ‘reunifying’ with adult, married children?
2. Does ‘reunification’ mean moving permanently to Portugal, or does it also include visiting for a month?
3. Does ‘family reunification’ apply only to reunification with Portuguese citizens? Or does it extend also to foreign residents (as Micha’el is)?

Let us assume, since we’re not managing our expectations, that the answers to all of the above questions are in our favour. We will then have to face the bureaucratic questions of exactly what documentation, in which language(s), we will need to submit to which authorities, when, and also what tests we will have to undergo when and what period of isolation we will have to serve.

I would say these are trivial matters, but, having watched my brother and sister-in-law struggle for months to submit the paperwork and get approval for a family reunification trip from Britain to Israel, I know it is far from straightforward. (Incidentally, they unexpectedly received authorisation a couple of weeks ago and are now in Israel, out of isolation, and having a wonderful time.) In addition to which, we would undoubtedly have to conduct at least part of this process in Portuguese.

Are we daunted? You betcha! Are we defeated? Far from it! Bring it on! We may still be learning how to control our superpowers, but, who knows, we may find that we are able to leap a mountain of paperwork at a single bound, and maybe even fly to Portugal under our own power.

A more realistic view might be that sometime in the next few months Israel’s numbers will come down. Portugal (and the other EU countries that have subsequently joined the party) will reconsider and, possibly demanding reciprocity (which Israel might by then be prepared to consider), will allow Israelis to visit. The fact is that we can take a trip anytime between October and March. Meantime, we did have over five weeks with the kids here in June-July, and we hope they will come over again next August, to help us, PG, celebrate our golden wedding.

And we still have WhatsApp video, for our regular calls with the kids and Tao. We’re building up our library of reading books that we have here and there, so that Tao can follow along as we read to him, and, as his speech develops every week, we are more able to have a sustained conversation, so those calls are becoming even richer. It also helps that Tao has spent an extended time in our home, so that he can recognise where we are when we video-chat.

It’s not only his speech that’s coming on: he’s also working on one-handed bamboo knife grape cutting…and that’s a skill his grandpa, for one, hasn’t mastered yet!

For the last couple of months, we (Bernice and I) have been devoting considerable energy to not doing something….and in a magnificent joint effort over the last two weeks we finally did it! What, if anything, will come of it, far wiser folk than we are would be hard pressed to say, so we’re certainly not counting any chickens or placing any bets ….although, in a sense, we already have placed our bet. Let me explain.

In June 2020, in common with millions of other people, we didn’t fly; in our case, to Portugal, using the national carrier, TAP. When we were forced to cancel our trip, TAP issued each of us a voucher for the full value of the flights we had booked, redeemable over the next 24 months against equivalent flights to the value of up to 20% more than the flights we had cancelled. This seemed a very fair arrangement. Actually, we each received two full-value vouchers, but, sadly, TAP realised their mistake a couple of days later, and cancelled one pair of vouchers.

For a brief period a few months ago, we considered booking to fly to Portugal for the month of August. In the end, we decided against that, for a number of reasons. First, the whole Covid-19 international air travel situation seemed potentially very volatile. In addition, if we were able to get to Penamacor, and found ourselves unable to return to Israel, we would have to spend the Tishri chagim (festivals) there, and the prospect of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot in Portugal seemed overly challenging.

Plus, the kids were here in Israel for a visit that only ended in mid-July. It seemed wiser to wait a little for our next visit.

Of course, that didn’t stop us talking almost constantly about when that next visit would be. We soon decided that a month’s trip, starting soon after all the chagim, made most sense. The weather in Portugal then would probably be not too cold; it would be two and a half months since we had seen the kids; if we ended up having to stay longer, we could manage Chanukkah and even Purim in Portugal, so we really wouldn’t have to be back in Israel until Pesach, in mid-April. (A five-month cushion seemed enough for most Doomsday scenarios – Polyanna is our middle name.)

Having made the decision, the time still didn’t feel right to start making the arrangements. We told ourselves that we should wait until the situation was clearer, even though I felt, and still feel, that the only thing that is going to get clearer in the foreseeable future is uncertainty. I suspect that our hesitation had something to do with a feeling that booking a flight was tempting providence.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we took ourselves in hand. To be more accurate, Bernice finally persuaded me to stop hiding under the metaphorical bed. As soon as I had agreed, she took the first bold step, of phoning a travel agent who had been recommended to us. This was because, some weeks earlier, I had spent one of those fruitless four-hour sessions jumping from one online travel site to another, watching flights appear and disappear and prices rise and rise. I had come away traumatized, which also partly explained my subsequent deer-in-the-headlights inability to act.

The travel agent was tremendously helpful, and no use at all. She pointed out that, since we wanted to cash in our vouchers from TAP, we had to book through them, rather than using her. She also offered another invaluable piece of advice. Many of her clients had been discovering that they were unable to get travel insurance, or that it was going to cost more than they were prepared to pay, and so she urged us to arrange our travel insurance before booking our tickets.

Inspired by Bernice’s seizing of the initiative, I sprang into action, and found online outward and homebound flights that ticked our various boxes. Those boxes included, for example: the outward flight had to be early enough in the week to allow us time in Penamacor to prepare for shabbat, and also had to be timed to allow a Covid test less than 72 hours before departure.

I then called our insurance agent, who arranged a conference call with an insurance company. I explained our situation, and asked for a quote. The very pleasant lady from the company explained that they could not give a quote until we had booked a flight. I explained that I had been told not to book a flight until I had a firm insurance quote. She restated her position. I restated my position. Impasse.

In the end, we decided we had no choice, and so I went into the TAP site online, and proceeded to book flights. I was pleasantly surprised by how user-friendly and responsive the site was; even the level of English was excellent. I cruised through to the penultimate stage, a page on which I was asked whether I had a voucher that I wished to redeem. I entered the number of my voucher, and then noticed that there wasn’t any box for a second voucher.

So, I typed in a comma and Bernice’s voucher number and clicked Submit. As I half expected, I got an error message – Invalid Voucher Number – and so I back-pedalled and entered only my voucher number, hoping that, after Submit I would be asked whether I wanted to redeem another voucher as well.

Instead, I got the same error message – Invalid Voucher Number. Taking a deep breath, I checked back through all my emails to confirm that I had used the correct voucher number and not the cancelled one. I then re-entered the number, double-checked that it was correct, clicked Submit, and got the same error message. Echoing in my ears was a comment from our daughter-in-law Tslil that rumour in Portugal had it that TAP was about to go out of business, and was no longer honouring vouchers.

At this point, I searched the TAP site and found a Tel Aviv phone number for customer support. Since it was now 8PM on Thursday, I knew there was no point phoning. I also suspected that the office would be closed on Friday. On Sunday morning, I decided that the office was probably staffed by Portuguese, and they would all obviously be at church. You can see that the prospect of spending hours waiting for my call to be picked up did not appeal to me.

It was therefore 10AM on Monday when I decided to bite the bullet. Pausing only to equip myself with a couple of cheese sandwiches, a mug of tea and a cryptic crossword, I tapped in the digits, and was connected to a straightforward English language menu. I listened carefully to the eight menu options, but of course none of them was anythiong remotely resembling Ticket Purchase or Flight Booking, So I listened to the options again and selected the least unrelated one: Technical Online Help. I then settled down for the long haul.

Not two minutes later (I still stagger in astonishment as I recall that), a pleasant service rep picked up. I explained my dilemma and she explained that ticket purchases involving redeeming vouchers have to be handled on the phone, and I had reached the correct extension. Naturally, I wanted to ask why, in that case, the website page includes a box for entering a voucher number and then claims that the number is invalid. However, I recognised that this was neither the time nor the place for me to attempt to troubleshoot TAP’s website, and I should stay focussed on the task in hand.

The service rep asked me all the relevant questions about the vouchers, confirmed that they were valid, asked about flight dates, asked me to hold, and, two minutes later (here I am, staggering in astonishment again), returned to say that she had booked the flights, departing October 24th, using the vouchers. I pointed out that we wanted to book a flight departing October 4th, not 24th (“One, two, three, four!”).

Profuse apologies, another wait of only two minutes (another stagger), and then an email arrived with all of the correct details. I confirmed that all was correct, and the rep issued the tickets. She was even able to tell us that the total cost was less than the value of the two vouchers, and we still had a balance of about ₤100. I felt as though I had won the lottery.

The same day I hired a car, and we then visited our family doctor for a summary of our medical conditions. Bernice’s summary, of course, fitted onto one side of a sheet of A4 paper, and mine…..didn’t. We are still waiting to hear what our travel insurance is going to cost. However, we keep telling ourselves that, because of Covid restrictions, we have missed four trips to Portugal, so think of all the money we have saved!

And here we are, more or less ready to go, though still determined to manage our expectations, since, of course, the situation in Israel or in Portugal can change at any time.

Just before I finish, a piece of housekeeping. For the first time since I started my blog, Jewish holidays are going to disrupt the publishing of next week’s post. I always aim for publication on Tuesday, 9AM Israel. Next Tuesday at that time, I expect to be deep in prayer in synagogue, on the first day of the New Year. At the moment, I am planning to publish 24 hours earlier.

This means that the post you are reading now may not be the last post of 5781, although I imagine many of you will have better things to do on Erev Rosh Hashana than read my blog. This therefore seems to me to be the ideal time to wish you all individually a happy and a healthy New Year, and to wish the world at large a more stable and healthier 5782.

Mind you, for a little one who has hardly known any different, and who is at the heart of a loving family, 5781 appears to have been very healthy, very stable, and very happy.

Don’t worry – this is not a personal medical update – the life (or lives) and death (or deaths) are not mine. Indeed, on my health front, the voice seems well on the way to complete recovery of its own (vocal) accord. (Did you see what I did there?)

No, this week we will reflect on the lives and deaths of and surrounding three figures of great distinction in the Israeli world of letters. They are front and centre in my thoughts at the moment because Bernice and I have just indulged ourselves in what is becoming an annual ritual. Every August (although, of course, not in the recent non-year, 2020), the Israel National Library holds a documentary film festival – Docutext – whose focus, as the name suggests, is on the written word, (though not exclusively).

This year, we saw four films over two days. Out of kindness to both the National Library and the filmmakers, I shall not comment on one of the films we saw. Nevertheless, we reckon three jewels and one lemon out of four is an acceptable strike rate.

The pleasure of anticipation began a month or so ago, when we bought a package of 12 tickets, and then sat down to decide what to see. This was, of course, a complex exercise. We wanted to attend two events a day over three days, rather than having to go into Jerusalem on four or five consecutive days. We wanted the emphasis to be on Hebrew language films, since this is a good exercise in staving off…um…what do they call that disease where you lose your memory? In the end, we made our selection.

First up was a 2008 American documentary about poet, diarist, Zionist pioneer and SOE parachutist Hannah Senesh, coupled with a guided tour of the Library’s current exhibit of her archive. You can read an account of her brief, but heroic, life here. Unfortunately, we weren’t, in the end, able to attend that day, but we hope to catch at least the exhibit at a later date.

Our next choice was On This Happy Note (in Hebrew על החיים ועל המוות), a 2021 Israeli film directed by Tamar Tal Anati. Where to start explaining this film to anyone who hasn’t heard of Anat Gov?

She and her husband Gidi were at the heart of a new wave of Israeli satire, that found early expression in what began as an Educational TV series, Zehu Zeh. Gidi was one of the stars of, and Anat wrote for, and played small parts in some sketches in, the series. From there, Anat eventually developed as a playwright. She also developed as a very articulate peace activist in Israel.

All of her plays are simultaneously extremely witty and deeply serious; written in everyday language they nevertheless have a poetic rhythm; although quintessentially Israeli, they remain accessible to a universal audience. Above all, they are completely – often searingly – personal.

Bernice and I have been lucky enough to see four of her plays on stage, the last of which was Happy Ending (סוף טוב): slightly surrealistic and part musical comedy, the play accompanies an actress in her 40s to her first chemotherapy treatment, where she learns that her cancer is terminal, and, over the course of the play, decides how to act in the light of that news.

At the time of the play’s premiere, Anat Gov herself had just decided, at age 57, that she was no longer prepared to undergo treatment for the terminal colon cancer that had been diagnosed 4 years earlier. She died the following year.

In that last year, as she prepared for her death, she also decided that she wanted to leave a spiritual legacy, and so she invited her theatrical agent, Arik Kneller, to interview her on film. This edited interview is overlaid with relevant spoken extracts from her plays and occasional brief observations, some years after her death, from her widower, Gidi, and from her best friend and the director of many of her plays, Edna Mazya.

These contributions are poignant, and the extracts are entertaining and enlightening, but the backbone of the film is the clarity and eloquence and calmness, the warmth and acceptance, with which Gov describes her philosophy. Death, she argues, is the one certain thing in life; it is therefore ridiculous to be afraid of it. She expresses gratitude for what she has been able to do with her life, for those with whom she has been privileged to share it, and for being granted the opportunity to prepare for her death. She is entirely accepting of her death.

She was originally opposed to having any treatment for her cancer, but her family persuaded her otherwise. However, when, after a few years, she had reached the point where she felt she had prepared her friends and family for her death, she simply stopped treatment and waited to embrace death.

On screen, as throughout her life, Anat Gov smokes one cigarette after another. When the interviewer comments on this, Anat is delighted, and proud, to point out that her lungs are completely clear. (Mazya recalls that when she was discussing with Anat the wording for her death notices, Anat was insistent that they should read “Anat Gov has finally quit smoking.” In this instance, she was overruled, apparently.)

Having seen the film, Bernice and I both felt that its lessons about facing death, and the image of Gov’s radiant face, would stay with us for a long time.

That same evening, we watched The Fourth Window (החלון הרביעי), whose subject is the literary work (and not the considerable political actvitist writing and thinking) of Israel’s best known author worldwide, Amos Oz. The film was made after Oz’s death, and therefore draws on a lot of archive material.

The trouble with that is that Oz was, in many ways, an extremely private man. He was, of course, a much filmed and interviewed public figure, but in those interviews I feel he was always very much in control of what he was prepared to share with the interviewer and the camera.

Oz had a difficult childhood, as described in his masterful family saga and magical self-portrait, A Tale of Love and Darkness. He was the only child of intellectual immigrant parents. His mother committed suicide when Amos was 12, and, in a move that seemed to spurn his parents’ heritage, he left home aged 14, changed his surname, rejected both his family’s right-wing revisionism and their academic life by moving to a kibbutz, and, after school, worked on the kibbutz’s agricultural land.  His long-time friend and biographer, Nurit Gertz, wrote that he ‘spent his whole life with a black hole inside and nothing could fill it’.

In the search to reveal more of Oz than he was prepared to share, the film’s director, Yair Qedar, struck unexpected gold. In the course of researching the film, she gained access to the recordings Nurit Gertz made of the phone calls Oz initiated with her at the end of his life. Oz asked her to write his biography, and over many phone calls ‘told’ her what she should write.

The film is interspersed with extracts from these phone conversations (or rather, for the most part, monologues). In these extracts, Oz reveals a great deal of what matters most to him, and of how he feels he has been misrepresented. He reveals insecurities and irresolutions that he usually took great pains to keep from public gaze.

Most fascinating in the film is the interplay between the guarded and unguarded Oz, the man at the peak of his powers and in full control of his narrative, and the man in his late 70s weakened by the cancer that was killing him.

Reading back over the last 1200 words, I realise this is all a bit on the bleak side. I hope that the last film I am going to talk about will life your spirits, although even David Grossman’s story is, as you may know, touched by tragedy.

Grossman will, I hope, not object to being called Israel’s second world-renowned contemporary author. It’s not a competition, as Bernice keeps trying to get me to accept, but, if it were, this is how Oz and Grossman would square up:

Remember that Oz died aged 79, whereas Grossman is only 67, and is still very much writing.

Oz wrote far more books, and was translated into 45 languages, whereas Grossman has been translated into 35.

They both received the Israel Prize for Literature. Oz won the Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt, while Grossman won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Oz was named to the French Legion of Honour, whereas Grossman won the Man Booker International Prize. In total, Oz won 27 awards and ‘recognitions’ from 11 different countries, including 8 within Israel, and no fewer than 7 within Germany. Grossman has won 19 such awards from 7 countries, including 8 within Israel.

Perhaps more significantly, the graph of Oz’s career has been compared to a Bactrian camel’s back, with one hump near the beginning, with My Michael, and another closer to the end with A Tale of Love and Darkness, and a number of troughs between, in terms of literary merit.

Grossman, in contrast, seems to write novels of consistent merit. He also speaks, as, in fairness, does Oz, with extraordinary clarity. Indeed, of course, so does Anat Gov. Not every writer is as fluent a speaker as each of these three is.

The director of Grossman, Adi Arbel, revealed, in the post-screening Q&A session, that Grossman was a most reluctant subject. However, it seemed to me watching that, once he had agreed to be interviewed, he was prepared to open himself up completely, and the film is fascinating in the glimpses it offers of the writing process itself, and particularly in Grossman’s descriptions of the period when an idea for a book first presents itself, and of his relation to the book, which seems to have a life quite independent of him.

However, the highlight of the film for me was a curious (perhaps unique) working practice that Grossman follows. He clearly has a warm relationship with his by now regular team of translators. When he finished writing his latest novel, More than I Love My Life, he invited some dozen of his translators to Croatia, where the book is partly set.

There, over the course of a week, they sat at a circular table, Grossman read the entire text aloud in Hebrew, and the author and translators commented, questioned, probed, discussed. The warmth, pleasure, focus and intimacy of that closed circle were completely enchanting.

I have mentioned previously my reservations about many authors reading their own work. However, I suspect there is a room in heaven reserved for when David Grossman arrives, where he will give daily readings from his work for the delight of the locals.

In conclusion, I know how lucky Bernice and I are to be retired, and therefore to have the time to go to documentary film festivals. Not everyone is so fortunate.

I have long felt that life offers very few more enjoyable experiences than a good meal eaten in the company of friends. There are even times when I feel that there are very few better ways to spend an evening than trying, and failing, to decide which is more delicious, which more nourishing: the food or the company. A good meal stimulates and satisfies; good conversation does the same.

Whenever I start going on like this, I wonder whether I’m being trivial. I surely can’t be suggesting that dinner with friends is up there with experiencing a performance of King Lear or The Marriage of Figaro? However great the chef, a meal is, in essence, an ephemeral thing, and the few traces it leaves behind are singularly unattractive. I love our friends dearly, but none of them would claim that they were wits and intellects in the class of Robert Benchley or Isaiah Berlin.

And yet….and yet. There is something about dinner with friends: the interplay between the semi-formal structure and the ease of being in a group all of whom feel completely comfortable in each other’s company; the balance of predictability (the set table gives a good idea of what to expect) and a sense of the unknown (down which particular byways will our conversation take us this evening?); the knowledge that no one in the group has anywhere better to be, and that the next couple of hours will provide an oasis on the journey through life’s desert.

It has, therefore, been a wonderful experience, over the last few weeks, to read a book one of my favourite dining companions lent me, a book with the daunting title: The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature, by Leon R Kass. Let me first say that I’m not sure whether the erudition and breadth of scope of the book or the author is more intimidating. Kass summarizes his background thus:

This strange book was written by a strange author. Trained first as a physician and then as a biochemist, he now practices neither. Untrained in philosophy and literature, he teaches both without a license, studying some of their greatest works with serious students at one of the world’s best universities [University of Chicago, which has just been ranked 10^th in the ARWU (Academic Ranking of World’s Universities) list – so that’s not a baseless claim].

As for the book, it has been described, fairly, I feel, as follows:

Who would have thought that a book on ‘eating’ could turn out to be a profound and brilliant exploration of the human condition, its limits and its potential?

As another critic wrote, Kass:

…recognize[s] that everyday activities are charged with unsuspected meanings….The way we eat together has everything to do with the way we live together.

So, in choosing to write this week about dining tables I have slid my feet under, I feel that I am not necessarily throwing out a few light-hearted observations, but rather touching on something that speaks profoundly to the human condition.

In one chapter, Kass points out the prominent part played by hospitality in Homer’s Odyssey. In modern Western civilization, of course, much of that private hospitality has been replaced by hotels, restaurants, inns and so on. However, as I repeatedly discovered when I travelled abroad on business regularly over a period of about 13 years, sometimes some of us need (or at least crave) more than the hotel and the restaurant can offer. A typical trip for me would be to attend, as part of a team of 5 or 6 people, business meetings, for two weeks in a single city.

Since I was very often the only religious member of the group, I expected to be alone on the middle Saturday, when my colleagues were either working round the clock or seeing the sights. Then after meetings ended on the last Friday, my colleagues would fly home, and I would be ‘trapped’ until the Sunday, unable to fly over shabbat.

It is fair to say that I was sometimes feeling rather sorry for myself at this stage. I would typically have survived all week on kosher cup-a-soups, tuna, crackers, salad and fruit, nuts and raisins and chocolate, all eaten in the sterile environment of an anonymous hotel bedroom. I would have worked 15–18-hour days, two thirds of the time in a comfortable but characterless conference room, and the other third in that same hotel bedroom.

But then, on Friday, more often than not, something amazing happened. Having completed my work, I would shower, change, and make my way to the home of someone I had never met, who was hosting me for shabbat. Sometimes this was the friend (or, on one occasion, the parents) of one or another of our friends in Ma’ale Adumim. Sometimes, it was someone I had called without an introduction (never a comfortable experience) earlier in the week.

On one occasion, it was pure good fortune. After two weeks in St Louis, I was unexpectedly asked to fly to Dallas for a third week. After meetings ended on the Thursday evening, I was completely exhausted, and also feeling that I had used up all of my charm and affability. So, I decided to spend shabbat alone in my hotel room.

Accordingly, I drove to a supermarket that had a kosher aisle, planning to stock up with goodies. Unable to find the challot, I spotted someone who was obviously Jewish and asked whether he could tell me where the challot were. He pointed me in the right direction, and then asked: ‘Are you in town for shabbat?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Have you got anywhere to stay?’ ‘I’m just going to stay in my hotel.’ Looking around, he called out to a tall young man in the next aisle: ‘Michael, you’ll host this gentleman for Shabbat, won’t you!’ I was simply unable to refuse without appearing rude. I jotted down the address, and comforted myself with the fact that I would at least get to stay in a J R Ewing-style Dallas mansion!

When I arrived at my host’s home the following day, I discovered it was a
small townhouse (terraced house) on a very busy main road. It transpired that
Michael was the principal (headmaster) of the Jewish primary school, a post
that came with a house. As he said to me, over dinner that evening: ‘You find
yourself in the only Jewish home in Dallas that votes Democrat.’ It was,
nevertheless (or possibly in part for that reason) a delightful shabbat.

I must have been hosted by twenty different families during those work years,
and every shabbat was a very special experience. In the same way as I feel at
home walking into a synagogue anywhere around the world, so I felt among
family, sharing shabbat with all of these diverse hosts. The sense in which we
both, host and guest, felt warmed by the experience was often palpable.

Incidentally, the synagogue I attended on that shabbat in Dallas was tremendously welcoming, with designated hosts for anyone looking for a dinner invitation on Friday night and separate designated hosts for Saturday lunch. After the Friday night service, three separate people asked me if I had a dinner arrangement. The only other place where Bernice and I have experienced that level of warmth was on our first shabbat in Ma’ale Adumim almost 24 years ago, when we first attended what has been, ever since, ‘our’ shul – Musar Avicha.

In only one city did I receive no welcome at all; that was Chicago (despite my dropping broad hints, to various congregants, that I was a visitor in town and staying in a hotel). This just bears out what has always been my experience: large, established communities are much less welcoming than small ones.

Which brings me to the most open house I have ever known, the house where Pauline and Louis Saville lived. They were the parents of Bernice’s closest friend since childhood – Denise. Louis had grown up between the wars in the then strong and close-knit Glasgow Jewish community, while Pauline had grown up in England’s second city, Birmingham. Louis qualified as a medical doctor, and, in 1940, Pauline and Louis married. During the Second World War, Louis was ordered by the Government to move to Ogmore Vale, a small mining village near the head of a South Wales valley, to serve as a family doctor there.

It is fair to say that, for Pauline, who loved the bright lights and social buzz of the big city, tiny, insular Ogmore was a huge disappointment, and, I imagine, for Louis as well. However, to Ogmore they were posted, and there they stayed for the rest of their lives. They very soon decided that if they were destined to live in a backwater, then no boat, however little, that ventured anywhere near their backwater would be allowed to float past without mooring for a shorter or longer time at their home.

I first experienced their extraordinary hospitality in April 1965. By that time, I was a veteran of one winter camp of Hanoar Hatzioni (the Zionist organization where Bernice and I met), and five or six of us from Ilford took the train to Swansea during the half-term holiday, to stay with various of our new friends. One afternoon, we decided to train and bus up to Ogmore Vale, to visit Denise. I can’t now remember how much notice we gave; I doubt if it was more than a few hours.

Regardless, we and our Swansea hosts (so, a party of about 10 or 12) turned up at the Savilles’. We spent a couple of hours listening to Beatles records on Pauline and Louis’ rather grand music centre, and were then ushered through to the dining room, where a long, long table, easily seating all of us, bowed under the weight of fried fish and salads.

That same hospitality was shown to anyone of interest who passed through, or even just nearby (both Cardiff and Swansea, the two cities of South Wales, were an hour’s drive away)….and probably the most important lesson I learnt from Pauline and Louis was that everyone is of interest, if you open your house to them, put them at their ease, ask the right question, and sit back and listen. They were both wonderful listeners. With them as your audience, you always felt as though you were a fascinating person, full of perceptive insights.

I always told them that it was a terrible shame that they did not keep a visitors book, because the number and range of guests they entertained over the decades was extraordinary.

Theirs was also a hospitality that could not be strained. One Saturday evening, Bernice and I had arranged to drive the eight miles up the valley from our home in Bridgend to Ogmore, for an evening of bridge. As we drove through Bridgend, a few snowflakes began to fall. We decided that it would be an exaggerated reaction to turn back, and so we continued to Pauline and Louis’ home. We arrived safely as the snow started to thicken. We were eventually ble to drive back home on the following Wednesday, after snow ploughs had cleared the drifts on the valley road. Meanwhile, the Army had helicoptered bread and milk in to the village. I bring up this story only to say that at no point in those four days did we feel for a moment that we had outstayed our welcome.

So, you will appreciate that it is with a broad smile that I tell you that my voice is now much stronger than it was, and I have been given the okay from the throat specialist to speak freely. Not the least welcome outcome of that is that we can now resume issuing, and accepting, dinner invitations…..at least until the next lockdown.

Tao, as you can see, has already learnt the art of engaging his audience non-verbally over dinner.

Author’s Note: The title is a reference to the 1959 11-minute film ‘The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film’, which those of you with shorter memories can get some sense of from the description here. However, rest assured that the film has nothing to do with this week’s post, so you can safely ignore the link and go through the rest of your life unaware of what proved to be a seminal bridge between The Goons and Monty Python.

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, said: “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part,” he cannot possibly have imagined what the Olympic Games would look like in 2021. As I write this, on Sunday 8 August, the very last Olympic medal has just been decided, and all that it is left is the closing ceremony. So, having made an oblique reference to the Games last week, I thought I would give them my full attention this week.

First, in the interests of full disclosure, I should probably mention that I have not seen (live or recorded) a single moment of the Olympic Games 2020. (Here’s a great trivia question in another century or so: When were the Olympics 2020 held?) I have, however, seen some still photographs, and so that, I think, is where I’ll begin.

Running
Arguably the greatest achievement of the Games was the smashing of his own men’s 400 metres hurdles world record by the Norwegian Karsten Warholm . This event is notable for having long-standing world records. The American Ed Moses dominated the event in the late 70s and early 80s of the last century (I feel about 140 years old when I write something like that), and the fourth and last world record time that he set, in 1983, stood for almost 9 years, before American Kevin Young took 0.24 seconds off Moses’ time, to set a new record of 46.78. (How is it, I wonder, that a country where everybody drives everywhere produces such good athletes?)

Young’s record stood for almost 29 years until July of this year! If you think for a moment of the advances that have been made over the last 29 years in such things as running shoe technology and training and diet regimens, Young’s achievement seems almost unreal.

Then, in Oslo, before his home crowd, last month, Karsten Warholm shaved 0.08 of a second off Young’s time. A Norwegian! Can you even name another Norwegian track athlete? Checking back, I see that, in 27 Summer Olympics, Norway has won 9 gold medals, which is, to be honest, more than I expected. Another good trivia question. Norway is one of only three countries to have won more medals in total at Winter Olympics than Summer Olympics (368 and 160). Can you name the other two countries? (Answers at the end.)

And finally, of course, on 3 August, Warholm improved his own month-old world record by a staggering 0.76 of a second, to take Olympic gold. And what was the photo that made the world’s front pages? What is the moment that captures the essence of the Olympics in 2021?

Well, if you google ‘karsten warholm world record’ and filter for images only, of the first 38 images you get, 28 are close-ups of Warholm after the race, showing his facial expression of shocked delight when he realized he had broken the record, 5 show him standing by the record display board, and only 4 show the actual race, with any of the other competitors. Someone clearly needs to explain to the photographers that “the important thing is to take part”.

Jumping
Speaking of which, the Olympics produced one story that was universally presented as heart-warming, although I have my suspicions. I’m talking about the men’s high jump final. After an unusually long competition, Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi couldn’t be split, having each recorded best clearances of 2.37 metres, failed three times at 2.39, and produced error-free records on countback. The pair were invited to take part in a jump-off, but the Qatari asked whether they could share the gold medal instead, and everyone agreed.

The media have been full of glowing stories of how they both felt that it would have been terrible for the other one to be deprived of gold. But I can’t help thinking: if they came to me and said: ‘You can share the podium with a gold medal round your neck, or risk getting silver’, I wouldn’t hesitate either. For these two, I suspect, “the important thing is to make sure you don’t not win, by turning down the opportunity to continue to take part.”

Standing Still
But at least all of the above athletes did take part. Probably the biggest story of the Olympics, and certainly the celebrity competitor who attracted most media attention, and a great deal of admiration, was Simone Biles, who, after suffering from the twisties (a potentially extremely dangerous disorientation in mid-exercise), elected to drop out of the team competition and, ultimately, withdraw from all but one individual competition, in which she won a bronze medal.

Before the games, of course, she had been tipped to repeat or better her 2016 haul of 4 golds and a bronze. CNN’s gymnastics correspondent wrote a telling piece, focusing less on Biles’ decision, and more on the prevailing culture in the American gymnastics camp.  

At the 2016 American Cup, I asked then-national team coordinator Marta Karolyi how she dealt with athletes who felt fear. She blew me off, saying, at the elite level, fear is not a problem anymore.

This, obviously, was not true. Asked by the New Yorker in 2016 why she wouldn’t try a front handspring double-front vault, called the Produnova, Biles said, “I’m not trying to die.” But many elite gymnasts have described the pressure to never show weakness under Karolyi.

The correspondent goes on to suggest that this prevailing culture of iron discipline may have helped create a climate in which then USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was able to prey sexually on the gymnasts, with none of his victims being prepared to call him out for a long time,.

I must confess that my initial reaction to Biles’ speaking of mental health issues was less than sympathetic. This was partly because of Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from two successive Open tennis championships; she felt unable, or unwilling, to tolerate the required post-match press conferences.

I respect her right to withdraw, but anyone who is ready to sign the very valuable sponsorship contracts that a player of Osaka’s stature attracts must recognise that she is not only a competitor but also a commodity. If she feels unable, or unwilling, to handle that, then, sadly, top professional tennis player in the 21st Century is not a profession that she is qualified for.

However, the more I read about the treatment of gymnasts, the more persuaded I am that there is a real issue here that Biles has been brave enough to confront.

And finally
I may have mentioned before in my blog what was for me the greatest moment of irony in the history of the Olympics. At the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, a children’s choir, and then John Lennon on a huge screen, sang Imagine, which, of course, includes the line ‘Imagine there’s no countries.’ This after many, many countries around the world had invested millions over four years preparing for a two-week contest built entirely around competition between countries. Then, for 17 days, the world checked medal tables to see whether their country had improved its position. Finally, at the closing ceremony, thousands of athletes waved their national flags in time to the music, and nobody appeared to see the absurdity.

I have always found Imagine a fatuous song, and I was therefore delighted to read just a couple of weeks ago of a music journalist friend of John Lennon visiting him in New York. When he walked into the apartment and spotted a large ice-box containing a collection of fur coats, he turned to Lennon and said: ‘Imagine no possessions!’. Lennon replied: ‘For goodness sake! It’s only a song!’ I cannot tell you how far, in that moment, Lennon went up in my estimation.

There you go: an entire column about the Olympics with virtually no discussion of actual sport. How do I do it?

In 2032, Tao will only be 13 years old, so it’s probably unrealistic to expect him to compete in the road cycling events at the Brisbane Olympics…but it’s never too early to start practising.

And the two other countries to have won more winter than summer Olympic medals are Austria (218 and 86) and Liechtenstein (10 and 0). Incidentally – more fodder for trivia fans – Liechtenstein is the smallest country in the world by population to have won an Olympic gold medal, and the second smallest by area (after Bermuda), although San Marino is the smallest country to have won any medal.

Athletes from Liechtenstein have won a total of ten medals, all in alpine skiing. It is the only country to have won medals at the Winter, but not Summer, Olympic Games. Liechtenstein has the most medals per capita of any country, with nearly one medal for every 3,600 inhabitants. (If Israel performed that well, we’d have won 2,500 medals!) Seven of its ten medals have been won by members of the same family: siblings Hanni and Andreas Wenzel, and Hanni’s daughter Tina Weirather. Further, the brothers Willi and Paul Frommelt have won two of the other three; only Ursula Konzett has medaled for her country without being related to Wenzels or Frommelts. Bet you wish you hadn’t asked. Ah, right! You didn’t.

First, an Olympic update. Four weeks ago, I attempted to describe to you the hoops that Israel and Portugal are making Micha’el and Tslil jump through in order to prove that they are not married, so that they can now get married in a civil ceremony in Portugal, which will, among other things, make various bureaucratic procedures in Portugal simpler for them and for Tao. It strikes me that, if skateboarding (2020) and breakdancing (2024) can qualify as Olympic sports, then there is no reason why bureaucracy shouldn’t qualify as well.

Or perhaps it should be a founding sport of the Anti-Olympics. The motto of the Olympics is Citius, Altius, Fortius – Faster, Higher, Stronger – so perhaps the motto of the Anti-Olympics should be Tardius, Inferioris, Inbecillioribus – Slower, Lower, Weaker; in that case, this clash between the bureaucracies of Israel and Portugal is starting to look like a gold-medal contest.

Last week, we received a slip from the Post Office informing us that a registered letter for Micha’el was waiting to be collected. When Bernice collected it, the envelope had already been torn open, albeit quite neatly. (I find myself wondering how much postage one has to pay to ensure that a registered letter arrives intact.)

When she looked through the contents, Bernice saw that the envelope was sent by the Israel Foreign Ministry, returning all of the documents that Micha’el and Tslil had submitted to prove their identity. These documents included Micha’el’s birth certificate, translated into Portuguese and notarised. Attached to this birth certificate by a paper-clip was a handwritten, unsigned, undated slip of paper from (presumably) a Foreign Ministry clerk, which read:

Greetings!
It is not possible for us to authenticate the attached document since the authorized signatory no longer appears in the system.
You have to get a new certificate issued by the Interior Ministry, and then send it again. 

If we understand this correctly, authorized signatories are removed from the system even though documents they signed will continue to circulate for decades. It beggars belief, and it makes me believe that the similarity between the Latin for weaker – inbecillioribus – and the English imbecilic cannot be a coincidence.

We only hope that Bernice manages to get a new certificate issued, and that the new certificate will reference the old one, so that the Portuguese notarisation document will still be valid, and Micha’el and Tslil will not need to pay another exorbitant notarisation fee.

I have presented this story in a light-hearted fashion, but it is, in truth, infuriating.

Speaking of slower, lower and weaker, my voice is not really improving, and I am, this week, making a concerted effort to speak as little as possible. It’s not easy, let me tell you. I have now managed to train myself not to answer my phone as a reflex reaction, but to hand it to Bernice. When I first got my voice back a little, I answered the phone and embarked on the following conversation.

• Hello.
• Hello.
• Is this David?
• Yes.
• I’m calling from [a charity].
• I’m sorry. I can’t speak.
• I can call back later.
• No! I can’t speak!
• Well, when would it be convenient for me to call back?
• I can’t speak! I’VE LOST MY VOICE.
• Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I wish you better. Goodbye.

I have started attending services in synagogue again, which also has its challenges. Much of the service, even the weekday service, includes verses that are sung and responses that are spoken aloud. When I went back, I could only speak in a whisper, and I was determined not to take part in those congregational responses; however, it is almost impossible not to get sucked in, particularly if the service is being led by someone who has a tuneful voice.

To my surprise, I suddenly realized, ten minutes into the service, that I could hear myself reciting the prayers. My voice had suddenly strengthened considerably. This, of course, meant that I had to remain continuously conscious of how I was reading, in order to stop myself speaking aloud.

This led to a couple of very interesting discoveries. First, there are many prayers that I have been reciting aloud for years, without needing to glance at the prayer book. Suddenly, I found I was unable to recite these prayers silently. I only know them off by heart if I recite them aloud. Over the last couple of weeks, I have developed a technique where I consciously ‘hear’ the prayers inside my head, even though I am making no sound. Using this technique, I remember the prayers perfectly.

This technique also helps me to weigh each word separately, rather than having the words melt into each other as they tend to do when I am not ‘hearing’ them. Needless to say, weighing each word is something I strive to do anyway when I pray (with, it must be said, varying degrees of success).

This led me to wonder about memorizing other texts. If you ask me my ID number, I can tell you it without hesitation…in Hebrew, but not in English. However, if you ask me to write down my ID number, I have discovered that I cannot do that unless I ‘speak’ the Hebrew name of each number silently in my head. Interestingly, I still know my army number (although I haven’t used it in 20 years) in English, but that is presumably because I found a convoluted arithmetical hook to hang that number on, and I still certainly do my arithmetic in English. (In my experience, counting is the very last language act that people retain in their native tongue, however well they speak the language of their adopted country.)

None of this really surprises me, because I have long known that I am a verbal, and not a visual, apprehender. If I were ever present at a crime scene, I hope that I would refuse to appear as an eye-witness, because my testimony would, I am sure, be unreliable. One of the reasons I dread Bernice disappearing is that I would have to report it to the police and they would inevitably ask me a string of questions I would be embarrassingly unable to answer. ‘What was she wearing when she disappeared?’ ‘How tall is she?’ ‘What is the colour of her eyes?’ ‘Her hair?’

Let’s make this perfectly clear: This is not the main reason I dread Bernice disappearing – of course it isn’t; don’t be silly. Nevertheless, it is a reason. (When Bernice reads this, she will suddenly realise why I insist on taking a photo of her every time she is about to leave the house.)

I leave you this week the most tenuous double segue since I started this blog. Are you ready? Speaking of leaving the house, a couple of celebrities left their shared home – Earth – rather spectacularly recently. Inspired by the examples of Richard Branson and Jeff Besos, Tao commissioned a spaceship and is pictured here about to make his maiden voyage.

As a small and select group of you will know, last week my acquaintance with the work of Jacques Brel was renewed and, subsequently, considerably deepened. So, with acknowledgement and thanks to my friend Shalom/William for the inspiration, I’m going to indulge this week in an in-depth look at perhaps the best-known work of perhaps the best-known chansonnier of the second half of the Twentieth Century – Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas.

If you look up ‘chanson’ in a French-English dictionary, you will find that it means ‘song’, and this is undoubtedly true. However, ‘chanson’ is also used to denote a particular kind of song. (Actually, several particular kinds, but, for our purposes, one will suffice.) The most succinct definition I have seen is ‘lyric-driven songs’; however, the rather fuller description Wikipedia gives of Brel’s work fleshes out that definition: ‘literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs’.

So, let’s start with a look at the lyrics. Alongside the French, I offer what seems to me a faithful translation into English. But first, a brief diversion, which will, I promise, bring us back to Brel.

I’m currently reading Robert Alter’s The Art of Bible Translation, which is both insightful and entertaining. Alter slipped almost by accident (or perhaps was sucker-punched) into translating the entire Hebrew Bible into English, and he brought to the task not only what he describes as “a good competence” in Classical Hebrew but also his background as a literary critic. This second element gave him a perspective rather different from that of most translators of the Bible.

His own translation reflects his belief that the style of the Hebrew text is a very significant part of what shapes the meaning. The art of the translator, he therefore argues, is not to smooth out the language of the original, but to retain, as far as possible, its ‘feel’; not to clarify what is unclear in the Hebrew text, but to preserve that lack of clarity in the translation. In this way the translation sets the reader the same challenges of comprehension as the original Hebrew does, and gives the reader the same experience as the reader of the original Hebrew has.

Of course, Alter realizes that all this is impossible. The translator cannot honestly do more than strive to come as close to this as she is able.

Alter references the translation theorist Lawrence Venuti, who distinguished between ‘domesticating’ and ‘foreignizing’ translations. Each type has its place. In translating a contemporary French novel into English, the translator may wish to make the text as ‘comfortable’ as possible for an American readership.

In reading translated fiction, I often find myself forgetting that I am reading a translation; the English is so natural. However, as Alter points out, it is important to avoid creating the impression that the Bible was written in English the day before yesterday, and to keep the reader aware that the linguistic patterns and cultural context of the original are very different from ours.

The modern age has, of course, seen various ‘special interest’ translations – feminist Bibles, Black English Bibles and so on. So, for example, one modern version renders the first lines of the Shema rather differently from what many of us are used to.

The version many of us grew up with is: ‘Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.’ This contemporary version offers the following: ‘Attention, Israel! God, our God! God the one and only! Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got!’ To my ear, at least, the domesticating translation jars.

Back to Ne Me Quitte Pas. Here are the lyrics, with what seems to me a foreignizing translation.

Ne Me Quitte Pas                    Don’t Leave Me
                            
Ne me quitte pas                      Don’t leave me.
Il faut oublier                             We must forget.
Tout peut s’oublier                     All can be forgotten
Qui s’enfuit déjà                        That has already passed away.
Oublier le temps                        Forget the time
Des malentendus                      Of misunderstandings
Et le temps perdu                      And the time lost
A savoir comment                     Trying to know ‘how’.
Oublier ces heures                    Forget those hours
Qui tuaient parfois                    That sometimes kill,
A coups de pourquoi                 With slaps of ‘Why?’,
Le cœur du bonheur                 The heart of happiness.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
                            
Moi je t’offrirai                           I will give to you
Des perles de pluie                    Pearls made of rain
Venues de pays                         From countries
Où il ne pleut pas                      Where it never rains.
Je creuserai la terre                   I will work the land
Jusqu’après ma mort                 All my life and beyond
Pour couvrir ton corps              To cover your body
D’or et de lumière                      With gold and with light.
Je ferai un domaine                   I will make a land
Où l’amour sera roi                    Where love will be king
Où l’amour sera loi                    Where love will be law
Où tu seras reine                       Where you will be queen.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
                            
Ne me quitte pas                       Don’t leave me.
Je t’inventerai                            I will invent, for you,
Des mots insensés                   Fanciful words
Que tu comprendras                That you’ll understand.
Je te parlerai                             I will tell you
De ces amants-là                     About those lovers
Qui ont vu deux fois                 Who have twice seen
Leurs cœurs s’embraser          Their hearts set ablaze.
Je te raconterai                        I will tell you
L’histoire de ce roi                   The story of the king
Mort de n’avoir pas                  Who died of not having
Pu te rencontrer                       Ever met you.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
                            
On a vu souvent                      We’ve often seen
Rejaillir le feu                           Fire flowing again
De l’ancien volcan                   From an ancient volcano
Qu’on croyait trop vieux          Considered too old.
Il est paraît-il                            It’s said that there are
Des terres brûlées                   Fire-scorched lands
Donnant plus de blé                That yield more wheat
Qu’un meilleur avril                  Than the best April.
Et quand vient le soir               And when evening comes
Pour qu’un ciel flamboie          With a burning sky,
Le rouge et le noir                   The red and the black –
Ne s’épousent-ils pas              Are they not joined together?
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
                            
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Je n’vais plus pleurer               I won’t cry anymore.
Je n’vais plus parler                 I won’t talk anymore.
Je me cacherai là                    I will hide over there
A te regarder                           To watch you
Danser et sourire                     Dance and smile,
Et à t’écouter                           And to hear you
Chanter et puis rire                 Sing and then laugh.
Laisse-moi devenir                  Let me become
L’ombre de ton ombre             The shadow of your shadow,
L’ombre de ta main                 The shadow of your hand,
L’ombre de ton chien              The shadow of your dog.
Mais                                         But
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas                     Don’t leave me.
Ne me quitte pas.                    Don’t leave me.

‘Literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs.’ How true. Let’s take a closer look at what is going on here.

In the very first line, the singer makes a blunt plea – Don’t leave me – without offering any reason why his lover should not leave. As the song progresses, this plea is repeated again and again in an act of ultimately humiliating begging.

In asking to gloss over their problems, he sweeps aside everything that has been in their relationship – All can be forgotten. He then makes a series of fanciful, unrealistic promises, stressing the lengths he will go to for her – I will work the land all my life and beyond to cover your body with gold and with light.

Then follows a promise of things he will say, a series of empty fairy tales – The story of the king who died of not having ever met you, and then a series of powerful images drawn from nature, suggesting that their love can be revived. It’s said that there are fire-scorched lands that yield more wheat than the best April. However, even some of these images are only hearsay – It’s said that… – and thefinal image is couched as a question, with a suggestion of uncertainty – Are they not joined together?

It is true that these same sentiments, expressed by someone at the very beginning of a love affair, could appear attractive (even if we also smiled wryly at their innocent super-optimism, and of the prospective lover’s eagerness to do everything, and expect nothing in return). However, for a man standing in the wreck of a relationship, they seem pathetic.

In the last verse, the singer desperately promises to make himself invisible, realising that his lover does not want to see him or hear him anymore – I will hide over there to watch you…Let me become the shadow of your shadow…your hand…your dog. Your dog! How humiliating is that! Finally, the begging refrain is repeated – Don’t leave me.

At no point in the song does he describe a healthy or realistic relationship.

The time has come to listen to Brel performing the song – a more complete and accurate word than ‘singing’, I think. (The English subtitles here are a slightly less successful translation than the version I gave above, but they’ll do.)

In a 1966 interview, Brel said that Ne me quitte pas was not a love song, but rather “a hymn to the cowardice of men”, and the degree to which they were willing to humiliate themselves. He knew, he said, that it would give pleasure to women who assumed it was a love song, and he understood that. (I’m not sure he would be able to get away with last sentiment 50 years on!)

And so, dear reader, we come to a domesticating ‘translation’. In fairness, this is not a translation but an adaptation. However, I think it speaks volumes about the distance between mainstream American popular music and chanson. Rod McKuen wrote new words to the tune of Ne Me Quitte Pas as If You Go Away. In that changed title, we already see much of the shift that McKuen made in the tone and meaning of the song. Here the lover’s going away is seen as a possibility, rather than something to be denied – If rather than Don’t.

Here are all of the lyrics:

If You Go Away

If you go away on this summer day
Then you might as well take the sun away;
All the birds that flew in a summer sky
When our love was new and our hearts were high;
When the day was young and the night was long
And the moon stood still for the night birds’ song.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

But if you stay, I’ll make you a day
Like no day has been or will be again.
We’ll sail on the sun; we’ll ride on the rain;
We’ll talk to the trees and worship the wind.
Then, if you go, I’ll understand.
Leave me just enough love to hold in my hand.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

If you go away, as I know you will,
You must tell the world to stop turning till
You return again, if you ever do.
For what good is life without loving you?
And I tell you now, as you turn to go,
I’ll be dying slowly till the next hello.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

But if you stay, I’ll make you a night
Like no night has been or will be again.
We’ll sail on your smile, we’ll ride on your touch
I’ll talk to your eyes that I love so much.
But if you go, I won’t cry,
For the good is gone from the word ‘goodbye’.
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.

If you go away, as I know you must,
There’ll be nothing left in the world to trust.
Just an empty room, full of empty space,
Like the empty look I see on your face.
I’d have been the shadow of your dog
If I thought it might have kept me by your side
If you go away,
If you go away,
If you go away.


The major differences between the original and McKuen’s adaptation are clear to see. First, rather than the whole of their prior relationship being swept aside, it is here recalled in loving detail in the first verse – When our love was new and our hearts were high. Then, in the second verse, instead of the future being imagined as fairy tale, as in Brel’s song, and being what the singer will do for the lover, it is realistically (in a romantic context) described, as an equal partnership – We’ll sail on the sun; we’ll ride on the rain.

As the song progresses, the possibility of the lover leaving becomes stronger and stronger – as I know you will…as I know you must…as you turn to go. The singer can visualise the leaving, and can talk about what life will be like after that event. For Brel’s singer, the situation is unimaginable, a measure of his cowardice. McKuen’s singer is braver, even though the prospect is bleak –  I’ll be dying slowly till the next hello. However, even in this bleakness, McKuen’s singer can imagine a reuniting – the next hello.

In addition, McKuen’s singer, unlike Brel’s, realises how pathetic wishing to be the shadow of the lover’s dog is – I’d have been the shadow of your dog, if I thought it might have kept me by your side.

Finally, McKuen has the line If you go away appear three times at the end of each verse, which fits the rhythm of the song. Brel adds a fourth Ne me quitte pas each time, spilling over the rhythm, as if he cannot stop begging even after the verse has finished, It is a further measure of his lack of self-control.

So, McKuen’s singer is smarter, more realistic, more self-aware, more dignified than Brel’s. Here is Shirley Bassey’s rendition of If You Go Away. Apart from the willing suspension of disbelief required to imagine that anyone would walk out on Shirley Bassey in her prime, notice the strength of the character she portrays.

Hers is a cover version that McKuen very much admired, and it is not difficult to see why the song attracted not only Bassey, but also, among so many others, Dusty Springfield, Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Julio Iglesias, Barbra Streisand, Glen Campbell, Scott Walker, Ray Charles. If You Go Away is much recorded. The singer is invited to inhabit a very sympathetic persona.

Yet Brel’s is the more gripping character, because the song is so merciless a portrayal of weakness, that has lost none of its power and immediacy in the intervening 60 years. Chansons: ‘Literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs.’ Indeed!

Meanwhile, in Portugal, someone is starting to hone his skills in preparation for a possible future in chanson (or maybe even fado).

If you’re under 50, then 10 points if you recognize the source of the above quote. If you’re in your 70s, you lose 30 points if you don’t recognize that it is a Simon and Garfunkel song.

After last week’s blog, a friend complimented me on how I connected the various strands of the blog together. I explained that it was all pure chance. I just stand here at the top of the hill, kick the ball once, and watch. What rocks it bounces off, what ruts it gets stuck in, what windows it smashes, on its bumpy descent – all that feels completely out of my control.

In one of my increasingly common serendipitous moments, having decided what I wanted to write about this week (a real no-brainer), I cast about for a suitably attention-grabbing title, and The Sound of Silence almost immediately presented itself. As part of my warm-up, I ran through the lyrics.

In a pre-internet age, this would, of course, have been a nightmare, because we only have the song on vinyl/LP, and we no longer have a deck/record player. (I am growing increasingly sensitive to the wide range of ages among my audience.) I can picture myself struggling like Himesh Patel, playing the lead in Yesterday, desperately trying to drag the lyrics of She’s Leaving Home from the recesses of his mind.

However, in yet another of the multiple daily reminders of the wonders of the web, I can google the lyrics instantly. (Mind you, if there were no internet, there would probably be no digital media, and we would still have a record deck and I would be able to play The Sound of Silence.)

Looking through the lyrics, I was immediately struck by the lines: ‘People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening’. Simply by switching the two verbs in the second line, I realized that I had, in a nutshell, the predicament Bernice and I currently find ourselves. I can, at the moment, talk, but only in a whisper that does not really qualify as speaking. Bernice, in perfect symmetry, listens, but because, at the moment, she is suffering with blocked ears, she can’t actually hear me. I’m not sure we’ve ever been a Simon and Garfunkel song before (and anyone who mentions Old Friends can leave now).

All of which is incidental, and, we hope, temporary. Bernice has an appointment to have her ears syringed soon by my throat doctor, and, by the time you read this, I should have had my throat examined by Bernice’s ear syringer, and I hope he will provide the solution to our problem. (I’ve always found it curious that one specialism covers what seem to me to be three very separate parts of my body arbitrarily lumped together – I can’t imagine specialism in toenails, spleen and neck. I know, intellectually, that E, N and T are all connected by a single canal system, but it doesn’t feel like that in my head. Just a thought!)

Editor’s Note: He didn’t (provide a solution). My vocal cords are only closing partially (an improvement on a month ago), so I can still only whisper. If they were not closing at all, the doc would know what to do, but, on the other hand, my position would then be more serious. What he has done is refer me to the top woman in Jerusalem, so I face another four weeks of whispering until my appointment with her. I am, at least, now officially allowed to talk, but only in short sentences and not in a loud voice.

This top woman is the Director of Hadassah Hospital’s Voice and Swallowing Outpatients Department. My brother Martin usefully pointed out that having a team devoted to swallowing outpatients should certainly reduce waiting times.

The real topic this week (reached in under 600 words) is the sound of silence: the silence that descended on our house at 1AM last Thursday, when Micha’el, Tslil and Tao drove off to the airport. Not just the silence: rather, the silences.

There is, first and foremost, the silence created by the absence of a two-year-old who is constantly on the go, and who is perfectly capable of engaging non-stop in an intelligent conversation even if he only offers one word each time it is his turn to speak. Excitingly, while he was here, he started putting words together in rudimentary sentences, such as “Caught ball”, and compound phrases such as “Big red truck!”. We fully expect that, by the time we fly to Portugal and see him again (planned for October), we won’t be able to get a word in edgeways.

Editor’s Note: Indeed, since arriving back home, he has. apparently, graduated to three-word sentences such as “Put it there”.

Then there is the silence left in the evenings, instead of the not-quite-discernible murmured conversation heard as Micha’el and Tslil catch up with their closest friends in the back garden.

Or the sheer joy of listening to Tslil, Micha’el, and Bernice each constantly enriching their own unique bond with Tao. Three very distinct voices and styles, wrapping Tao in love and security.

Next time I make granola, (following the wonderful recipe shared years ago by our good friends Bobbie and Joe), it is going to be a very quiet process. This is in contrast to last time, when Tao added all of the ingredients according to my instructions. I, of course, had to be generous with the nuts and seeds, because Tao, like his grandpa, has to taste everything as he goes along. If anything, Tao granola tastes even better than my usual batch (even if it does take twice as long to make, and three times as long to clear up the counter-top and sweep the floor). The granola is one lingering trace that he has left behind for me.

Above even all of that is the silence left when we are not sitting around the dinner table with our four children and our grandson. Hearing our seven voices (or, rather, their six voices and my hiss) in inter-weaving harmony has been the greatest pleasure of their trip, for me.

Bernice and I spent Thursday packing away the toys and books that we had taken down from the wardrobes, or bought specially (in the hope that they will be a good investment for the future – no pressure). We also packed up and put aside items we had borrowed (thank you, Metanel for the Lego, Gan Horim for the wheelbarrow and Hagit for the mattress.)

This involved a fair bit of dismantling, squeezing into boxes and retrieving marbles and pieces of Lego from behind sofas. When we had finished, we sat down and surveyed the vast, empty expanses of our salon. (It’s true what they say about bringing in the goat!)

Incidentally, our best buy, without a doubt, was a balance trike or bimba (no pedals) that folds down quickly and simply, is light but extremely sturdy, and cost only 60 shekels. At home, Tao spends a lot of time on his quad bike (pardon the oxymoron) and we wanted him to have a substitute here, which certainly got very good use.

It was, for us, a great visit, and the ease with which Tao settled in was wonderful and very reassuring to see. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks after they arrived, the municipality closed off and started digging up the little playground just at the top of our street, which Tao visited daily. The renovation is still not finished, so we had to find another suitable park further away.

Even that I miss. And so, we hang in abeyance, wistfully awaiting the next invasion. Meanwhile, I have to start practising speaking laconically, so here goes.

Bye.