Today’s post, dear reader, is a race against time, for reasons that will become clear as we continue. Probably the first thing to tell you is that I am writing to you from the glassed-in balcony (which, I suppose, makes it a kind of conservatory, although that sounds a lot grander than the reality) that leads off the bedroom of our house in Penamacor. Yes, we are here!

Last Monday, we went through a very thorough check-in process at Ben Gurion airport, which involved presenting our vaccination certificates (of course) and (a requirement of the Portuguese authorities) a passenger location form giving our seat allocation on the flight and our contact details in Portugal, so that we could be located in the event of any close-by passenger having Covid-19.

We also had to complete, online, (a requirement of the Israeli authorities) a form of which we had been completely unaware, stating that we were not travelling to any country classified red by Israel. Ironically, by the time we landed in Portugal, Israel had taken all countries off the red list. Completing this form provided a healthy adrenaline rush while we were queuing for check-in.

My phone refused to read the Q-code displayed on boards in the queuing area. Bernice had more success with her phone and completed and submitted the form online in both our names. Showing astonishing presence of mind, she then took a screenshot of the confirmation that the form had been submitted successfully, which is just as well, because, although the form was supposed to be sent to her email, it never arrived. Fortunately, the check-in clerk accepted the screenshot as sufficient proof of submission.

At each stage of this process, we were allowing ourselves to believe with a little more conviction that we were actually going to make it to the kids.

After that rather stressful 45 minutes, we were through to the departure lounge, for our traditional airport Aroma snack: tea and a sticky bun – an almond chocolate croissant for Bernice, a cheese bun for me. We regard this as advance compensation for the fact that we cannot enjoy a similar snack in any of the Penamacor cafes, because of kashrut.

By the time we finished that, it was time to make our way to the gate. Boarding was on time, and very quick, with the plane about two-thirds full. We took off on time, and, after a smooth flight, landed 15 minutes early. The official at passport control asked to see only our passports, and then waved us through with a smile. Our luggage arrived at the carousel a minute after we did, We were not stopped at customs, and stepped through to Portuguese soil, feeling like Steve McQueen sailing over the wire on his motorcycle in The Great Escape. On a more prosaic note, there was no queue at the car rental desk, and, apart from one superfluous lap of the airport car park, we made it to our hotel without incident, arriving about 70 minutes after landing.

The hotel was absolutely fine for our needs, clean and comfortable, with a 24-hour complimentary hot and cold drinks machine in the foyer and the usual channels on Portuguese hotel TV: 24 channels of Portuguese news, game shows and reality shows, a couple of movie channels and several sports channels, all with Portuguese commentary. This, for some reason, always includes Eurosport snooker. Over the years, I think I have watched Ronnie O’Sullivan in at least ten languages.

The following morning, the weather was bright and clear, and we were on the road by 7:40, having spent 10 minutes taming the car’s nat sav system. The hotel was only a two-minute drive from the motorway, and since I felt well rested and we did not need to break the journey, we arrived at the house at 10:30. It was wonderful catching up with the kids and, to our delight, Tao was completely at ease with us immediately. Even Lua, the kid’s dog, seemed cautiously accepting of our presence, which is just as well, since she is (theoretically) a guard dog, and, although a puppy, she is already the size of a small pony: the perfect size for the kids’ land, but ridiculously oversize for our little house.

Over the week, Lua has grown much more relaxed. The first night, when I got up to go downstairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night, Lua was sleeping in the hall outside the kids’ bedroom, and gave one low, quiet growl. By the end of the night, she had realised that my wanderings throughout the night are just bathroom breaks, and not attempts to murder the kids in their bed, and she remained silent. When we took Tao to bed with us one night to give the kids a break, Lua spent the night on the floor in our room, just to make sure Tao was okay. Since then, she has slept downstairs, as usual.

The rest of the week was fairly routine: shopping, playing, shopping, playground, shopping, shabbat. We managed to combine one shopping expedition with a visit to a fairly large playground, which Tao enjoyed, but apart from that most of our time has been spent reading to and playing with him at home. Since we have a long video call every week, we did not expect to see any dramatic changes. However, we have been surprised by the complexity of Tao’s sentences. One example, from before our visit to the hypermarket 40 minutes away, was: ‘Go to supermarket, buy truck with doors that open and close.’ What grandparent could fail to comply with a request expressed with such competent complexity!

We have also been struck, not for the first time, by the intensity with which Tao plays, and the length of time that he can stay absorbed in what he is doing. He is passionate about diggers and dumper trucks, and can play by himself, narrating to himself what he is doing, for a very long time.

He is also an avid devourer of books and songs, giving the reader or singer his undivided attention. Needless to say, both Bernice and I are quite comfortable with that state of affairs, and it is nice, for a change, to read a book with him on our lap or sitting next to us, rather than having to turn the book to face the screen and read the story upside down, peering over the top of the page.

Shabbat was very special for us. Tao had been eagerly looking forward to it: not only because he had spotted the bottle of grape juice we had brought, and because he loves challa. On Friday night we sang, and he remembered that he had to wait for the bracha before drinking his wine. On shabbat morning we sang, and then ate lunch. When we finished singing havdala, Tao said: ‘Now we eat’, and was rather disappointed to discover that, no, now we go to bed.

Today (Sunday) was a very special day indeed. The long, complex and multi-layered process of preparing the floor of the tipi* on the kids’ land has been continuing for many months. After levelling the ground, building a retaining dry-stone wall, laying a layer of rocks, a layer of gravel, a layer of soil and then a levelling layer of fine-sifted soil, Micha’el and Tslil were now ready for the final layer of cob. This is a mixture of clay-based earth, double-sifted to almost the consistency of sand, water and straw. The kids had prepared what they hoped would be enough soil for the cob, and today was the day for laying the floor.

They enlisted the help of a few friends, and invited us along to watch the momentous event. First, Bernice, ably assisted by Tao, watered the floor to ready it to receive the cob, while one team began mixing the cob, by hand, by foot, and then with spades and trowels in a wheelbarrow. The second team then began laying it like plaster in the tipi. Micha’el was uncertain whether we had enough sifted soil, and, after the first couple of loads, it seemed likely that more would be needed.

By this stage, I found, much to my surprise, that I felt invigorated by watching so much hard work, and wanted to join in. So, Micha’el and I headed off to a nearby part of the land, where he had started digging a swale – an open trench following the natural contours of the land, to catch rainwater and channel it to be used for permaculture irrigation. We carried on digging, then sifting the dug soil, and wheeling it back to the tipi area for a second, fine, sifting. Bernice, Tao and other two toddlers (children of the friends helping) joined in with this. We were able, over the rest of the day, to sift enough extra soil so that just enough cob was produced to complete the floor.

After a delicious alfresco lunch of pasta, salad and fruit, work proceeded a little less energetically in the afternoon (certainly, as far as I was concerned). Bernice and I headed back home with Tao early enough to shower before the kids arrived home. Once we were showered, I came upstairs to start writing this, knowing that it was a race against time. It’s now 7PM and I can already feel myself starting to flag. So, I’ll stop here, and leave you with some shots and videos from today’s activity.

*When I was growing up, Red Indians lived in teepees. (Well, of course, they no longer did, but you know what I mean.) Now, I understand that they are Native Americans, and it appears that they live (or, more accurately, no longer live) in tipis. Some people might call this progress, but I’m not entirely convinced myself!

In the fortnight (that’s two weeks in new money) since I last updated you about our forthcoming trip to Portugal, much has changed (or, to put it another way, nothing has). By the time this post reaches you, we will probably know no more than we do now. However, a week from now, I expect to be writing to you from…who knows where?

Let me try to explain. In mid-September, the Portuguese Government was reported in the media as having rescinded its previous decision to ban Israelis from entering the country. However, even now, no Portuguese Government website that I have been able to find states this explicitly. In addition, the decision was reported as being valid until the end of September, with the expectation that it would then be renewed.

As our planned trip on 4^th October grew nearer, Bernice and I grew more nervous. We sought reassurance that we would not be refused entry at Lisbon airport, or, alternatively, not be blocked from boarding the aircraft in Israel. However, I was unable to find any clear statement online. TAP’s site still linked, in its Covid update, to a statement from the Portuguese authorities from 2^nd September.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeking clarification through other channels. Not the Portuguese embassy in Tel Aviv, by the way. Their website has a helpful list of telephone numbers, all of which lead to a recorded message informing you that the embassy staff will only interact with Israeli citizens in face-to-face meetings. On the website, it is possible to book such an appointment, but I wasn’t able to, because I haven’t yet bought a diary for 2022 – the earliest available date.

I decided to try TAP, reasoning that they would know whether they are currently flying Israelis to Lisbon, and, if so, they would have surely noticed whether the Lisbon arrivals lounge was becoming clogged with Israelis all wandering around like Tom Hanks in The Terminal. So, I phoned their Help Desk on a Thursday – twice, actually: once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Or, more exactly, from 9 till 11:30 in the morning and then from 2:00 till 4:00 in the afternoon. Apart from devising a striking four-part harmony for the TAP call-waiting jingle, it was an unproductive day.

By the following Monday, I had recovered sufficiently to try again, and I actually got through to a living, breathing, English-speaking person. I kept my question nice and simple: ‘Can Israelis enter Portugal by air at the moment?’ I should have been alerted by the fact that the help-desk rep did not know the answer; instead, I was charmed by the fact that she said she would immediately find out, and asked me to hold. ‘Don’t hang up,’ she urged me. I assured her that that was the last thing I would do, having got this far.

After holding for around five minutes, I was surprised to hear a different voice beg me not to hang up. This voice then proceeded to ask me to participate in a brief survey about my satisfaction with the service I had received today. At this point, I realised I was listening to a recorded message.

Question 1 invited me to choose between tapping ‘1’ to indicate that I was satisfied with the service I had received, and ‘2’ to indicate that I was not. I decided not to answer, for two reasons. First, by tapping either number, I would have implied that I agreed that I had received service, whereas I felt that what I had received was a start, but it wasn’t really substantial enough yet to constitute service. My second piece of reasoning was that, if I kept the voice waiting for long enough, my rep might return to rescue me with an answer.

After telling me that my answer was inappropriate, the voice gave me just one more chance, then, without seeming to be at all perturbed by my lack of co-operation, it went on to Question 2: ‘Has the service you have received today resolved your problem?’ Again, both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ made me complicit in the charade that I had received service. So, again I abstained, and the system hung up on me in disgust.

Undeterred (shades of Robert the Bruce’s spider), I dialled again. This time, I was connected within three minutes. Another helpful rep asked me to hold while she found out the answer to my question. This time I immediately responded by asking her to write down my number, so that, if the system again hung up on me, she could call me back. She took my number and promised to do her best, but explained that the system feeds her another call as soon as her current call is terminated. I should have responded: ‘Well, then, I hope that a fire doesn’t break out in your office, because you will never be able to call the fire brigade.’ However, this was, sadly, l’esprit de l’escalier, and did not occur to me until I was retelling the story later for Bernice’s benefit.

This time, the rep returned before the surveyor could step in, and told me that Israelis were not allowed to fly to Portugal. At this point, it occurred to me to ask whether the rep was based in Lisbon, which she said she was. I found this reassuring: cocooned in an office block in downtown Lisbon, she obviously knew nothing about, and knew nobody who knew anything about, what was actually happening at the airport. I really needed to speak to someone from TAP in Tel Aviv, but, of course, there is no way to reach them.

So, another two days had passed, and we still had no clear proof that we were going to be able to get into Portugal. At this point, I whatsapped a friend who had been due to fly to the Azores from Israel. She was able to assure me that she and the entire group of Israelis she was travelling with had had no problem at the airport.

Sadly, when I checked the Portuguese government website again, I discovered that, indeed, the Azores had a much more lenient admissions policy that mainland Portugal.

At this point, I realised something interesting. As I seem to be mentioning with increasing frequency, while I am, by nature, somewhat Eeyorean, Bernice is considerably more Pigletish. This ought to have meant that she was optimistic about our chances, and I was not. However, in fact, she was really disturbed by the situation, and had great difficulty sleeping for a couple of nights. I, on the other hand, viewed the situation with more equanimity, as just another example of how things can turn out badly. Exactly as expected!

Throughout this period, Micha’el was assuring us that there were a number of Israelis in their area who had arrived in September by air from Israel without incident, and we, of course, found this heartening. It even calmed Piglet down.

At this point, I decided to contact my old friend Tal at the consular section of the Israeli embassy in Lisbon (see the post of two weeks ago) and ask whether she had heard back from the Portuguese authorities regarding our application to be considered as an exceptional case on the grounds of family reunification. At the same time, I asked whether she knew what the situation was for Israelis entering Portugal.

In her reply, which she sent within three hours, Tal told me that the situation was unchanged, and Israelis were only being allowed in for essential reasons. She also sent me the embassy’s own statement from their website explaining the situation.

This news caused Piglet to have a relapse, despite my brilliant deductive reasoning, which ran as follows. If Israelis were being turned back at Lisbon airport, at least some of them would have contacted the consular section of the embassy. If that had happened, Tal would not have quoted from the website, but would have told me that Israelis were actually being turned back. Therefore, since she had told me no such thing, it had to be true that Israelis were entering Portugal without incident. Elementary, my dear Piglet.

What finally calmed Bernice down again were screenshots from Micha’el and Esther. Micha’el sent us a facebook page answering a question from an Israeli in our position. The answer read that there were lots of Israelis at the airport with only an Israeli passport and no problems. Micha’el then followed that up with an excerpt from the TAP Covid guidelines stating that citizens of countries with whom the EU has reciprocal vaccination certificate recognition can enter mainland Portugal. Israel, we know, is such a country

Esther, meanwhile, forwarded us a link to a site that provides worldwide travel updates, and that also stated unequivocally that Israelis can enter Portugal. It is wonderful to have two children who are both finely attuned to the hysteria in our voices and who are so prepared to humour their angst-ridden parents.

So, while it is true to say that neither of us will actually breathe freely again until we can watch Lisbon airport receding in the rear-view mirror of our rental car, we are both feeling a lot calmer. Indeed, Bernice now feels relaxed enough to devote considerable attention to worrying herself sick over the fact that our luggage is going to be way overweight, which, of course, it is not. This, at least, feels like a traditional pattern of our last 49 years together.

[A couple of quick updates on Sunday afternoon.

Now that we have packed, even Bernice is convinced that we are comfortably underweight (at least our cases are).

We also both received negative test results today, so that’s one more obstacle removed.

Finally, at 6AM today, I saw sense, suddenly realising that driving from the airport immediately on landing makes no sense, both because of the strain and stress it places on the driver and, even more so, the passenger, and also because Micha’el will have to wait up for us, even though we have a key, because their puppy, though lovely and sweet-natured, is nevertheless a guard-dog, and has never met us. She possibly wouldn’t take a chunk out of my leg, but she would probably wake the entire street at 2AM with her barking.

So, by 6:10AM I had booked us a room in a modest airport hotel. We can now drive, in daylight, after a good night’s sleep, and probably arrive at the house only an hour or two after we would have woken up had we arrived there in the middle of the night. I can’t tell you how relieved Piglet is that good sense has prevailed.]

Have there been moments in the last stressful weeks when we have wondered whether the game is worth the candle? See below, and then you tell me!

I am writing this on Sunday morning. Since Tuesday is chag again, the plan is to publish this post on Monday (again). This will be the third week running that I have published on a Monday. There is a strong Jewish tradition that, if something is repeated three times (or, more accurately, for the pedants among you – and I promise you I know who you are – if something is done once and then repeated twice), then it acquires the status of a custom and should be observed in perpetuity.

I am very tempted to follow the tradition in this case, for a couple of reasons. First, provided that nothing untoward happens between now and then, next Tuesday morning at 9AM (standard posting time) will find me in Portugal, where it will be Tuesday morning at 7AM. I expect to be in one of two conditions at that time.

I might be sleeping off the effects of my (estimated) 22-hour Monday that will, I hope, start with a 45-minute walk in Maale Adumim at 6AM and end with a three-and-a-quarter hour drive from Lisbon airport, arriving in Penamacor around 1:45AM local time on Tuesday. Or I just might be downstairs playing with, or more likely reading to, Tao. Either way, a post will not be the first thing on my mind. It is therefore almost certainly safer to post on Monday morning, before all the big events of the day, and the coming month, begin.

An additional reason for publishing on Mondays is that every week, just before I post, I check how many people read my previous blog. Until now, I have done this by adding the number of visitors each day in the previous Tuesday–Monday period. However, since the software I use to write and publish my blog starts its week on Monday, if I switch to publishing on Monday I will be able to switch to view the visitor stats in a weekly display rather than a daily display, and avoid the need to do all those sums. Or, if I feel that I ought to keep doing the mental arithmetic to stave off Alzheimer’s, I will at least be able to check the accuracy of my calculations.

All of which is merely a preamble to the official announcement that:

Henceforward (if we don’t dig these words out every now and again from the dusty recesses of our thesauruses, they will go rusty on us), Penamacorrespondent publication day will be Monday, and not, as heretofore, Tuesday.

By the way, the morning synagogue service on Monday (which is Hoshana Raba) is particularly long. By dint of having led prayers three times on Hoshana Raba – see my opening paragraph above – I appear to have become the traditional leader of prayer on Hoshana Raba in my shul. Since I am not noted as one of the speedier leaders of prayer, we will be finishing fairly late on Monday morning, and so I doubt that I will publish on the dot of 9AM. I’m aiming for 10AM.

Unsurprisingly, at a time of year in the Hebrew calendar that is packed full of traditions, my thoughts have been turning, over the last few weeks, to the power of tradition. I have just reread what I wrote on this subject two weeks ago, and, if you will indulge me, I wanted, this week, to reflect further on the power of tradition.

In my previous reflection on this subject, I spoke about the mechanical act of executing a mitzvah, and the conscious intent in fulfilling it. On the surface, tradition seems to be much more about the first than the second. This seems particularly true if, over the generations, understanding and explanation fade, and only the rote tradition remains. It is easy to find both common and exceptional examples of this, sometimes within the very same mitzvah.

Take, for example, the practice of lighting candles on Friday night. Today, throughout the world, millions of Jewish families do not observe the bulk of the commandments, nor even most of the commandments relating to Shabbat. Nevertheless, in many of these same families, the mother will light candles every Friday evening. After their meal, family members may then watch television, or go out to the club with friends. They may not even eat a meal together first. But the mother will still light candles.

There are even, as I mentioned in a previous post, some families in Portugal in which the mother, completely unaware of her Jewish heritage, has maintained the tradition of lighting candles in the basement every Friday night, a tradition handed down from mother to daughter from the time in the late 15^th Century when those Portuguese Jews who were not prepared to leave either their home or their religion became anusim – clandestine Jews.

I find myself unwilling to accept that even this kind of candle-lighting is merely mechanical, a rote action devoid of any deeper meaning. It seems to me that traditions absorb something of the conscious intentionality of the originators of the tradition. Tradition takes on a resonance of its own, reflecting the originally fully understood significance of the tradition. This resonance remains, even after the significance is forgotten.

Traditions, I feel, exist, in Jewish religious life, both to reinforce the understander’s conviction and to act as a substitute for understanding in the ignorant. Whenever a Jewish man recites a prayer, even if he is only parroting it without any understanding, or a Jewish woman chooses to hear the shofar, even if she knows nothing of its symbolic significance, the performance of the tradition allows the performer to feel deep within herself the echo of that resonance.

At first sight, tradition looks very much like blind execution, but its resonance, I believe, can sometimes add something that sounds, looks and feels more like fulfilment. Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, in his theologian’s analysis of execution and fulfilment, made a very clear distinction between the two. However, in the heart of the follower of the tradition, this distinction may be less clear.

Traditions, then, may be the strongest remaining point of contact a particular Jew has with his religious heritage. They may also be one of the aids an observant Jew uses to move from ‘mere’ execution to more meaningful fulfilment. Either way, if you are looking  for a way to explain to an interested non-Jew the relationship between Jews and their religion, buying them a ticket to Fiddler on the Roof remains a pretty painless, but not inaccurate, introduction.

Meanwhile, under the guidance of Tao, Bernice and I seem to be creating our very own traditions. Our weekly WhatsApp video calls have now reached the point where Tao shoos Micha’el away, and we and he enjoy up to an hour of story-time and action songs. We are normally sitting in the salon, but last week, since it was sukkot and since the weather was cooler when we called, we were in our sukkah. As soon as Tao saw us, his face dropped. ‘Outside?’ he declared. ‘Salon! Books!’

We were eventually able to reassure him that reading need not be exclusively an indoor activity, and, as this screenshot from the story-time shows, he was soon, as always, completely absorbed in, and delighted by, what we were reading.

The experience demonstrated that, even at this young age, he clearly has a healthy respect for tradition. I couldn’t be more thrilled, speaking as someone who revels in a variety of British traditions, even those I have never actually particpated in. I bring you, as a parting shot (across the bows, in all probability) that extraordinary celebration of perhaps the most jingoistic extolling of all that we used to know was great and good (but now that we have been ‘woked’ up we are required to realise was despicable and bad) about the British Empire.

Ladies and gentleman, you are invited to wallow in (or, alternatively, stagger in shocked amazement at) the 2009 version of the closing concert of the BBC Promenade Concerts (The Last Night of the Proms): more specifically, Land of Hope and Glory, containing the immortal sentiment: ‘God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet’. If you’ve got it, flaunt it (or, in England’s case, flaunt it even when you no longer have it). If you are a snowflake, consider yourself to have been trigger-warned.

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.