A week ago, I stated, in response to a comment from a friend who was having difficulty making the words of the sedra names match the tune of America, that I had actually made a recording, but that my voice was so ropey that I wasn’t prepared to share it. (I think I have air conditioning throat.)
Now here we are, a week later, knee-deep in medical appointments (just routine check-ups; all is well), magazine editing, and preparing for when we kidnap Raphael and bring him back here on Tuesday for some nana and grandpa time. All of which means that, even though I had a topic in mind for this week, I’m going to take the embarrassing but easy way out and share with you my croaky voice.
Suffice it say that Tom Lehrer remains unchallenged. I’m not giving up the day job just yet.
Normal service will, I hope, be resumed next week, but meanwhile, you can suffer the rendition here. If you feel cheated this week, just drop me a line and I’ll send you a complete refund of your subscription fee.
My big brother is getting more assertive as he gets older. Last week he set me two tasks. Normally, I don’t take kindly to being told what to do, but the first was so enticing, and his logic for suggesting the second was so persuasive, that I find myself compelled to act like a submissive younger sibling.
First, he came up with a cool idea (he didn’t actually use the word ‘cool’. He spent over 40 years as an actuary in the world of insurance, so ‘cool’ isn’t in his vocabulary.) Inspired by my rekindling of memories of Tom Lehrer last week, he suggested that, for Simchat Torah, it would be fun to set to music the names of the 54 weekly Torah portions.
So, on Sunday, instead of working on the shul magazine, I spent the day doing just that. It was an interesting challenge. First, I grouped the names of the portions into their rhyming families. I used what I hope is the standard Israeli Ashkenzi pronunciation; the last group in the following list contains all the unique final sounds that have no rhyming partner.
Having done this spadework, two things were obvious. First, this was unlikely to be as daunting a task as I had first feared, because there were six groups with at least four rhyming names, which would allow for four-line verses with an AAAA rhyming scheme, and, with luck, an internal rhyme as well.
Second, thirty of the names were three-syllable words, only four were four-syllable words, fifteen were two-syllable words and one was a monosyllable. Only two of the others were six syllables long. All of this suggested that it would not be complicated to fit the names into the pattern of a song with a triple rhythm. My first thought was the theme from The Lone Ranger, or the William Tell overture by Rossini, to give it its highbrow name. I eventually rejected that because of the complicated and long finale. Then it struck me: there was a perfect triplet patter song that could tolerate the throwing in of an extra syllable here and there, pacy and racy.
If you start by singing the first two lines below to the end of the intro to America from West Side Story, starting at the line “I like the isle of Manhattan”, and then sing the four lines of the main tune (starting “I like to be in America”, followed by the first variation “I think I go back to San Juan”, followed by the main tune twice, you will find that the following arrangement works.
I have taken the same liberty Lehrer allowed himself, by throwing in a ‘ve’ or an ‘u’ (and) at the beginning of the occasional name, to aid the scansion (cf ‘and anthramum and osmium’):
בלק, ויחי, אחרי מות, שלח, משפטים, ראה, וזאת הברכה, שמיני, ובא, בהעלותך, כי תבוא.
There. That’s a little gift to you, my loyal readership. There’s plenty of time for you to memorise that and polish your performance before you amaze your friends in shul on Simchat Torah.
Unfortunately, the second task does not, in prospect, seem quite so much fun. However, Martin pointed out that I have, from time to time, ventured into the realm of geopolitics, and since, last week, Maale Adumim became the centre of the Middle East conflict for a day, he felt that I really couldn’t not write about the Israeli government approval for the planned development of the area that has been known for years as E1, that is now renamed T1 (in recognition of Trump’s support for Israel), and that will, in the future, be known, apparently, as Mevasseret Adumim, which we can translate as the Herald or Harbinger of Adumim. (Mevasseret Yerushalayim is a town on the main road to Jerusalem, the first point on the road from which you can see Jerusalem as you approach on the road.)
The development of T1 will add 3,400 housing units to the city of Maale Adumim. A new suburb within Maale Adumim is expected to add an additional over 3,500 units. Together, these two suburbs should see the city’s population grow from about 40,000 to around 75,000. Provided that this development is achieved with commensurate infrastructure development, this should be good news for the city. It certainly will bring to an end a long period when young citizens could not find affordable homes within the city.
However, none of this is the reason why the world is focused on E1. On a scale that is out of all proportion to its size, the area represents a huge battleground over territorial contiguity. The development of E1 will effectively turn Maale Adumim into what will be potentially a suburb of Jerusalem.
Incidentally, this will probably lead to a significant increase in our arnona (property tax), because the per capita sum raised by Jerusalem municipality from among its citizens is significantly less than the corresponding figure in Maale Adumim, a city with a prop-ortionately large working-age and working population. At the same time, we may find that the market value, and the saleability, of our house both increase.
Of course, contiguity of Israeli housing will result in discontiguity of Palestinian housing. For the last decades, Palestinians have maintained illegal facts on the ground, in the form of housing, to ensure that the southern part of a putative Palestinian state (including Bethlehem) is not cut off from the northern part (including Ramallah) It’s worth bearing in mind that, despite the dramatic sound of the phrase’cut off’, we are talking about a very small parcel of land.
In the map below, the Jerusalem municipality is in beige, Israeli population centres are shown in blue, Palestinian population centres are shown in brown and E1 is shown in red. The map clearly shows that, if pigs were to be seen flying tomorrow, and an agreement were reached over a Palestinian state, it would be very easy to build a tunnel under E1 providing contiguity to the two parts of Palestine. It would scarcely need to be longer than the new tunnel underpassing French Hill, which has shortened our journey to Jerusalem and beyond by at least ten minutes.
So, what is the real significance of this announcement? Here, for what it’s worth, is my take. First and foremost, this is not a maverick act by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Even though he was the government representative at the official ceremony announcing the approval of the development project, and even though he is undoubtedly personally delighted by the decision, and more than ready to take credit for pushing it through, let no one be in doubt. It is Netanyahu who has blocked the development for a couple of decades, and it is Netanyahu who has now decided that it will go through.
I believe that this change in tactics is part of Netanyahu’s concerted attempt to increase pressure on Hamas. If Hamas intransigence results in loss of Palestinian land, that represents a far greater humiliation for Hamas than the mass losses among its forces, the hardship suffered by the Gaza population (obviously) and even the elimination of multiple layers of Hamas leadership. Martyrdom is a badge of honour for Hamas: not only, I suspect, for the foot soldiers, but also for the senior leadership. They genuinely see their cause as greater than themselves and they regard it as a religious duty to be prepared and proud to die for the cause. They will embrace death.
Loss of Palestinian land, on the other hand, hits Hamas where it hurts, at the very heart of their cause. In addition, if Palestinians in the West Bank join the dots between the failure of negotiations in Gaza and the development of E1, this is potentially very bad news for Hamas.
That represents about the extent (to be honest, considerably more than the extent) of my willingness to comment on the situation. At the end of the day, I’m much more comfortable playing at making patterns with words.
I wrote last week that my reflections on the death of Tom Lehrer would “have to wait for another time”. I feel as though I want to make this week that time, not because my mind is now cleared of all that was occupying it last week; it isn’t. Nor because things on the national and international front look much rosier this week; they don’t. If anything, things are even worse. However, there’s only so much doom and gloom I can wallow in, and I really feel as though I want to escape to somewhere more….innocent? Not the first word that springs to mind when considering Lehrer. Somewhere more civilised, certainly; more urbane; less intense. More ironic.
I’m not quite sure how to approach the subject of Tom Lehrer. I doubt if there are more than a handful of my readers who are not familiar with Tom Lehrer and his modest (in size), but wide-ranging (in subject-matter) oeuvre. If the name means little to you, then perhaps the best thing you can do is go to YouTube, search for him and spend an hour or four, letting him, in his own words: “… take you now on wings of song as it were and try and help you forget, perhaps, for a while, your drab, wretched lives.”
Which leads me neatly into two initial observations. First, four hours is all you will need, more or less, to listen to Lehrer’s entire musical oeuvre, even including all of the pirated videos from live appearances. A few of Lehrer’s songs were not initially issued on record – either because of issues of good taste (of which more later) or arcaneness. At a shockingly young age, Lehrer grew tired of performing, and stopped writing songs. As he later remarked: “Satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Secondly, once you start listening to Lehrer, you find that almost everything he wrote in his songs and his equally polished introductions to them is eminently quotable and, after a few repetitions, unforgettable. The comments below his obituary in The Times were full of people doing little more than sharing their favourite quotes from the songs.
Okay. Assuming the few of you who needed to do a pre-term make-up class in Lehreriana have done so, and are now back with us, I can now attempt to explain why I am convinced that his contribution to the comic song repertoire was unique and magnificent.
Let’s get the least memorable, but still essential, element of the Lehrer cocktail out of the way first. Tom, as I cannot imagine anyone referring to him (Tom is for ordinary folk like Hanks, not elite near-geniuses who skip a year of high-school for three consecutive years and win a place at Harvard at age 15, on the strength – if we believe the internet – of an application letter in the form of a poem) was born into a nominally American Jewish home, in which the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were often on the gramophone. Here, one assumes, Lehrer developed his ear for a good tune and his recognition that in comic song the music has as key a role as the words.
Fortunately, Lehrer was also a sufficiently accomplished pianist to be able to execute what he had written, and to do so with such effortlessness that his whole attention appeared to be focussed on his verbal interaction with the audience. Which brings me to another point. Lehrer began his career performing his songs for fellow-students at parties, and he exudes the same relaxed and comfortable aura of being among friends even when he is performing for an audience in a large theatre (and even when the audience are not native English speakers and miss some of the cultural references). In one of his in-house performances at Harvard, he reprised a song by Noel Coward, and he shares with Coward an apparent social ease.
Enough, I think, of skipping round the edge of the lake, admiring the grassy verges and the ornamental bridge. The time has come to plunge in, and talk about the lyrics. The first point to be made is perhaps the breadth of the range of subject-matter. While Lehrer wrote for a season of That Was the Week that Was and dealt, there, with social, political and geopolitical satire, he felt free to range very much further afield. Indeed, since he had no sense of propriety (a word he rhymed with ‘impiety’ and ‘variety’ in one of his memorable triplets), the world was his oyster. Few writers of comic songs cover such topics as necromancy, drug peddling, sado-masochism and what we used to call venereal disease but is now apparently known as STD (which, when I was a boy, was a feature of the telephone system and stood for subscriber trunk dialling).
Consider these lines from I Got it from Agnes (the STD song):
Max got it from Edith Who gets it every spring She got it from her Daddy Who just gives her everything
She then gave it to Daniel Whose spaniel has it now
In many ways, this is an uncharacteristic lyric from Lehrer, in that it is not self-consciously clever. However, when he wants to, Lehrer can be cleverer than anybody else in the room. Consider this quick-fire rhyming pattern from a Gilbert and Sullivan parody recounting the story of the last verse of the story of Oh, my darling Clementine!
Though I missed her, I kissed her Young sister named Esther This mister to pester she tried. Now her pestering sister’s a festering blister You’d best to resist her, say I!
Two rhyme sounds there: one used in six different words (plus one repetition), and the other in four different words (plus one repetition), all in the space of thirty one words. If you think that sounds easy, please try it at home.
But of course he made it sound easy. He made it all sound easy. I knew that Daniel Radcliffe (possibly better known to you as Harry Potter) was a bear of little brain when he woked all over JK Rowling, the woman who gave him fame and fortune, on the occasion of her pointing out that ‘woman’ is a word with a biological meaning. However, you can also get a measure of Radcliffe’s maturity from the fact that, like many of us, he has learnt the lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s Elements song, but, unlike the rest of us, he considers it suitable for trundling out not only at parties but also on prime-time television. Having admired Lehrer’s faultless, unruffled and clearly enunciated performance (while playing the piano), contrast it with Radcliffe’s fumbling, mumbling, bumbling, gauche ineptitude here. One wonders what party pieces he rejected because they weren’t quite polished enough!
Of course, The Elements is an atypical Lehrer song, for several reasons. He composed neither the music nor the words. All of our delight is in the delightful and delighted execution, and the effortless way he has rearranged the elements into an order that may have no chemical elegance, but has a literary elegance.
It is also atypical in that it is not, to some degree of gentleness or sharpness, poking fun at attitudes, institutions or personalities. All were grist to Lehrer’s mill. To illustrate this, I am going to offer links in this section rather than quoting lyrics, because Lehrer’s relish in his skewering of targets is so tangible.
If the tunes were Lehrer’s piano, then the words were his forte.
The inevitability of the nuclear apocalypse might not seem an obvious topic for a comic song, but if you ensure the rhymes are tortuously brilliant, you can pull it off.
If you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o’ l- ater those you love will do the same for you And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- tives to think of all the weeping they will do
Pe4haps the best marriage of form and content in his body of work is in the setting of a song that purports to give an example of what the Catholic church should have been aiming for in its (then) desire to modernise the liturgy is Vatican Rag. The ragtime tune rings absolutely authentic, and Lehrer sets himself increasingly stiff rhyming hurdles, all of which he effortlessly sails over.
We come next to Lehrer’s other career, as a mathematics professor. Although he eventually abandoned his PhD studies, he was no slouch, and he wrote several amusing songs about mathematics. They were mostly written for consumption within the Harvard math department, but he eventually found one topic that non-mathematicians could relate to, since a whole nation of parents were being exposed to and befuddled by it in their children’s homework: new math. Now, obviously, you cannot write a comic song about new math that actually demonstrates and explains the underlying mathematical concepts of new math and is at the same time hilarious. Except that Lehrer did, of course. (I think I recommend listening to this without watching the annoying animation whose primary effect is to ruin the timing of Lehrer’s delivery.)
And now here we are exactly where I knew we would be: very nearly 1500 words in and there are at least another 15 songs that I absolutely have to talk about. You know what? Go back to YouTube and listen to the master himself: Poisoning Pigeons (with its rhymes for both ‘strychnine’ and ‘cyanide’, Alma (every word of which has historical authenticity), My Home Town, Wernher von Braun, Smut (the perfect mismatch of tune and lyric, and the best collection of rhymes on the first syllable of a word that breaks across a line). Anything, really. There are no duds here.
Lehrer’s greatest line? I’ll offer two contenders, one from an introduction to a song, the other from a lyric to a mock Harvard anthem.
I’ll just leave you with Lehrer’s purported admission poem to Harvard, written, remember, at the age of 15. This sounds like an urban myth, but it appears that it was definitely written by Lehrer, even if he did not use it ashis application letter, but simply an amuse-bouche for his fellow high-school students. Either way, it is the earliest record of his precocious and formidable talent. It is interesting to note, by the way, that long before Lehrer rhymed ‘Harvard’ with ‘discovered’, he rhymed it with ‘larva’ed’, which is less humorous but almost as impressive.
Dissertation on Education Education is a splendid institution, A most important social contribution, Which has brought about my mental destitution By its own peculiar type of persecution. For I try to absorb In the midst of an orb Of frantic instructors’ injunctions The name of the Fates And the forty-eight states And the trigonometrical functions, The figures of speech (With the uses of each) And the chemical symbol for lead, The depth of the ocean, Molecular motion, The names of the bones in the head, The plot of Macbeth And Romeo’s death And the history of the Greek drama, Construction of graphs And the musical staffs And the routes of Cortez and da Gama, The name of the Pope, The inventor of soap, And the oldest American college– The use of conceits, The poems of Keats, And other poetical knowledge. I’m beginning to feel I don’t care a great deal For the reign of the Emperor Nero, The poems of Burns, What the President earns, And the value of absolute zero, The length of a meter, The size of a liter, The cause of inflation and failure, The veins and the nerves, Geometrical curves, And the distance from here to Australia, Reproduction of germs, Biological terms, And when a pronoun is disjunctive, The making of cheese, The cause of disease, And the use of the present subjunctive. I wish that there weren’t Electrical current, Such places as Rome and Cathay, And such people as Watt And Sir Walter Scott And Edna St. Vincent Millay. I don’t like very much To learn customs and such Of people like Tibetan lamas, And I’d like to put curbs On irregular verbs And the various uses for commas, International pacts All historical facts, Like the dates of Columbus and Croesus, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, And Ticonderoga, The War of the Peloponnesus. But although I detest Learning poems and the rest Of the things one must know to have “culture,” While each of my teachers Makes speeches like preachers And preys on my faults like a vulture, I will leave movie thrillers And watch caterpillars Get born and pupated and larva’ed, And I’ll work like a slave And always behave And maybe I’ll get into Harvard…
As I was going down the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish that man would go away!
In another week, in another universe, I hope that I will be in a mental place where I can share with you the origin story of the surreal poem from which that is a stanza. This week, however, my mind is elsewhere.
One of the places my mind is, or was until a few days ago, is the death of Tom Lehrer. My reflections on that will also have to wait for another time, other than to say that, towards the end of last week, I found myself wishing passionately that Lehrer were sixty years younger, and alive, so that he could capture, in his inimitable fashion, the full irony of the surreal geopolitical reality we are living through.
Last week, as you will doubtless be aware, France announced that it plans to recognise the state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly this autumn. Then Britain made a similar announcement, making its declaration contingent on Israel failing to carry out a number of measures before then. Then Canada and Malta followed suit.
I have a little skin in the UK game, and I wouldn’t have expected anything else from Macron, Malta has no muscle at all, and Canada…is Canada. So my attention is directed at Sir Keir Starmer. A cynic would argue that the timing of his announcement reflects his desperation as he struggles to fend off challenges from within and beyond the Labour Party he leads. I would like to believe that his announcement is driven purely by political expediency and cynicism. The idea that he might actually believe that such recognition of a Palestinian state is a good thing for the world, for Britain, or even for the Palestinians, is too worrying to contemplate.
Anyway, Tom Lehrer I am not, but a verse came into my head as I attempted to digest this news.
As he was going down, Sir Keir Recognised a state that wasn’t there. IT WASN’T THERE! He knew full well. I wish Sir Keir would go to hell.
A couple of other observations. First, let’s look at Starmer’s statement that this recognition will take place unless the Israeli government “take[s] substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza” (no clear statement about what precise situation Starmer is referring to, because that might involve considering at whose feet the responsibility for the “appalling situation” can be laid), “agree[s] to a ceasefire and commit[s] to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution. And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid” (which hasn’t stopped) “and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank”.
Here he virtually makes explicit the fact that he is motivated not by any sense that recognising the state of Palestine is the morally correct thing to do at this point in time. He presents it as merely a tactic to persuade Israel to act according to his will. Either he believes Britain has a moral duty to recognise the state of Palestine, in which case he should recognise it, unconditionally, or he does not believe that, and has no justification for recognising the state. To use recognition of Palestine purely as a stick to beat Israel with is indefensible.
At the same time, he has demanded that Hamas “must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza”. However, he has not made his government’s recognition of the state of Palestine contingent on Hamas meeting those demands. Only the goose gets the sauce, not the gander.
So, with your permission, let us step back for a moment from Starmer’s delusional universe into the real world. Imagine, for a moment, that you are one of the Hamas executive enjoying the hospitality, protection and financial support of that upstanding nation, Qatar. Sitting in your seven-star hotel room, you read Starmer’s demands. “So”, you reflect, “unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire, Britain will recognise Palestine, regardless of how we act. Well, then, all we need to do to guarantee that outcome is withdraw from the ceasefire talks.”
My second observation is this. What, in the name of all that is logical, does “recognising the state of Palestine” mean? A purely hypothetical entity with no borders, no system of government or administration, no diplomatic service, is not a state, and cannot be recognised as a state. (“I met a man who wasn’t there.”) That’s not just my opinion, by the way. Under international law, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 gives the following minimum requirements for a recognised state: a defined territory, a permanent population, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. (One out of four apparently doesn’t qualify you.)
The good news is that 40 peers from the House of Lords have written to the UK Attorney General pointing this out, and concluding that, therefore, for Britain to recognise Palestine “would be contrary to the principles governing recognition of states, according to international law”. The bad news is that it is far from certain that the Attorney General will so advise the government, and even further from certain that the government will take his advice.
A tiny part of me, of which I am not excessively proud, would like to see France, UK, Canada, Malta, and everyone else, “recognise” “Palestine”, and then for Israel to “recognise” “Palestine”. When, a couple of hours, or days, or weeks later, a terrorist attack (correction, an enemy invasion) takes place in Israel, or a rocket is launched from Gaza (correction, Palestine commits an act of aggression against Israel), as it inevitably will, Israel can declare this an act of war from a foreign state and conduct a war against that foreign state, thereby sidestepping all of the arguments about supplying humanitarian aid to the enemy and about innocent civilians. Even this very small part of me is, I wearily acknowledge, too big for some of my readers to stomach, and I apologise to them.
There was a brief period when I thought the above was going to be the story of the week. However, another story has loomed into view that towers over it, especially in the week that marks our annual commemoration of the disasters visited upon the Jewish people throughout history. The last couple of days have marked a new low in the moral depravity of the once-civilised world.
Hamas, taking their lead from the Nazi death camps, are systematically starving at least some of the “hostages” (surely we can find a word that better captures their desperate situation). This should, perhaps, surprise nobody. However, Hamas has judged that its cause will be best served by publicly flaunting this starvation. It has published videos in which the victims of that gradual starvation speak about their plight (one of them, Evyatar David, speaks while, barely able to stand, he is digging what he has been told will be his own grave). The benefit to Hamas of releasing these videos should be clear: their effect on the morale of the man in the street in Israel. The last couple of days have seen entirely understandable calls, from hostage family members and many others, for Israel to recognise that it cannot win the war, to lay down its arms, to bring the hostages home through an agreement, and then and only then, if it wishes, to resume the war, unfettered by responsibility for the hostages.
What is chilling about the release of the videos is not the cynical way Hamas seeks to manipulate Israeli public opinion, but its judgement that, at this stage, the decades-in-the-making worldwide propaganda campaign that the jihadi regimes have financed and orchestrated has been so successful that releasing video of its inhuman, obscene, calculated, cold-blooded murder of Israelis by slow starvation, and its (I assume deliberate) inclusion in the video of a muscular, well-toned Hamas bicep handing the emaciated Evyatar a tin, will not lose Hamas any significant amount of sympathy around the world.
At the time of writing, this calculation by Hamas seems chillingly, horrifyingly, accurate. If that does not keep you awake at night, if that did not inform your reading of every kina (every liturgical poem of lament) in shul yesterday, if that does not make you contact the Jewish Agency representatives in your home country to inquire about Aliyah, then I don’t know what will. Our safe Jewish future here is not yet certain, but our unsafe Jewish future anywhere else is increasingly certain.
May we all hear better news this week, and may I feel able to write about happier topics this time next week.
The Great Depression was, ultimately, a good thing for Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish furniture maker. In reaction to his business struggling in 1930, he started building miniature scale models of his various designs, to show to potential customers. This inspired him to branch out into toys, and, in 1934, he gave his company a new name based on the Danish for “play well”. In 1947, injection moulding as an industrial process was introduced to Denmark, and Christiansen, ever enterprising, bought an injection moulding machine for his company. In the same year, he obtained samples of plastic, interlocking Kiddicraft bricks. In 1958, he patented a toy brick with cylindrical protrusions on the top face, and hollow tubes on the undersides, and Lego, as we know it, was born.
Fast forward to 2025 and Lego seems to have weathered several storms. Despite its patents having expired all over the world, and competition from many copycat manufacturers, Lego is still a prestige brand, and, astonishingly, manufactures more tyres every year than any other company in the world. The question of copies is ironic, since Lego arguably copied the interlocking concept from Kiddicraft.
All of which is an introduction to the fact that one of this Portugal trip’s greatest hits was a non-Lego rip-off pirate ship kit that Bernice spotted in Maxstock. Tao is a great Lego fan, and we have been fairly impressed with the quality of the significantly cheaper copies we have bought him a few of in the last year or so. The pirate ship was a particular hit, not only because it feeds into one of his favourite imagination games, but also because the ship comes equipped with an anchor that can be wound up (not, sadly, by turning a capstan in a horizontal plane, but rather by turning a cog-wheel in a vertical plane, but you can’t have everything). It also features a ship’s wheel that actually turns, a rudder that moves from side to side, a trapdoor that reveals a treasure chest with jewels, and, the cherry on the top, a cannon that actually fires a Lego cannonball an impressive distance. This guarantees hours of fun as you fish under the cupboard with a broom handle, in an attempt to locate the fired cannonball.
It was probably a mistake to follow up the pirate ship (which was our last Shabbat’s present to Tao) with a film night on our very last night in Portugal (Sunday night) that featured Disney’s 1952 animated Peter Pan. While Tslil was a little concerned by the darkness of a few moments, and I was appalled by the shameless sexism of the portrayal of Tinkerbell, the mermaids, and even Wendy, Ollie enjoyed his first entire film, particularly the ticking crocodile, and Tao was captivated by Peter’s antics, delighted laughed hysterically at Smee’s bumbling ineptitude, and completely captivated by Captain Hook’s suavity and sinister aura.
What this meant on Monday morning was that Tao insisted on wearing his magician’s cape – inside out, so that the scarlet lining was on the outside; he also insisted on a long-sleeved t-shirt (despite temperatures in the high 30s), because it enabled him to hide his hand and clutch a terrifying hook fashioned from a tube game. Hardly any area of the house was safe; at any given moment, the sofa, or the kitchen table, might be requisitioned as Hook’s pirate ship. Unfortunately, his pirate’s hat has, over the last months, been ravaged in numerous near-fatal encounters with opposing navies and other enemies, so we will have to be sure to bring out a sheet of black sol (a kind of centimetre-thick, rubberised foam sheet, a little more flexible and durable than card, that can be easily cut, shaped and stuck, and is used in craft projects) for making a tricorn.
In all of these games, as in so much of their lives, Ollie is both a valuable playmate and an eager sponge. By osmosis, he seems to be absorbing more and more of Tao’s knowledge of arithmetic, as well as his abilities for very rich imaginative play and construction work, with Magnetiles or Duplo. He also unerringly echoes some of Tao’s favourite phrases, with very accurate intonation. As the boys grow, one of the great pleasures during our visits is to see how well they get on together.
On Sunday afternoon, we all went down to the gym for a private unveiling. After huge efforts over the last couple of weeks, with Grandpa chipping in as floor-layer’s first mate, and Micha’el and Tslil putting in long hours, the gym is now virtually ready to open, and they hope to start taking paying customers in another week or so. It certainly looks and feels a very professional space, and, having tried out, for the briefest of sessions, the multigym and the rings, I can vouch for the enthusiasm and positive attitude of the personal trainer, as well as the challenge of bodyweight training.
This family outing was also an opportunity for a whole range of family photos. Needless to say, we have taken hardly any photos on this trip, but we certainly made up for it on Sunday, and have a number of great shots to take home.
Apart from pirates, Monday morning was spent packing, clearing away, ticking our way through our ‘leaving Portugal’ checklist, and wondering whether the industrial action at Lisbon airport would affect our flight. I am writing this from the departure lounge. So far, things have gone smoothly (although I am once again reminded of the man dropping past the 29th floor of the Empire State Building). If you are reading this on Tuesday morning, then you will know that we are safely back in Israel, in Zichron Yaakov actually, ready to resume our adventures with Raphael and catch up with Esther and Maayan. All the family within 24 hours! Bernice and I never dreamed we would have so much to look forward to in our retirement.
Philosophical question. If I tell you that a post headline is clickbait, have I effectively de-baited it. Whether I have or no, this week’s post title is unabashedly clickbait. I’m here to talk about life in rural Portugal. Gotcha!
I was reading the Penamacor municipality’s glossy twice-yearly magazine the other day (that Google Lens is pretty good at translating while standing on one leg!) and my eye was caught by an article describing a public meeting in Penamacor, presenting a report commissioned by the inter-municipality of Beira Baixa.
Since Beira Baixa is not a name I have dropped in these pages much, if at all, over the last five years, let me bore you with a brief description of Portugal’s political structure.
All of Portugal is divided into some twenty provinces (seventeen more than Gaul). Penamacor is in the fourth largest province (in terms of area): Castelo Branco (which is also the name of the province’s capital city). Each province is divided into municipalities. The village of Penamacor, with a population of about 6000, is the largest parish in, and the ‘capital’ of, the municipality of Penamacor, which is itself part of the inter-municipality, or district, of Beira Baixa, a looser association formed to formulate and carry out policy common to several municipalities (in Penamacor’s case, 8) within a single district.
Castelo Branco is Portugal’s fourth largest province in terms of area, covering almost 7% of Portugal’s total land mass. However, its population of 226,000 represents only about 2% of the country’s population. This reflects the imbalance in the distribution of Portugal’s population. The metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto together constitute only 5% of its total land area, but they contain almost 45% of the country’s population.
This uneven distribution is largely a result of the economic boom that began in the 1960s and led to mass migration from the hinterland, especially the rural North (where Penamacor is situated) to the urban centres. This was coupled with a drop in the birth rate to well below natural replacement levels,
So, back to the report commissioned by Beira Baixa. The authority commissioned the Castelo Branco Polytechnic to conduct an analysis of population change in the district. Specifically, the report focussed on the immigration situation and dynamics in Beira Baixa from 2008 to 2023.
The report revealed that recent migration has played a fundamental role in reshaping Beira Baixa’s population dynamics, reflecting growth trends that contrast with the region’s historical recession. The total population of Beira Baixa is just over 80,000, having dropped by about 10,000 in the decade before 2010. However, the number of legalized foreigners living in the inter-municipality was 1,856 in 2008. By 2023, it had grown to 6,786, a 265% increase. In Penamacor itself, over the same period, the number grew from 58 to 440, a 758% increase. Since Ollie is a Portuguese citizen, our family has contributed only 3 to this figure.
If the kids’ subjective perception is a guide, this number has increased considerably in the two years since the survey was completed. Even on our visits, when I venture no further afield than the supermarket and the dog walk to the forest, I almost always come across at least one or two new faces during every trip.
Due to this growth, the real population in the territory of Penamacor, in 2023, increased by 49 inhabitants, resulting from a positive migratory balance of 130 inhabitants, as opposed to a negative natural balance of 81 inhabitants. This growth and population inversion is happening for the first time in the last 50 years and enhances the development strategy of the municipality, reinforcing the growth of the school community in the last three years.
The report also indicates that the United Kingdom and Germany are the countries that supply the most new residents to the municipality, although other North European countries are also well represented.
During the preparation of this analysis, about 400 surveys were carried out with immigrants residing in the territory, which showed that, despite the structural challenges, Beira Baixa has been attractive to immigrants and has the potential to deepen this path of animating development at local and regional level. Researchers also carried out interviews and focus group sessions with a very large number of local interviewees, from a variety of institutional and business spheres, and the general perception of immigrants was positive in most municipalities, highlighting their contribution to the local economy and to the maintenance of essential services.
The authors also highlight that, from the community’s perspective, this immigration represents an opportunity to revitalize the economy and combat depopulation, but it requires effective inclusion strategies, with the most pressing challenges including housing, language barriers, and access to public services.
From our limited perspective, it seems to me that Tslil and Micha’el and the boys are integrating successfully in the local community, meeting all of the above challenges successfully. I suspect, looking at their circle of immigrant friends, that their integration is well above average for the immigrant community. They certainly deserve for it to be, because it is something whose importance they have long been aware of, and they have invested considerable time and effort in ensuring their successful absorption in the local community.
Which is just as well, because Micha’el’s parents have made hardly any effort. We can still barely scrape together two words of Portuguese, and our interactions with the village include a lot of Bom diases or Boa tardes (depending on the time of day), a fair number of Obrigados and Desculpas, and an inordinate amount of smiling and nodding, but precious little more than that. Almost everyone we meet knows who we are; half the time, Lua, or the boys, are our calling card. We, on the other hand, know very few locals, beyond shopkeepers and the kids’ immediate neighbours. Fortunately, being the kids’ parents wins us a fair degree of affection and regard with no effort required on our part.
As I have grown to know Bernice better over the years (indeed, let’s be honest, decades), one of her qualities that I have grown to admire more and more is the extraordinary intelligence she shows in understanding people, their emotions and their motivations. If I cast my mind back, I think it was something that I was aware of even way back when, but, with each additional year, I grow more acutely aware of it, and admire it more and more.
In fairness, there are times when I admire it more, and times when I admire it less. As it happens, last week marked one of the latter occasions. Micha’el and Tslil are very much occupied with the final stages of renovation of the premises they are renting for their gym and studio, and, when Micha’el announced that the studio walls were ready to be painted, I offered to help. Quick as a flash, Bernice observed that I was only volunteering because it would look good in the blog, a remark no less hurtful for containing just a sliver of truth in it.
Micha’el and I had a very productive couple of hours, and completed the painting of the upper half of the walls, which, because it is a very attractive mid-grey with a slight bluish tinge, being painted on top of a not dissimilar existing grey, required only one coat. I’m hoping that we will be able to repeat the double act on the lower half of the walls in the next day of two. Since this will not require me spending extended time on a stepladder, it promises to be kinder to my calves. Mind you, if you spend a couple of hours in a gym, I suppose you should expect to come away feeling achy.
Since a couple of you have asked me privately for an update on this exciting project of the kids, this seems like the perfect time. To put the story in context, you have to remember that their efforts to register the business are being conducted in Portugal…and, in provincial Portugal at that….and, to make matters even more interesting, in rural provincial Portugal.
By this time, the kids had hoped that they would already be up and running, but there are two inter-connected obstacles that are preventing that. The first is the question of obtaining a licence. They are renting two premises opposite each other on a narrow side-street very close to the centre of Penamacor, a street that, in a normal town, would be an alley leading nowhere with no passing trade, but that, remarkably, in Penamacor enjoys a fair amount of pedestrian traffic throughout the day.
One space, which they will use as a studio for private lessons, was fairly recently renovated; the other, which will be the gym for general use, and will include a small office, the owner had been using for storage.
Ready to lay the floor
In order to start trading, the kids have to register their business and obtain a commercial licence. Micha’el accordingly arranged a meeting with the municipality, at which he submitted all of the necessary documentation. Extraordinarily, all of the paperwork was in order and he had brought all of the paperwork needed. It only remained for the clerk to determine into which category of commercial business the gym falls, and to issue the appropriate licence. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody had ever sought to register an equivalent business in Penamacor, and neither the clerk, nor, after consultation, his colleagues, were able to decide exactly which licence was appropriate. Currently, the problem has been kicked up the bureaucratic chain, and the kids are waiting for a decision. However, the municipal architect has given them the go-ahead to begin operating regardless; if there are any issues down the line, they will be addressed as and when they arise.
To complicate matters, the premises do not have a valid electricity clearance. This is much less serious than it sounds. Between the time that the building was renovated, a few years ago, and today, the regulations for electricity supply have changed, and the owner needs to arrange for the electricity company to carry out the necessary, but minor, adjustments required.
All being well, this should be resolved very soon, and then Tslil and Micha’el will be able to launch their business with an easy mind. They already have a number of potential clients interested in group classes. Increasing numbers of locals are asking the kids when the gym is going to open. Micha’el has actually already started individual training sessions with one client, and is offering a free assessment session to a second. While neither of them is in the kids’ target customer group (family men and women in their thirties), they both seem keen. One is in his fifties and the other in his seventies, and Micha’el is enjoying the challenge of building an individual program that is age- and fitness-appropriate, as well as the challenge of polishing his Portuguese. After his first sessions, he realised that he needs to strengthen his body-part vocabulary, but, as I pointed out, at least when he needs a word he has the necessary body-part on hand (or foot, or torso) to demonstrate.
When Tslil and I were at the pool with the boys last Thursday, a woman she knows from Pilates and from the forest school that Tao attends came over. She is currently launching a program of free classes for local residents to be offered by the municipality, and asked Tslil if she was interested in teaching a yoga class. Since this offers a steady income and no need to find students or chase them for payment, Tslil is understandably keen.
So, things are developing: a little slower than hoped, perhaps, but reassuringly steadily. You have to learn to adjust to the rhythm of Iberian life. Meanwhile, both of the kids are continuing with their existing work – Tslil teaching yoga and Micha’el teaching English online to Israeli schoolkids.
The other major development is that Tao is now officially registered in the Portuguese home-schooling program. In practice, this means that, starting in September, he will be taught at home, following the Portuguese school curriculum, and required to sit the national school tests. He is registered with the local school, which means in practice that he is eligible to participate in extra-curricular school activities. Tslil and Micha’el plan to teach him themselves, as well as hiring a tutot for the Portuguese-based subjects (language and culture/history). This last will almost certainly be online.
All of this means that at any time in the coming years, Tao will be able, should he wish to, to transition to merging into the formal school system, or, if later, to apply to university. The formal scheme offered by the authorities allows the kids to home-school while keeping all options open – the best of both worlds.
Which more or less brings you up to date, other than to say that last Friday we celebrated Ollie’s third birthday, a day of balloons and cake and a lot of wonderful presents. It is heart-warming to see how Tao and Ollie are very ready to share their birthday and un-birthday presents with each other – they do play together really well.
By the time this post is published, we will, astonishingly, be halfway through our four weeks here. It feels as though we only just arrived!
My goodness, we have a lot of ground to cover this week, so we had better get started.
It may come as a surprise to some of you to learn that this week’s is the first of four planned posts from Portugal. I know that I normally give some warning of any impending trip, but the fact is that things were very uncertain in the weeks immediately preceding our planned departure of July 1, what with the Iranian campaign and all. Bernice and I postponed our preparation until virtually the last moment, not wishing to tempt providence. Not that we are superstitious, of course. I used to be, but then someone told me that being superstitious is unlucky, so of course I stopped immediately.
Anyway, in the event, and despite Eeyore’s worst fears, Piglet won the day, and our entire journey day was almost as smooth as possible. Five days before we were due to leave, Bernice reminded me that we still needed to book a taxi to the airport. This is a mild bone of contention between us. Bernice feels that we are now too decrepit to face the walk from where a taxi would drop us close to the railway station in Jerusalem, to a seat (if we’re lucky) on the train. This involves lifting our luggage onto a security conveyor belt, negotiating three separate lifts or escalators, steering through the ticket gate, lifting the luggage onto the train, finding places to store the cases out of the way on the train, then, at the airport, retrieving our luggage, lifting it off the train, negotiating the ticket barrier and walking into the airport, which is on the same level. The alternative, a comfortable taxi ride with a friendly driver from outside our house to the airport entrance, has only one downside: the 350-shekel fare. I find it difficult to admit that we are so old and frail as to justify the fare, even though I know in my heart that Bernice is right.
However, when Bernice raised the question of booking a taxi, I was blessed with one of those rare inspirational moments of clear thinking that serve to reassure me that I have not yet completely lost it. I suggested that, rather than missing seeing Raphael (and his parents) on the Tuesday we return, we should pack and leave home on the Monday, drive to Zichron, pick up Raphael from gan and stay overnight with Esther and family, leave the girls our car for the month, take a taxi to Binyamina railway station (for only 40 shekels!), take the train to the airport, and then return to Binyamina, sleep for a couple of hours in the girls’ flat, pick up Raphael from gan, and then go home in the evening. Since the platform at Binyamina is at street level, this journey is much easier.
This meant that, for the first time, we were able to take Raphael to gan, rather than just pick him up. He is now approaching the end of his second year in this gan, and it is lovely to see how he has matured there and how he relishes his role as one of the big boys. Interestingly, he chose to play by himself on one of the swings, rather than playing with any of his friends. Normally, when we take him to the park, he always has half an eye looking for one of his friends from gan, and he always enjoys himself much more if he can run around and climb and kick a ball with friends, rather than having to rely on the inconsistent agility and limited stamina of his grandparents.
After a few minutes, we said our goodbyes to Raphael and returned to the flat, to pack our overnight things and prepare to leave. Esther had arranged to time her journey into work so that she could drive us to the station in our car (no need to transfer our cases), help us get the luggage on the train, and travel with us most of the journey. (She was working in Tel Aviv that day.) Although the day was, as always, very long, the journey was uneventful, although we experienced a couple of delays, and arrived in Penamacor an hour and a half later than we had hoped. We even managed a not unreasonable night’s sleep, and were ready for the boys when they came into our room in the morning.
Since then, our days have been as full, and as fun, as they always are here. We arrived to be greeted by a heatwave. Having left Israel in the high 30s, we were greeted by temperatures reaching 40o for the first couple of days. Since the house is now equipped with an upright fan in each room, and the air conditioner in the kitchen is effective, conditions were less intolerable than we had initially feared. An added bonus is that it appears that 40o is too hot even for flies, and there were far fewer in the house that we remember from last summer.
Over the last couple of days, the heatwave has broken (if that is the right word for temperatures around 35o), and the flies have returned, at least in the cooler morning and evening hours. Even 35o is a bit much for Lua, the family dog, who has so far refused to go into the forest when I take her for a morning walk. She doesn’t really ant to go out at all, but after I drag her up the road, we reach a point where she accepts the fact of the walk. However, there is a further point, beyond which she has, until now, refused to go. I have, I must admit, a certain amount of sympathy for her position.
Last Thursday, Tslil and I took the boys swimming in the local open-air pool. Although it is only a seven-minute walk from the house, it is located at the very top of the hill that our street climbs, and it is a challenging walk at 37o with two children whose combined age is 9. I was therefore very pleased when Tslil suggested we drive. When we arrived, at about 4PM on a cloudless July afternoon, there were just two couples sunbathing on the grass slopes that surround the pool, and both the children’s pool and the main pool were completely empty. By the time we left, two and a half hours later, there were perhaps 15 people in the pool. The boys had free admission, and Tslil and I, as ‘residents’, were charged EUR 2.70 each. So, that is the equivalent of ILS 21,00 for the four of us to have a full-size pool virtually to ourselves.!
Since we were last here, Tao has become much more comfortable in the water. The kids have an inflatable toy dinghy that Ollie was happy to sit in almost the whole time, squirting water to put out imaginary fires. Having been given a couple of hours’ warning, I had time to buy a very fetching pair of bathing shorts from the China shop, and I was happy to spend a couple of hours cooling off in the pool with the boys.
Other than that, and the usual multiple supermarket shopping expeditions, there is not a lot to report. We have already given the boys two of the books we brought out, and they appear to be the only books Ollie wants to have read to him. He is, it must be said, rather an obsessive listener. Once he attaches to a book, he doesn’t want to let go. Fortunately, one of the two books is The Cat in the Hat, which, as far as I am concerned, stands up to being read multiple times every day. The only problem is, of course, that any mistake in reading is immediately pounced on by Ollie, who quickly committed the entire book to memory.
On Shabbat afternoon, Tao and I built a Lego robot, and I have found it fascinating how Tao has interacted with the robot since. We were both pretty pleased with the end result, but I did not expect the robot to prove as popular as it has. Since Shabbat afternoon (about 53 hours at time of writing), the robot has barely left Tao’s hand. It has featured in all of his imaginative play, and has had a starring role in all of the interactive puppet shows that Bernice and the boys improvise several times a day. When we played a board game this morning, the robot played for Tao.
I used to think of Lego as a construction toy, but Tao has demonstrated since Shabbat that it is, of course, a construction, destruction and reconstruction toy. Literally tens of times every day, Tao breaks the robot up and then effortlessly builds it again. The breaking-up is often a side-effect of the robot wrecking a magnetile tower-block, However, sometimes Tao just disassembles and reassembles the robot, treating it almost as a six-year-old’s equivalent of a set of worry beads.
This is, of course, also a large part of the appeal of magnetiles, which are even easier than Lego to take apart and put together. Tao has been a dedicated magnetiler from a very young age, and Ollie has learnt from sitting alongside him. Tslil mentioned the other day that, although she rotates many of the boys’ toys, she never ‘rests’ the magentiles, because they are played with every day.
The other day, we were able to observe the extent of Tao’s construction skills. In the past, Tao has helped Micha’el assemble a number of standing fans. This time, with no guidance, Tao assembled the fan we had just bought. When Micha’el checked the fan afterwards, he only had to make one minor adjustment. We can only hope that, finally, someone in the family will have a marketable skill that pays well. It should also improve Tao’s chances of being taken in by a closed community in the event of the apocalypse. My reading of the geopolitics suggests these are not trivial considerations.
There! Even in deepest rural Portugal, I can’t quite clear my mind of what is happening elsewhere. Perhaps by next week I will have managed to detox more effectively.
This week, I feel as though I want to step back and attempt to assess where we are. There are a few things I want to say in this post. Some of them may contradict others. I apologise for that. It seems to me that it is still premature to attempt any final assessment (of something that clearly isn’t finished). However, this feels like a good place on the road to pause and reflect. I apologise for any lack of clarity, and I’m really not sure that I can bring anything new or particularly insightful to the table. However, that has never stopped me before, so here we go.
Since 7 October, 2023, we have been fighting a war against Iran and its proxies. This war still has no name. That may be partly because the war has no single theatre: it has been waged and is being waged in Israel, in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iran, in Yemen, and, conceivably, in other theatres that we will learn about at some point in the future, or possibly not.
The lack of a name may also be partly because, for Israel, the war has never had a single, clear, achievable aim. Throughout the last 20 months, various aims have been proclaimed. Principal among these are: eradicating Hamas; returning the hostages; breaking the ‘ring of fire’ around Israel; preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; destroying Iran’s missile capability. Let’s take a closer look at these.
Israel cannot remove Hamas from Gaza: it can certainly mow the grass shorter than ever before (and has done so), but Hamas cannot be separated out from the population of Gaza and defeated. As long as there are Arabs in Gaza, and as long as some of them are attracted to Hamas, Hamas will continue to recruit new members to replace those who have been killed.
There are two possible ways to remove Hamas from Gaza. The first is to expel the entire Arab population from Gaza, and I am not proposing that. The second is for the population of Gaza to undergo a social reform. This would, presumably, need to be sponsored, fostered and nurtured by Arab countries that are allies of Israel, and would, I imagine, involve dismantling the entire corrupt UN infrastructure in Gaza. This is not something that will be completed in my lifetime. My feeling is that a 30-year plan is needed to achieve a situation where Gazans under 40 years of age are all deradicalized.
Israel cannot return the hostages from Gaza. It can work towards that, but only Hamas can return the hostages, and to couch the desire in terms of ‘bringing’ them home has been a constant source of unresolvable contention within Israel. Neither the Government, nor the IDF, nor the Mossad, can ‘bring’ the hostages home. In addition, creating the negotiating conditions under which Hamas will be prepared to return the hostages will certainly mean giving up on the aim of removing Hamas from power.
In terms of breaking the ring of fire, Israel has achieved a great deal, but, on every front, Iran’s proxies are weakened but not destroyed. This is, of course, a function of those proxies being terror organisations rather than sovereign states. A terrorist organisation cannot be defeated in war with the finality that a nation state can.
As for Iran’s nuclear capability, who knows how much we achieved? Were several hundred kilograms of enriched uranium smuggled out of Fordow before the American B-2s struck? Have we assassinated enough of the scientists and administrators of the nuclear program to set it back a generation? Regarding missile attacks, have we destroyed enough missile launchers, stockpiled missiles and missile factories to remove the threat of further missile attacks from Iran?
Much of the above feels like kicking the can down the road. Undoubtedly, a long way down the road; further than ever before. However, it is difficult, at this stage, to know how much the fundamental existential threat to Israel has been removed.
Let me say, at this point, that the name 12-Day War, to describe the campaign directed against Iran by Israel and then the US, is a misnomer. This was not a war, but rather a single campaign in the war that began on October 7. To see the threat of Iran as separate from the threat of Hamas, Hizballah, the Houthis and others is to misrepresent the role of Iran in the Middle East.
In fact, I would like to propose that we call the current war the Israel-Iran war, both to emphasise that all of the other forces of evil involved are mere tentacles of Iran, and to point out that America’s involvement, valuable and valued as it was, was momentary, and came only after the bombers’ path to and from the bombing site had been secured by Israel.
Last Friday, which was Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the month of Tammuz, shuls in Israel said full Hallel, rather than half Hallel – the shortened form of Hallel that is recited on Rosh Chodesh. (Hallel is a collection of psalms expressing thanks to God.) The reason for this decision was to express thanks for the success of the campaign in Iran over the last couple of weeks.
While I expressed, above, reservations about coming to any final conclusions regarding our success in waging the war and the impact it will have on the geopolitics of the Middle East, it is difficult to argue with the decision to say Whole Hallel. Let me try to give a sense of what I feel we have to be thankful for.
First and foremost, we need to give thanks that Hamas acted unilaterally and impetuously on October 7, assuming, as it did, that the other tentacles of Iran, and maybe even Iran itself, would join the assault on Israel. Horrifying and devastating as the assault on the Southern communities and on the Nova festival was, imagine how much worse it would have been, how much more thinly our national resources would have been stretched, if, at the same time, Hizballah had launched rocket attacks and a major incursion in the north, while the Houthis fired missiles from Yemen and Iran sent over wave after wave of ballistic missiles.
Then, we need to give thanks for the nationwide, immediate, unhesitating response to this assault. Countless stories of individual heroism continued to emerge even months after the events of those first 36 hours. Without in any way belittling the horrifying suffering visited on the thousands of victims of this assault, those who were murdered, raped, abducted or otherwise assaulted, it was only the selfless courage of so many of those present, as well as of the hundreds who rushed to the area, that prevented many thousands more being similarly abused.
We must also give thanks that each of the vast number of pieces that constituted the jigsaw of the Hizballah pager sting fitted perfectly. There were so many points at which the plan could have failed. That this sting demoralised the organisation as completely as it did is an incredible game-changer, and that this seems to have emboldened the government of Lebanon to stand up to Hizballah is even more remarkable.
The timing of the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria opened a potential air corridor for our fighter planes that we could secure, bringing Iran within much easier and safer reach of the Israel Air Force. Coupled with the ease and speed with which we neutralised Iran’s own air defences, this meant that we had total control of the airspace over Iran, and our planes were able to traverse the country with no losses.
Not least of all, we must give thanks that, within the Haredi community, there are growing numbers who recognise that they are part of this national struggle, and are choosing to serve in the army. From this modest but already growing start, a national change may well grow, until Haredi military exemption and avoidance are sought by only a minority of that community. What seems clear to me is that this necessary change can only come organically. No attempt to impose it by force can succeed.
Each part of this is deserving of thanks. Taken as a whole, it represents an alignment of positive outcomes that invites the adjective miraculous, whether used literally or metaphorically. All of the above is, of course, also testament to years, if not decades, of assiduous intelligence-gathering, brilliant planning, meticulous preparation and, finally, flawless execution. It all shows what can be achieved by a nation whose citizens recognise the justice of their cause and are committed to their surviving, and their flourishing, in their homeland.
Last week I wrote, you will almost certainly not recall, “… in this week’s post, and almost certainly for one week only, I am adopting ‘war correspondent’ as my profession.” Despite that prediction, I find it impossible to write about anything other than ‘the situation’, and so I will stick with being some strange kind of war correspondent for one more week. William Boot revisited.
I had planned to devote this week’s blog to the other major story of the week: the news of the passing of Alred Brendel, one of the giants of classical piano of the second half of the last century. It is true that he retired from the concert hall 16 years before his death, and that he lived to the respectable age of 94, two facts that mitigate to some extent the blow of the news of his death.
However, he was still, until relatively shortly before he died, an incredibly insightful, as well as a charming, speaker and writer about music, art, philosophy. He was also a living oxymoron. No great pianist was ever more cerebral, yet Brendel achieved, in performance, a depth of emotion that few could equal. Terrifyingly serious, he could cow an audience into silence with a single look, but was possessed of an impish sense of humour. A rationalist intellectual, he had a deep love of Dada and the absurd, as well as kitsch.
He was also, astonishingly, almost entirely self-taught, not a career path normally recommended to classical pianists. I’m guessing the secret is that, if you are going to be self-taught, make sure you get a teacher as insightful, disciplined and gifted as Alfred Brendel.
As if this were not enough, Brendel was an exhibited watercolour artist who also published both nonsense verse and serious poetry. Indeed, it seemed at times that he was all things and everywhere. Yet, he was above all a uniquely crystal-clear pianist, and it is this purity that makes his frequent encore – Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s choral prelude Nun Komm’der Heiden Heiland – a perfect distillation of his musical insight.
If that is too dry for your taste, then search for Brendel playing any Mozart concerto, Beethoven, Schubert or Liszt sonata. (Those links are all suggestions available on YouTube.) His repertoire was confined to those composers who commanded his respect and into whose works he felt he could offer insight. Within that repertoire, he plumbed incredible depths and uncovered truths that perhaps no other pianist has revealed.
Meanwhile, back in Israel, it has been a truly remarkable week, as you may have noticed. Once again, I am going to avoid attempting any profound geopolitical analysis, other than to observe that, whatever else you might say about that Donald Trump, he certainly keeps you on your toes. Those of you outside Israel won’t be surprised to hear that even Israelis who are not, by nature, fans of Trump are acknowledging his contribution, this week, to Israel’s, and the world’s, security.
Incidentally, this is, I think, a reflection of Israelis’ understanding of the nature and extent of the existential threat we face. Too many in the Western world feel so secure in their lives that they cannot imagine a situation in which they could applaud any action of Donald Trump. In Israel, over the last couple of weeks, or days, sworn enemies of Netanyahu, and those who despise Trump, have acknowledged the rightness of their actions against Iran. There is nothing like an existential threat to encourage a pragmatic world view.
On a more personal level, our life has understandably shrunk over the last couple of weeks. We are following orders, and not venturing far from our bomb shelter, except when we have to, of which more later. On all but one occasion, we have been given the 10-muinute heads-up before the sirens sound, indicating that we have 90 seconds to get into the shelter. Indeed, on several occasions, the warning is not followed by a siren, either because the missiles have all been intercepted or because, as they approach, their target can be more accurately calculated, and it isn’t Maale Adumim.
As a result, we have often either been lying in bed, or sitting in the salon, ready to move, listening to distant, or, sometimes, what sounds like not-so-distant, explosions, trying to assess whether they are mid-air detonations of intercepted missiles or explosions of missiles as they hit the ground, and wondering whether we are wise to have such confidence in the accuracy of assessment of the Home Command in determining that we really don’t need to go in the shelter. So far, our confidence has not been misplaced, although as I say that I may sound to you rather like the man who threw himself off the roof of the Empire State Building and, as he passed a 29th floor window, called out to a spectator: “So far, so good!”
Last week I was due to have a minor medical procedure in Shaarei Zedek hospital. After a couple of days of trying, I finally got through to the hospital to confirm that my appointment had not been postponed. As the information clerk put it: “We’ll be treating anyone who turns up.” The following morning, the roads were considerably emptier than usual – at that point, schools were closed and only essential workplaces were open – but the hospital was fairly busy, although not quite as crowded as usual.
I was actually seen to very quickly and efficiently, and we would have been in and out in just over an hour, were it not for the fact that there was an air raid just as we were nearing the end of our stay. Fortunately, Shaarei Zedek, like many hospitals in Israel, has considerable facilities that are in protected spaces, and the department we were in was one such facility. As a result, the air raid did not interfere with the procedure at all.
Last Shabbat, when restrictions were marginally eased, our shul reopened, with provisions to use the shelters in a number of buildings within a minute’s walk from the shul. We personally didn’t return to shul on Shabbat, largely because we live a 15-minute walk from the shul, and would feel rather exposed on that walk. I understand that those who did attend were almost exclusively members (and others) who live very close to the shul.
I haven’t even been attending the shul I normally go to on weekday mornings, which is currently conducting services in the shelter attached to the shul. This is because I have not been putting an alarm on for the morning. Most nights the Iranians interrupt our sleep once or twice, and, even when they don’t, I, in common with most people I speak to, am finding it difficult to get the energy and the focus to do very much.
Having said that, Bernice and I have, this week, tackled the jungle that our front garden had become. Our gardener has spent much of the last 20 months on reserve military duty, and, even though we understand he is currently home, he did not respond to Bernice’s WhatsApp enquiries. So, I have been cutting back the nectarine tree, most of whose fruit this year was beyond my reach to harvest, and Bernice has been trimming and tidying up the bushes, thinning out the undergrowth, and collecting leaves and rotting fruit. We can only work for an hour or two in the morning and another hour or two in the early evening, because of the heat during the day. However, we really got into a routine, and we are currently convincing ourselves that we can handle this routine on a regular basis, and save ourselves a considerable amount of money while keeping fit.
Past experience suggests that this may be one of those plans that sounds good when pitched, but doesn’t always deliver. In addition, gardening in the dappled early morning light of June is not quite the same experience as in the cold and rain of December. However, only time will tell.
I have one more observation to share with you. I have started playing bridge online, on a platform that allows individual players to join an ad hoc table. I have noticed, in the past, that every two or three tables that I joined would contain one other person from Israel. Since we started direct hostilities with Iran, I am bumping into Israelis at the table two or three times as frequently. This is not really surprising, since you can play online bridge close to, or indeed in, your bomb shelter. It did mean that, when I left a table last Friday afternoon, I felt very comfortable wishing my fellow players Shabbat Shalom.
