I am writing this post from the Economy section of an El Al flight. (Paying subscribers get a post written from Business class.) If the post seems radically different from the last written in mid-air, that may be because I am now facing East, rather than West, as we head back home after four hectic but wonderful weeks in Portugal. Friends are advised not to ask Bernice and myself ‘Did you enjoy your holiday?’, but we did, in fact, have a great, if exhausting, time. As we drove back to Lisbon this morning at 120 kph on cruise control through bright sunlight and an outside temperature of 26^o , we remarked, as we often do, how fortunate we are that our children share their house with us so generously for a month at a time, and that our grandsons regard us as so natural a part of their lives.

Once again, this week I have nothing overly dramatic to report. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Ollie’s advances in speech. In the last couple of days of our visit he seemed to take another dramatic leap forward, and his active vocabulary is now growing every day. He has added ‘Nana’ and ‘Grandpa’ (smart child), as well as ‘bubbles’, ‘down’ (as the natural partner to his favourite ‘up’), ‘bread’ (this is a child who loves his food) and, this morning, ‘please’. He even attempted on one occasion to follow the most difficult instruction in a charming picture book ‘Tickle My Ears’, in which the child being read to is encouraged to adopt a hands-on approach to helping a rabbit get ready for bed. Ollie has long been willing to tickle the rabbit’s ears, pat its back, clap his hands, switch off the light, but he attempted for the first time to say ;’Hoppity-hop’ to encourage the rabbit to get into bed.

Tao, meanwhile, is taking his first major steps in reading. He has, for some time, been able to recognise, and write, his own name. How far-thinking his parents were when they named him! (Pity his cousin Raphael when he first tries to write his name in English.) In our last couple of weeks in Portugal, Bernice spent ten minutes almost every day starting Tao on a reading program. She is not a fan of phonics. Rather, he learnt, as his father and his Auntie Esther did, with ‘Peter and Jane’, and it is fair to say that he took to it very quickly and is thoroughly enjoying the sense of achievement it gives him. It is so exciting when, as one or other of us is reading to him in the evening, he suddenly exclaims: ‘That’s one of my words – ‘and’!’

Our last full day in Penamacor was Sunday, which was Tao’s 5^th birthday. Celebrations actually began on the previous Thursday, when we all went down to the kid’s land for the planting of Tao’s birthday tree. His first birthday was marked by the planting of an almond tree, which was followed by a pomegranate and a plum. For some reason, he missed out last year, but this year, for the first time, he went with Tslil to the plant nursery to choose his own tree. He chose a black cherry (what a great choice, promising, in the fulness of time, delicious fruit and generous shade).

The site that Tslil chose proved to be very clay-heavy soil, which made digging the required hole very hard work. I attempted to help Micha’el with wielding the pick to break up the soil and the spade to drag it out of the hole, but I quickly found that the three years since I helped digging the swale have not been kind to my body, and settled for serving as one of the official photographers. All that remained was for each of us to place a stone by the tree, with, on each stone, a single word representing our birthday wish for Tao.

It proved to be a lovely afternoon on the land. Warmer weather made the last two weeks of our visit even more pleasant, and we could sense that spring is arriving, something I also became aware of on my morning walks in the forest with the kid’s dog, Lua. Over the last week, the forest has come alive with new growth. Purple, white and blue wildflowers are starting to carpet the slopes, and new growth of oak and pine saplings is replacing the mature trees felled in storms last winter. This is all against the backdrop of the still snow-capped foothills of the Sierra da Estrella mountain range on the horizon.

After the Thursday family ceremony, Tao had a birthday celebration in gan the next day, the highlight of which was the chocolate cake Tslil made. He came home with a birthday crown which, in Bernice’s considered professional opinion, was not a patch on what is standard in Israeli gamin, but he seems to have enjoyed himself nevertheless.

Then, on Sunday, Tao had a full day of celebration, starting with opening his presents, from all of which he extracted the maximum enjoyment, as he seems to do from all his toys. Tslil’s parents took out in Tao’s name a subscription to a concept built around a hedgehog’s year-long journey around the world. Every month Tao will receive a personal letter from the hedgehog, whose progress he will follow on the world map included in the first month’s package. In this way, Tao will learn all sorts of fascinating facts about different countries, including their native animals. When I pointed out to him where Portugal and Israel were on the map, and also Britain, he pointed to the tiny clock-tower illustrating Britain and, to everyone’s surprise, announced ‘That’s Big Ben’, a fact he had presumably gleaned from some video or other.

Our present, following Micha’el’s suggestion, was shamelessly much less worthy, being a remote-controlled stunt car. It proved to be a huge hit with all four of us little boys, although the womenfolk seemed less keen to get their hands on the remote control. To my great relief, the rechargeable battery lasted on one charge for as respectable a time as the manufacturer claimed in the product description online. To top it all, we were able to buy it in royal blue, Tao’s favourite colour. Within minutes, he had mastered spins and flips and wheelies and Micha’el constructed a magnetile ramp that allowed Tao to put the car through its paces very effectively.

Sunday afternoon brought a party with a couple of Tao’s friends, involving the usual games, balloons, noise-makers and sugar rushes. It was all a bit too much for Ollie (and, to be honest, me) but for those who fell within the appropriate age range it was a huge success.

And then, before we knew it, it was Monday morning (this morning, though it seems an age ago), and a mad rush of packing, last games, last breakfast, with Ollie, as usual, eating fruit faster than I could cut it for Bernice and myself, last book-reading and then the goodbyes that we try not to linger over too much. Tao, obviously, understands that we are going back to Israel and that he won’t see us until the summer. Ollie, sadly, doesn’t, and we’re sure he won’t find it easy when Nana is suddenly no longer there with her eminently snugglable shoulder, her cuddles and kisses, her songs and stories. Fortunately, the boys have two parents who are completely devoted to them, and we know they are certainly not going to be missing out at all.

As for us, we’re off home to recuperate and make our plans for our summer trip in three months, God willing.

As we move towards our last week in Penamacor, I find myself looking forward, in a way that I never have before, to returning home. Usually, a month out of Israel is a welcome escape from the constant barrage that is the Israeli news cycle. If, as Harold Wilson is often reported as saying, a week is a long time in politics, then in Israel a day is a very long time in the newscycle.

The upside of that, usually, is that if you miss a couple of hourly news bulletins, most of what you have missed may never be mentioned again in the news, so you can feel that you haven’t really missed anything. However, we live in times that are, of course, far from usual, and I feel very cut off from the Israeli pulse.

For the last two months, my staple news supply has been a thrice-daily digest distributed to a quiet WhatsApp group. The organisation that is responsible for this feed is dedicated to presenting news in a non-sensationalist and dry format, and it has certainly made the news easier to digest. Bernice and I are continuing to read that regularly here, but I realise that what I am missing is more the reactions to the news: the radio and TV interviews and background pieces, the exchanges between radio presenters.

Occasionally on my morning walks with Lua, I manage to catch one of those morning programmes live, and even more occasionally I listen to one from the archive. However, I am following events much less closely than I would be if I were in Israel, and I am also failing to read online the range of opinion pieces in the paper that I would read in Israel.

That sense of isolation is, of course, only increased by the fact that I don’t share a language with the kids’ neighbours, and so cannot get involved in discussions with them. I suspect, anyway, that their interest in, and knowledge of, Middle Eastern affairs is pretty limited. Indeed, I am not at all sure that they have any interest in current affairs generally. This Sunday saw Portugal go to the polls in a general election triggered by the resignation of the centre-left prime minister after a long series of corruption scandals. This is against a background of spiralling housing prices in the big cities, salaries well below the EU norm, an ailing health service, and economic stagnation.

The election produced a very narrow lead for the centre right over the centre left, these being the two parties that have, alternately, governed the country since the Carnation Revolution of 50 years ago. However, potentially the most interesting development is that the only recently formed extreme right party almost tripled its share of the vote, winning 48 of the 230 parliamentary seats. To give you a sense of the party’s platform, among its more interesting policies is chemical castration for sex offenders. Meanwhile, the centre-right won 79 and the centre-left 77 seats.

Interestingly, both before and after the election, the centre-right party pledged that it would not seek a coalition with the far-right to form a government. The centre-left announced that, in that event, if the centre-right sought to govern without an absolute majority, the centre-left would not act to bring down the government.

Government corruption? The rise of the far right? Electoral instability? Coalition governments? No wonder I feel homesick.

All of this has, I imagine, made for a spirited election campaign. However, walking around the village over the last two weeks, and even on election day itself, I saw absolutely no signs of an election: no banners, no posters, no loudspeakers. Of course, the entire electoral district of Castelo Branco, in which we find ourselves, returns only 4 of the 230 members of the legislature. Although it is geographically one of the largest districts in Portugal, it is also one of the least densely populated,

I can, however, tell you about one poster. One of the political scandals that led to the government’s downfall involved a police raid on the home of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, a raid which uncovered a large sum in cash. Apparently, IKEA has launched a poster campaign in the big cities, featuring a bookcase with the following slogan: Good for storing books. Or €75,800.

Earlier today, Bernice and I went with both the boys to the local supermarket, to start our purchases of provisions for Tao’s birthday party next Sunday. As I was returning the trolleys after loading the car, a woman in her 60’s greeted me with a cheery ‘Shalom’. This is, of course, one of the advantages of wearing a kippa. At least, for most of my life, and in almost every country I have been in, it has been an advantage. I have struck up many enjoyable conversations as a result of advertising my Jewishness.

These days, of course, I would hesitate to wear a kippa even walking around one of the big cities of Portugal, let alone anywhere more aggressively antisemitic. However, in Penamacor, everyone knows who Bernice and I are, and what our background is.

Anyway, this lady introduced herself as a Belgian who has lived in a village a few miles away for the last three years. She clearly feels an affinity with Jews, because she mentioned a number of Israelis that we have met. She also expressed sympathy and concern for what we are going through now in Israel.

In the course of our conversation, she mentioned an Israeli whom we have met several times. Retiring early from a successful career in Israel, he moved his family (his wife and, I believe, six children, from kindergarten to high-school age) to Portugal, bought a piece of land, and had a family home built on the land while renting a house in Penamacor. He and the family clearly lead a very traditional Jewish life, and Bernice and I have speculated about how the family would cope, particularly as the children approached marriageable age.

Well, my new-found Belgian friend informed me that his oldest boy insisted that he wanted to accept his call-up to the Israeli army and so the family are letting out their newly-built house and have all returned to Israel. When I asked her whether she thought they would return to Portugal, she was sceptical. I must say I share her scepticism.

Other than that, there is little new to report from here. The weather has swung between fairly heavy rain and bright sunshine, so we have been able to get out with the boys on several occasions. Later this week, if the planets all align, Bernice and I are planning a half-day in Castello by ourselves, including lunch, before we enter the mad turmoil of the last few days with family birthday celebrations, Shabbat, a party for a couple of Tao’s friends, laundry, packing and saying our farewells until our next visit which, we hope, will manage to include both Michael’s and Ollie’s birthdays, which will give us a calendar grand slam.

I updated you last week about Ollie’s great linguistic leap forward, adding ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye-bye’ to his existing vocabulary of ‘ə’. This past week saw another dramatic, though not, ultimately, particularly helpful, development in his speech.

Before his first breakthrough, Ollie had realised that ‘ə’ lacks a certain specificity, and he had almost always accompanied it with hand gestures or other body movement that clarified whether he meant: ‘Don’t you get the feeling that the old minute hand has edged its way round to teatime-ish?’ or ‘Do you fancy a quick game of marble helter-skelter, old chum?’. (Who knows, incidentally, whether ‘realises’ way back at the beginning of that last sentence is really an accurate word? Does a child of 19 months ‘realise’, in any sense that an adult can understand? I must access my second year teacher training notes on Piaget.)

After that breakthrough, Ollie had clearly understood that he, like others, could make sounds that had specific meanings. Unfortunately, he had only mastered two sounds: ‘Hi!’ and ‘Bye-bye!’ Now he quickly developed the considerable skill of working these into almost any conversation. If anyone so much as approached the door to the kitchen, or put on a pair of shoes, Ollie would be there like a shot with his cheerful ‘Bye-bye!’ and his rhythmic hand-wave.

He then added to these two the really useful: “Up’, which initially tended to mean he wanted to be carried but now means that he wants to go upstairs. The problem here is that he is incapable of explaining why he wants to go upstairs, and so, more often than not, one or other of us will go up with him to see what he wants. This morning, I discovered at the top of the stairs that what he wanted was for me to carry him downstairs. I suspect he was actually just trying the “Up’ on for size.

The downside of this newly acquired vocabulary was his fairly swift realisation that ‘ə’ no longer cut it; it belonged to an earlier stage of development, which, from the plateau of his verbal 20^th month, he now spurned. And so he decided to replace all the ‘ə’s with something that more closely resembled adult conversation. He settled on exhaling in a single breath while sounding an ‘a’ sound as in ‘apple’, while simultaneously moving his tongue swiftly back and forwards and up and down in his mouth. If you try this at home (I recommend alone in a room with the door closed), you will soon discover that you produce a sound resembling ‘Ba-la-bla-la-ba-la-ba-bla’.

In fairness to Ollie, this seems to me at least as close an approximation to human speech as the ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’ first used, apparently, by the actor Charles Kean’s company at the Princess Theatre, London 200 years ago, to simulate background conversation on stage that the audience is expected to register but not understand. I learn that the variation favoured by radio producers is: ‘Walla, walla’. ‘Peas and carrots’ is another option sometimes used, but that seems silly.

But I digress. Where Ollie went wrong is that he appears to have convinced himself that, just as his ‘Hi’ and ‘’Bye-bye’ are understood, so should his ‘Ba-la-bla-la-ba-la-ba-bla’ be. After all, we all seem to understand adult conversation, which, as we have established, sounds quite a bit like ‘Ba-la-bla-la-ba-la-ba-bla’. And so he no longer sees the need for hand signals and body language. Unfortunately, his ‘Ba-la-bla-la-ba-la-ba-bla’ is usually incomprehensible to anybody else, and so we’re in a mildly frustrating time. Fortunately, his oral comprehension means that a quick cross-examination can usually establish what he wants to say.

If I tell you that I have now shared the most exciting thing that happened this past week, you will understand that we are buried in deepest rural Portugal in deepest winter. So far a bit less rain than I anticipated, but the weather is, for those of us who usually live on the edge of Judean desert, very cold. The insulation of the house, and the efficiency of the heating, are currently being challenged by the conditions, but, fortunately, we have a fairly decent winter wardrobe out here permanently, and multiple layers and scarves work very well.

I’ve been nursing a cold for the last few days. (I choose the word ‘nursing’ carefully, to win favour with Bernice, who always contends that women soldier on through mild inconveniences such as colds, while men wallow in them. I keep telling her to talk to me again when she’s my age, and not the young girl she is now.) Fortunately, the local honey is excellent, the lemon tree in the garden cannot be seen for fruit, and I have a number of bottles of whisky to work though, so lemon toddies are the order of the day.

Despite the cold, I gamely went with Bernice and the boys to a park in a village 15 minutes’ drive away. In the middle of the day, it is actually considerably warmer outside in the winter sun that huddled inside on a sofa. This park has a slide that is long enough for Tao to welcome the challenge of climbing up the chute, and for Ollie to feel considerably braver climbing up the stairs than standing at the edge of the slide wondering how good an idea this is. However, guided down by Grandpa’s restraining palm on his chest he couldn’t wait to climb, and hesitate, and thrill again.

The park also boasts a few swings, at various heights for various ages, a fair-sized open space for running around and kicking a ball, and, major attraction, a water fountain operated by foot pedal. Bernice and I spent some time remembering how, the last time we were there, Tao was very timid about trying anything. The problem this time was, it is fair to say, the reverse.

As we were racking our brains over ways of disposing of lemons last week (fortunately, Tslil now teaches a few yoga lessons in person, and so can make her students an offer everyone is too polite to refuse), I suddenly remembered the citron pressé that I enjoyed every day of our summer holiday in the South of France 40 years ago.

Retrieving a recipe from Google was the work of minutes, and I had soon reduced a lemon sugar syrup. The next morning. I added a generous dollop to the juice of two freshly squeezed lemons, added cold water (no need for ice in a Penamacor winter) and found that I had managed a passable reproduction of what I had drunk all those years ago. Not quite a madeleine, but very refreshing.

And that’s about it. The days, and, indeed, the weeks, seem to be galloping by. We are already halfway through our trip. It’s just as well that we never come out here with any grandiose plans. Just keeping up with the boys takes all of our energy.

You don’t realise how close you came to not getting a post from me today.

Last night, Bernice and I were eating dinner at 8:15 when I suddenly blurted out: “Good grief! It’s Monday today!” Bernice, having been married to me for 51 years, immediately realised the significance, and offered me encouragement: “Well, you’re not going to bed early tonight then, are you?” I then felt obliged to point out that, since she must always read and approve my post pre-publication, nor was she.

Which explains why this post was written in a mad rush, starting just over 10 hours before publication, and finished in a record time of 40 minutes, which, by my reckoning, is a composition speed of over 35 words a minute.

I left you last week in mid-air – literally, as we winged our way to Portugal. So let me pick up from there. We landed only 15 minutes behind schedule, but then had to wait an inordinate amount of time for our luggage to come through. This was followed by picking up the rental car, which sounds easy, but, as we found out on our last trip, can have unexpected complications. When I checked out prices for this trip, it soon became clear that renting from a company with offices in the airport, while very convenient, is also very much more expensive. After some discussion, we decided that we would use the company we ended up using last time, whose offices are a 12-minute drive from the airport by shuttle bus.

When we reached the pick-up point for the shuttle bus, we found a couple of English businessmen in front of us, who explained that the bus had just left, and that the driver had told them that another bus would be along very soon. We all agreed that there was no other bus, and that the same driver would return in 25 minutes, which he indeed did. By the time he returned, the four of us had been joined by another four couples. Having checked our names, the driver announced that he had room only for the principal driver in each pair. He would take these and he would then return for the partners while the principal drivers started the paperwork.

After some argument, discussion and translation, everyone accepted this plan, and so I left Bernice waiting outside the airport. When we arrived at the office, the driver assigned us numbered tickets from a machine. He was kind enough to promote me to number 4, having asked me how old I was and awarding me priority status. We were then invited to scan a Q-code on the wall and start the paperwork independently. This went well until I reached the section asking for my address, which I completed as follows:
Country of residence: Israel
City: Ma’ale Adumim
County: [Since Israel has no counties, and nothing equivalent, I left this field blank]
District: [Since I was far from sure what this referred to, I left it blank]
Address: 14, Hashminit Street

When I pressed Next, I was of course informed that I had left one or more mandatory fields blank, so I returned to the two problem fields. Under County, I clicked the dropdown, which proved to be empty. I then tried Jerusalem, Central, Ma’ale Adumim (with, then without, an apostrophe, and with one and then two ‘m’s in the middle of Adumim). No success. I then went over to one of the clerks who was processing another customer and explained that I was not able to proceed until I provided information that did not exist. “Well,” he asked me, “what region do you live in? Is it in Haifa, or the Mercaz, or what?” At a subliminal level, something about this last question seemed odd, but I was becoming too enraged to explore it further.

Eventually, the clerk told me to leave the form, and it would be sorted out when I sat with a clerk later. Indeed, a few minutes later, my number was called, and I sat down with the same clerk I had spoken to earlier. Just then Bernice arrived – which was just as well, because the form also wanted to know my identification number, and, although I had filled in my Israeli ID number, I knew that they would almost certainly only accept my passport, which Bernice was holding.

When it came to District, the clerk established from me that we lived near Jerusalem, entered something on the form and then turned his screen to show me. “You see!” he said triumphantly. I read the word Yerushalayim. “So, you’re telling me,” I said, “that I am supposed to guess that your program thinks Ma’ale Adumim is in the non-existent district of Jerusalem, and then I am supposed to guess that I have to enter an English transliteration of the Hebrew name for Jerusalem. Sorry, I know you didn’t write the program, but…” The clerk agreed that he and his colleagues often discussed how the program’s requirements are incompatible with the political geography of many countries around the world, From that point on, we were the best of friends. When he was finishing the registration process, I said to him: “So, tell me: you know the Hebrew name for Jerusalem, and you know that the centre is the mercaz in Hebrew. Is this just something you’ve picked up from your work here, registering Israeli drivers?” “No,” he answered, with a shy smile, “my grandparents are actually Jewish…but” he added apologetically, “I’m afraid I don’t practice anything.”

It transpired that he had spent much of his childhood in New Jersey, and had made many Jewish friends there, which also explained why his English was so good, as I told him. He was kind enough to ask how I had acquired my excellent English, but by that stage I was too tired to take offence.

The upshot of all this was that we drove away from the car rental office about 90 minutes later than we had hoped. Then, an hour into our drive, for the first time ever in Portugal, we took a wrong turning – or, more accurately, missed a right turning – , adding 45 minutes to our drive. The result of all this was that we arrived at 00:15 (Portuguese time), after an 18-hour door-to-door journey. The lovely thing about our arrival (apart from the fact of the arrival itself) was that we were greeted very warmly by Micha’el, who we expected, Lua, the dog, who appeared to remember us and wagged her tail furiously, and, as an unexpected bonus, a not-having-the-best-of-nights Ollie, who made Bernice’s day, nay, her month, by happily going straight into her arms for a cuddle, a position from which he has scarcely strayed in the ensuing week.

The following morning, Tslil and Tao greeted us no less warmly, and it was all systems go from first thing in the morning. This first week has flown by, filled with nothing very special at all, just the usual round of daily routine, starting with our regular big first shopping expedition, In this case, Bernice is sure that the young cashier at the supermarket will be dining out for weeks on the story of the people who bought so much more stuff than he has ever rung up for a single customer, and then produced a second trolley just as full.

Unfortunately, both Tao and Ollie had been ill before we arrived, with colds and viruses and all the usual wintry things. They have both been a bit up and down for the whole week, but we have still had a lot of time for games and songs and stories, bath-time and playing, puppet shows and shared meals.

The one dramatic highlight is that, in the last two days, monosyllabic Ollie, whose single schwa note (like the sound of the ‘e’ in the word ‘taken’) I mentioned several weeks ago, has discovered diversity. He suddenly said “Hi” when one of us came back yesterday, and today, when we went to the supermarket with Tao, leaving Ollie behind, we had a string of both “Bye-bye’s” and then, on our return, “Hi’s”. It is very exciting to be here to witness this watershed moment firsthand, although it’s fair to say that Ollie seems considerably less excited about it than some of the rest of us.

What there doesn’t seem to have been time for this week, inexplicably, is photographs. In addition, it seemed a little unfair to photograph boys with streaming noses and highly-coloured cheeks. I hope that the coming week will bring full recovery, a chance for photos (which I will send privately to those interested, as I explained a few weeks ago) and more of the same.

Until then, and now that Bernice has read and approved the post, I will let her go to sleep and wish you, in Israel, a happy national holiday for municipal elections.

The vast majority of these posts are composed as I gaze, largely unseeing, through the window of the office at home. (Bernice always refers to it as my – i.e. David’s – office, although I am always telling her that she is only too welcome to use it whenever she wants.) This window affords me a view of the patch of scrub that lies at the back of the houses on our almost circular road, and, beyond the houses on the far side, the land rising towards the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem, over the distant ridge, is almost completely hidden from view.

More rarely, I will have slid open the frosted windows that closes in the balcony of our bedroom in Penamacor, and I will be gazing, largely unseeing, at the not unimposing ruins of the tower of the castle, on the far ridge of the saddle of land on which Penamacor rides.

But today, I am gazing, largely unseeing, through the porthole of a Boeing 737, as we cruise smoothly above the Mediterranean. The ice cream castles beneath us are bathed in strong sunlight, and could not be more different from the heavy blankets that rained on us this morning as we carried our cases to the taxi. In the space of five hours, we have indeed looked at clouds from both sides, which makes today a very special day.

I am gazing through the porthole and my heart is already in the West, where Micha’el and family, so he tells us, are all “very excited and waiting to see” us. My heart is also in the East, where Esther and family are holidaying in Sri Lanka. How well it worked out that they and we will both be out of Israel at the same time, so that we won’t miss any opportunities for our weekly visit to Zichron.

My heart is also in the centre, our home, Israel. A few hours ago we walked down the sloping corridor from passport control to the departure lounge at Ben Gurion airport, a corridor now lined on both sides by posters of the 134 abductees still being held hostage, each picture giving the name and age of the abductee. Every picture is heart-wrenching, but some are particularly so. Here is the baby, ???? The original text gave his age as 10 months, but a piece of paper has been stuck over this, updating it to 1 year. There is ????. Someone has pasted on the side of his poster the notice announcing his death in captivity. How fitting it is that everyone leaving Israel should carry those images with them as they go.

Because Micha’el and family came to Israel for December, we skipped a trip to Portugal, and this is our first visit since last July. I had been thinking that perhaps, given that we have both  celebrated a birthday since our last trip, we might travel a little more light this time, and, indeed, when I surveyed our boxes of ‘stuff for Portugal’ a few weeks ago, I was quietly optimistic. Naturally we would have to take two suitcases, but perhaps they would each weigh 15 kilo, rather than 22.8.

I had, of course, forgotten Bernice’s extraordinary power through the final bend and into the home straight. For the last couple of weeks, every day it seemed that she had another errand to run in the mall, and, half of the time, when she returned home, it was with another few outfits for one or other of the boys, outfits that the shop practically paid her to take off their hands. The other half of the time, it was with a toy or a game that Tao had particularly enjoyed when he played it in Israel, or that Ollie will adore – you can’t, after all, expect him to only have Tao’s hand-me-downs to play with.

Not that I disagree with Bernice. She has her late grandmother’s nose for a bargain and eye for the perfect gift, especially when buying for our children or grandchildren.

Last Thursday, I weighed all of the boxes, and added in the estimated weight of the last minute items that we would be packing – cheese, a couple of items for Bernice and myself. I estimated that this would come to 43 kilo. So much for travelling light!

Last Friday morning saw the next stage in our preparations: the grand assemble. This is when I unpack the contents of all the boxes and bags onto the sofas in the salon, dividing them as I do so into two piles, designed to be of roughly equal weight, bulk and nature. So, half of the bumper packs of bags of bamba (a peanut puff snack that is the Israeli child’s staple diet) go into each pile. That way, if one case is lost, everybody gets half of their toys, clothes, treats or whatever.

The bamba occasioned our first discussion of the day:
David: “You don’t honestly think we’re going to take all this bamba, do you?! It will fill a suitcase by itself!”
Bernice: “If we haven’t got room, then leave some of it out.”
D: “It’s not just a question of room. By the time we unpack, it will all just be sawdust.”
B: “Then leave it out.”
D: “No, we’ll see how it goes.”

Once everything was laid out, it was time for the second ritual discussion.
B: “I’m sorry. I had no idea it was going to be so much.”
D: “Don’t worry. It’s not too much.”
B: “We don’t have to take everything.”
D: “Don’t worry!”

The next step was the bringing down of the empty suitcases. As happens every time, somewhere between the wardrobe that I took them out of and the sofa that I lay them down on, the suitcases magically shrank. Lying next to the piles of stuff to be packed, it began to look as though Bernice might be right. However, experience has taught me that however much we have to take, it always ends up fitting into the suitcases leaving no room for any other single thing, and the combined weight of the suitcases is always 46 kilo.

30 minutes later, the sofas were empty, and the cases had weighed in at 24 kilo and 20 kilo respectively. A little juggling between cases brought the heavier case down to 23 kilo. Then on Sunday (yesterday) a few last-minute additions came to mind, with the result that, when I weighed the cases for a final time, they came in at 22.5 and 23 kilo. At those weights, weighing on our bathroom scales is challenging. The full cases are too bulky to rest them on the scales without them touching the floor, so I have to first weigh myself, then pick up a suitcase and endeavour to clamber back onto the scales and retain my balance without wobbling so that a reading is possible. Of course, when I am holding a suitcase I cannot see the reading, so I have to wait until I guess that the reading has frozen and then get off, hoping to get a valid reading.

Last night, it took me several attempts before I managed a valid reading. At the airport this morning, the cases weighed in at 23 kilo and 23.5 kilo, but we all know that the airport scales always weigh heavy. Fortunately, the check-in clerk did not bat an eyelid, or Bernice and I would have had to start eating cheese.

In fact, we are going out with less than usual, because we only have one carry-on trolley this time. This of course made our journey to the airport – taxi to Jerusalem and train to the airport – easier than usual. Coming home we should be able to fit the trolley inside one of the almost-empty suitcases, and board the plane with just our backpacks. As always, we spent some time this morning discussing how much longer we will be able to keep up travelling this heavy, but, meanwhile, we seem to be managing.

The effort is, of course, worthwhile, to see the pleasure the boys get from their gifts, and from the shabbat kiddush grape juice, and the delight Tslil takes in her silan, tehina, botz, and so on. We, similarly, can’t imagine going four weeks without good cheese, and wine from duty free. I also can’t contemplate going the first two or three days without granola, until we can do the shopping and I can make a batch. Micha’el is, fortunately, considerably more ascetic, in dietary matters at least, and hardly contributes to our luggage weight.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some rest in preparation for the three-hour drive this evening. Next week, I hope to be updating you with all the latest exciting news from Penamacor.

Week 19 – Monday

Day 129

I went to bed last night wondering what I should write about this week, and woke up this morning to discover that the question had been answered for me overnight in a totally unexpected way. It seems to me that there are several ways in which the news of the rescue of two hostages is a major new development, and I would like this week to think about some of those ways.

First, a couple of general observations. If one of the hostages was my child or parent or spouse, I would conceivably be prepared to contemplate releasing any number of convicted terrorists to ensure their return. Any discussion of how Israel should act to attempt to secure the release of the abductees has to begin by acknowledging one simple fact. Those of us who are not counting the days until our dearest loved one is returned have no right, and no basis on which, to judge the statements and actions of those who are counting the days until their dearest loved one is returned.

At the same time, this does not mean that the families of the abductees are in the best position to decide how the authorities should proceed. If one of the abductees was the child of the Prime Minister, I think there would be a very strong case to be made for the Prime Minister excluding himself from decision-making about how to proceed. The decision-makers certainly need to hear, and to listen to the families of the abductees, but they then need to reach decisions weighing other considerations as well.

Since very soon after October 7, there has been a well-organised campaign to put pressure on the authorities to bring the abductees home at any price, and to keep their return as Israel’s primary objective. While the majority of the families support this campaign, and many of them have been working tirelessly, in Israel and around the world, to achieve this goal, some of the families do not believe that paying any price is justified, and are less certain that defeating Hamas is less of a primary objective than returning the abductees. Their voice, it is fair to say, has been less audible, and less reported by the mainstream media.

As the days grew into weeks that have grown into months, the majority campaign has become more aggressive, in terms of both its actions and its words. In recent weeks, demonstrations have been less disciplined; there has been some disruption of traffic and blocking of roads by a few demonstrators.

Perhaps more significantly, the initial mood of seeking to persuade the government to prioritise the return of the abductees has soured. Over the weeks, the families increasingly complained that they were being ignored by the authorities, and that nobody was sharing with them what steps were being taken. In recent weeks, the campaign seems to have moved to one of calling for the replacement of the government – in immediate elections – or the replacement of the Prime Minister, who is now cast in some campaign material as the traitor who fed and fostered the Hamas monster over the years and enabled the pogrom of October 7.

Israel is a country where no secret can be kept, and where Cabinet arguments and caucus cabal meetings are reported verbatim in the media, often with audio recordings. My personal feeling is that it is unreasonable, in such a country, to expect the government to share sensitive material – diplomatic or military – with abductee family members who are very understandably emotionally charged. It is inevitable that, if the government did share sensitive material with them, it would be leaked, sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, the manner in which Netanyahu publicly addresses this issue often sounds very patronising, which, understandably, serves to antagonise the families further.

As the days pile up into months, I increasingly feel that at least some of the families’ energies should be directed towards those who are primarily responsible for their family members being held prisoner in Gaza: Hamas. The fact is that there is nothing we can do to “bring them home” overnight. However, Hamas could literally send them home overnight. A partial change of focus from the families might draw more the world’s attention to that fact.

At the same time as the tension over the status of the abductees is building daily within Israel, international tension over the continued waging of the war is also building daily. In the last week, this tension has focussed on Rafiah/Rafah (which are the Hebrew and Arabic names respectively of this southernmost major town in the Gaza Strip). Rafiah is the last stronghold of Hamas, and Israel’s intention is to open a humanitarian corridor to allow the civilian population to move northwards to safe areas and then for its ground forces, supported by the air force, to move through Rafiah, hunting down and eliminating Hamas terrorists, destroying Hamas infrastructure, seizing Hamas assets, as it has done throughout the Strip.

Voices have been raised about the potential humanitarian disaster such an evacuation would, it is claimed, create. (I have written before, in the 4^th paragraph here, about civilian casualties, so I won’t repeat the argument.)

Against all of this background, we woke this morning to discover that, starting at around 1AM last night, a joint operation was conducted by Israel’s General Security Services and counter-terrorism unit, supported by the navy’s commando unit and the armoured brigade, as well as by Air Force planes and rescue helicopters. The operation succeeded in rescuing alive, and in good condition, two male, civilian, abductees, Fernando Marman, 61, and Louis Har, 70. One of the troops suffered minor injuries as a result of a fall from a height. No other injuries were sustained by our troops.

As more details emerge, it seems that these two men were kept together, ‘embedded’ in the home of an ordinary Gazan family, and guarded by at least three Hamas guards. What their relationship was with the family we do not yet know. However, as more details of this action emerge, they may well make it clearer why Israel has to continue its ground assault into Rafiah and just how intertwined Hamas and the civilian Gazan community are.

Already today the news of this brilliantly planned, coordinated and executed operation has raised spirits here in Israel. It will be very interesting to see whether the fact of this rescue will lead the families of the remaining abductees to reassess their opinion of the authorities, and their scepticism about how highly the government ranks the safe return of all the hostages. It is just possible that the events of last night may lead to a softening of positions and be a move towards the healing of a rift that we really do not need now.

Just Numbers…and Unjust Numbers

In the heart-wrenching reality that is this war, these two ‘reclaimed’ lives were tragically balanced by the announcement this morning of the names of two more soldiers who died fighting in Khan Younis: Sgt. First Class Adi Eldor, 21, from Haifa and Sgt. First Class (res.) Alon Kleinman, 21, from Tel Aviv. May their memory be for a blessing.

As we reach 129 days since October 7, five more numbers:

123 – the number of abductees that have returned so far from Gaza;
134 – the number of abductees that have not yet returned from Gaza;
105 – the estimated number of abductees left alive in Gaza, and, consequently:
29 – the estimated number of dead abductees in Gaza, who were either abducted when already dead or who were killed or succumbed to their injuries or neglect in Gaza;
229 – the number of Israeli troops killed in the ground offensive in Gaza.

I don’t know what you do with those numbers, other than to remind yourself, every day, that every one in each of those numbers represents a human being, an entire world.

Week 18: Monday

A Humanitarian Crisis or Humanitarian Relief?

In the last couple of weeks, more than fifteen countries, including United States, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Finland, Japan and the European Union, have announced that they will be suspending their contributions to UNRWA after being made at least partly aware of the extent to which Hamas is embedded in the agency. These contributions represent about 60% of UNRWA’s funding.

The evidence has been hidden in plain sight for years: textbooks used in UNRWA schools (with their arithmetic exercises built on a narrative not of the number of apples Johnny has eaten, but the number of Israelis Mohammed has killed); videos of end-of-year plays staged by pupils in UNRWA schools, depicting terrorists murdering Israeli soldiers. It appears that the evidence Israel presented has compelled these governments to confront the truth: evidence of UNRWA staff in closed WhatsApp groups revelling in the news of the October 7 pogrom; evidence of a handful of UNRWA staff (including teachers in UNRWA schools) actively participating in the massacre.

There are many calls for these countries to reconsider. UNRWA, it is argued, represents the best agency for providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population. The evidence on the ground would suggest, rather, that UNRWA represents the agency by which Hamas ensures that little aid reaches the civilian population, thereby artificially stoking the humanitarian crisis and expropriating the bulk of the aid for its own use.

If UNRWA’s initially dismissive response to Israel’s accusations, and the evidence of arms caches and tunnel entrances located in UNRWA schools, and arms smuggled in UNRWA grain sacks, leads to a decision to cease funding UNRWA, perhaps UNHCR may be able to take over, and, finally, after 76 years and four generations, something may be done to alleviate the Palestinian refugee situation rather than perpetuating and nurturing it.

Iberian Reactions

Sadly, Spain has announced that it will continue to fund UNRWA and send an additional 3.5 million euros. The acting government of Portugal (Spain’s less wealthy neighbour) has similarly announced that it will send an additional one million euros.

Also last week, demonstrations in Porto against the rising housing costs included protestors waving banners and chanting slogans attacking the Jewish community of Porto. One sign read “Not Haifa and not Boavista, no to a Zionist capital”, referencing the Porto neighbourhood that houses a synagogue and a growing number of Jewish residents. Other signs called for “cleansing the world of Jews” and urged people “not to rent a house from Zionist murderers”.

Bernice and I are due to fly to Lisbon in another two weeks, to spend a month with the kids. It is certainly true that Penamacor is a very long way, geographically and geopolitiucally, from Porto, and I am confident that we will not encounter any unpleasantness on the streets. To be honest, outside of retailers, we don’t have much contact with the local population, beyond the occasional ‘Bom Dia’. However, this is yet another reminder of the way much of the world is going. (Or should that be ‘reverting’?)

The Theatre of the Absurd Part I: Pinter

On Saturday night, Bernice and I watched a National Theatre production of No Man’s Land, which is probably Harold Pinter’s lightest and least menacing play. We had never seen it before, although I was well aware that it premiered with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson playing the two lead characters. In the revival we watched, the two leads were Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. I can pay them no greater compliment than to say that I didn’t feel the absence of Gielgud and Richardson for a moment. These were spellbinding performances by two men, each of whom can command a stage without speaking.

Having seen Patrick Stewart as Henry IV in the 1970s, I have always felt that he ‘sold out’ when he boldly went where he didn’t oughter go, as Captain Picard in Star Trek. It was therefore a particular joy to see him on stage. I also suspect that his decades principally in front of the camera have made him less ‘theatrical’ in his delivery and stage presence, a characteristic that certainly lent itself here to a filmed performance of the stage play.

McKellen, it is fair to say, was more flamboyant, but this was certainly appropriate to the role he was playing. The balance between the two, and their generosity to each other on stage, was wonderful to watch.

At this point, I should probably make some apposite comments about the ‘meaning’ of the play. I am reluctant to admit that neither Bernice nor I has any clear idea what the play is about. Extraordinarily, the production was so polished, and all of the performances so riveting, that we didn’t actually mind being in the dark.

After we had discussed the play briefly, I googled some reviews, and was, to be honest, relieved to read Michael Billington, reviewing in The Guardian this production. He stressed how enigmatic the play is, and, after offering his own interpretation, concluded that “it is up to every spectator to make up their own mind.” Clearly (or perhaps less than clearly) it is a play about memory, about rivalry, about the threat of oblivion and the various strategies we use in our attempt to avoid it. It is also, let me say, a mesmerising piece of writing, elevated here by two bravura performances.

The Theatre of the Absurd Part II: Richard III and Oedipus

Here I pause, as I wonder just how to do this next extraordinary subject justice. Shakespeare Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank is staging a production of Richard III later this year. Richard is famously known for his deformity. (The recent discovery of what is now agreed beyond reasonable doubt to be his skeleton confirms that he suffered from curvature of the spine.)

Interestingly, the theatre’s artistic director has been cast to play the king, and this has caused an uproar, after a professionally trained actor with a disability, posted on X: “Why is an artistic director of any theatre hiring themselves to play the lead when it’s not their casting or lived experience? Before anyone says it doesn’t matter, every time this happens more harm than good is done to disabled communities through misrepresentation.”

Let me first attempt to put this statement in context. In recent years, at least two English theatre companies, and one Australian, have cast disabled actors as Richard. (Unfortunately, I do not know whether all three actors suffer from scoliosis – Richard’s specific condition – or other disabilities.) At the same time, at least two major productions have starred non-disabled actors.

I feel I should tread carefully here. Not being disabled, I am perhaps not really entitled to talk about this topic. However, it does seem to me that this is a slippery slope. If only disabled actors can play disabled roles, because only they have the requisite ‘lived experience’, then perhaps only blacks can play Othello, or, since Othello is a moor, perhaps only North Africans can play him. Or, given that Othello has risen to a commanding position in the Venetian army, perhaps only Colin Powell can play him. Can only Jews play Shylock? Can only gay actors play gay parts?

And, if this is so, then presumably only straight actors can play straight parts, and only white actors can play white parts. It is usually at this point that the second purpose of this campaign is articulated. The disabled acting community is under-represented onstage. Disabled roles should be reserved for disabled actors as a form of positive discrimination, to redress an unjust imbalance. In the same way, black roles should be reserved for black actors.

Oedipus, of course, poses a particularly tricky challenge, since he blinds himself midway through Sophocles’ tragedy. Perhaps he needs to be played by a sighted actor before the blinding, and a blind actor afterwards.

You may have detected a certain tetchiness in my tone over the last paragraphs. This is brought on by my clearly unfashionable belief that the essence of acting is the ability to imagine an experience that is not one’s own lived experience. This is the magic, the alchemy, of acting. Rock Hudon convinced us that he was sexually attracted to Doris Day just as successfully as Anthony Hopkins convinced us that he enjoyed eating human flesh. John Hurt in Elephant Man, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man…

Oh, this is ridiculous! Almost any actor you have ever seen, playing any part you have ever seen them playing, convinces by imagination and empathy, not by identical experience. Through that remarkable alchemy, a successful performance allows the audience to feel the emotion, and share the lived experience, as well. Somewhere in there is, perhaps, as good a definition as any of art.

The logical consequence of believing that only a disabled actor can portray a disabled character, because only a disabled actor has the lived experience, is that only a disabled theatregoer can identify with a disabled character, because only a disabled theatregoer has the lived experience. Theatre is, in that case, both unnecessary and ineffective. (I happen to believe that isn’t the case.)

Not the least absurd part of this whole argument about the Globe’s casting is that scoliosis is arguably not the only, and possibly not even the most blatant, of the casting director’s perceived inappropriatenesses to play the role. This particular casting director is not, I have it on good authority, a murderer of inconvenient nephews, nor is she, as it happens, a man. However, in modern Britain, nobody argues (at least not aloud) that Michelle Terry does not have the ‘lived experience’ to play a man.

Having watched Tamsin Greig play Malvolio in Twelfth Night, I can say that I find no compelling reason why a woman cannot play a part written for a man. I certainly enjoyed her performance, and the production. In a different way, the casting of black actor Lucian Msamati as Salieri in Amadeus made immediately apparent how isolated and out of place the Italian composer was in the cosy, German-speaking, Viennese court.

Inevitably, casting against the obvious externals of the part sets the audience thinking about any significance. I am not certain how far an audience (let me rephrase that: I am not certain how far I) can be colour-, gender-, height-, physical-attribute-blind. Perhaps, if the current practice continues of casting with no regard to these externals, we will all become blind to these externals. I can only hope to be watching theatre long enough to find out.

Photo Note: As I explained last week, I won’t be posting any more photos of the grandkids on this very public platform. However, a few of you have expressed a desire to continue seeing photos. I thought I might create a quiet WhatsApp group and send out photos every couple of weeks. If you’d like to be included, please WhatsApp me (+972-052-8651-591). Please mention your name, so that I know I’m confining the group to bona fide followers. Please don’t feel awkward if you feel no desire to see more photos of my grandchildren. I have no real desire to see photos of yours, so I quite understand.

Week 17, Monday

For those of you who have had enough of me writing about ‘the situation’, good news: so have I (at least temporarily). For those who want more, let me point you (not for the first time) to the man who, more than any other, makes me feel that anything I have to say is less thoroughly researched, less insightful, less well-expressed than anything he has to say. Daniel Gordis offers a substack (whatever that is) also available as a podcast, entitled Israel from the Inside.

Click the link in the previous paragraph to read all about it, and read it, and even subscribe to it. In normal times, it provides a fresh and wide-ranging dip into anything of interest culturally, socially, politically, academically, scientifically – anythingly really – in Israeli life. (Since October 7, it has, naturally, reflected Israel’s almost exclusive focus on current events.) Its own blurb states, accurately: ‘Israel from the Inside is for people who want to understand Israel with nuance, who believe that Israel is neither hopelessly flawed and illegitimate, nor beyond critique. If thoughtful analysis of Israel and its people interests you, welcome!’ While aimed primarily at American Jews, it is relevant and accessible to everyone, and I highly recommend it.

74 Today

It may have slipped under your radar that today (or yesterday, as it will be tomorrow when I send this out) is (or was) my 74^th birthday. I was planning to celebrate by sharing with you some fascinating facts about notable 74s. When I started researching (which is a rather grand term for Googling) 74s, I soon discovered that 74 is the number of different non-Hamiltonian polyhedra with a minimum number of vertices. This looked promising!

In a previous existence, when I was at college studying to become an English teacher, I was required to take a second subject. I opted for maths, having eliminated all of the options that didn’t appeal to me, and, as part of my coursework, I completed a project on regular polyhedra, which included building models from stiff card of all of the stellated regular polyhedral. (A polyhedron is stellated by extending the edges or face planes of the polyhedron until they meet again to form a new polyhedron or compound.) Here, for example, is a stellated dodecahedron.

 So, non-Hamiltonian polyhedra sounded promising. All that I was missing was the faintest idea of what the hell a non-Hamiltonian polyhedron was. A little further delving clarified the issue. Non-Hamiltonian polyhedra are polyhedra that are not Hamiltonian. Well, who would have thunk it!

All that I was now missing was the faintest idea of what the hell a Hamiltonian polyhedron was. A little further delving clarified the issue. A ‘Hamiltonian’, I learnt, is a function that is used to describe a dynamic system (such as the motion of a particle) in terms of components of momentum and coordinates of space and time and that is equal to the total energy of the system when time is not explicitly part of the function.

Not yet entirely daunted (although the amount of daunt I had left was rapidly shrinking), I felt my heart leap as I read the dictionary’s final laconic instruction: ‘Compare Lagrangian’. ‘Well, this looks promising’, I thought. Lagrange I did at least recognise as the name of an 18^th Century mathematician, The definition of ‘Lagrangian’, I discovered, is: ‘a function that describes the state of a dynamic system in terms of position coordinates and their time derivatives and that is equal to the difference between the potential energy and kinetic energy’.

Increasingly, in recent years, I find that there comes a point in some of my research where I realise that Google has a lot more in common with Hampton Court maze than is first apparent. I felt that I had reached that point, and decided to look for other, equally fascinating, but less abstruse, 74s.

So, how about this? What is the definition of a hurricane (or, indeed, a typhoon)? It is a system with sustained winds of at least 74 mph. How, you are doubtless asking, did they arrive at this precise number? The only explanation I can find is that this figure is chosen on the Beaufort scale because it ‘represents the point at which the storm’s wind speeds become strong enough to cause significant damage to property and pose a threat to human life. Even so, the decision to opt for 74 rather than the more rounded 75 seems bizarre. Converting to kph or even knots (119 and 64 respectively) sheds no further light on the puzzle. Another mystery of life unsolved.

My final, desperate attempt to find something interesting to say about 74 is this. A ‘seventy four’ was, so I gather, a third-rate warship with 74 guns. This definition aroused my interest. I found it difficult to imagine His Majesty’s Navy being so self-deprecating as to describe one of its models of warship as ‘third-rate’.

This was, of course, in the days before British warships bumped into each other, as happened nine days ago in a Bahrain port, when HMS Chiddingfold reversed into HMS Bangor, apparently creating a large hole in the unfortunately named Bangor’s hull. Rear Admiral Edward Ahlgren sounded, to be frank, less than reassuring when he stated that while a full and thorough investigation is conducted, “the UK will continue to play a key part in ensuring the safety of merchant shipping in the region.” It would be petty to point out that the Royal Navy appears to be unable to ensure the safety of even its own shipping.

But I digress! Back to those third-rate warships. In the rating system of the Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). A second rate had more guns and a third deck, while a first rate had even more guns, although no more decks. The Navy maintained a hierarchical system of six “ratings” in all, based on size and firepower.

Ironically, the third-rate warships proved to be what we would term ‘first-rate’, since they represented an excellent balance between firepower and sailing qualities. These third-rate warships formed the mainstay of most major fleets in Europe until well into the 19th Century.

So, the mystery remains of why we persist in regarding third-rate as reflecting a ranking of quality rather than being purely descriptive and not judgmental.

And that, dear reader, is about all of the most interesting stuff about 74, so you can imagine what the least interesting stuff is like! I have to say that, so far, 74, for me, doesn’t feel strikingly different from 73. Personally, I’ll certainly settle for more of the same as I enjoyed when I was 73. We are all, of course, wishing for a better year nationally, regionally and globally, but that’s another story that I’m trying not to think too much about for this one day at least.

Editor’s wife’s footnote: I’ve just realised why this post isn’t very satisfying. It’s not at all personal; there’s nothing of David in it.

Editor’s footnote: Bernice is, of course, right, as always. I promise to try harder next week, but it’s now 8:52 on Tuesday morning, so I’m cutting it a bit fine for a complete rewrite, even with my track record of finishing homework on the bus to school.

Wot? No Photos!?

Although I have been vaguely aware of deepfake for some time, an article in The Times one day last week made me much more conscious of deepfake’s invasive reach and ugliness. Apparently, facial images are being lifted from social media and faked onto actors’ bodies in pornographic and paedophile videos.

Over the day after we both read this article, Bernice and I each independently started thinking about this, and when Bernice suggested to me a day or two later that I should stop posting photos of our grandsons, I had already reached the same conclusion. To recognise that this is what the world has come to, and that there seems to be no concerted effort to find a way back, is a depressing thing to think about on your 74th birthday, but it is what it is.

Week 16: Monday

Can We Win the War, or Have We Already Lost It?

I don’t have much in the way of good news to share on the national front this week. Indeed, at this stage it is not easy to imagine what might constitute good news. As one week gives way to the next, the declared (indeed, originally proclaimed) aims of the war – to bring home the abductees and to eliminate Hamas – seem less and less realistic.

As someone wrote about an earlier round of fighting in Gaza: ‘The public invariably expects the government to continue the battle and “flatten Gaza,” believing that with enough punishment the Hamas regime would collapse. Yet that would only happen if we sent in the army. The casualties would mount: many hundreds on the Israeli side and many thousands on the Palestinian side. Did I really want to tie down the IDF in Gaza for years when we had to deal with Iran and a possible Syrian front? (The someone was Netanyahu, in his autobiography.) Is the country ready for the daily rollcall of fallen soldiers – on a good day, one; on a particularly bad day last week, nine – to continue for years?

Note: It’s now Tuesday morning. When I wrote that last sentence yesterday, my heart sank as I typed ‘nine’. When I came out of shul this morning and caught the news headline, I wept: since last night, 24 reservists have died. Of those 24, 21 were in the process of mining two buildings used by terrorists close to the border, in preparation for their demolition; the buildings suffered a direct hit from an RPG, which triggered the mines, and the buildings collapsed on the soldiers. Is the country ready for this to continue for years? On the other hand, do we have any option? May their memories be for a blessing, and may their deaths prove not to have been in vain.

As for the hostages, the feeling is growing that it is unlikely that they can be brought home. This is a feeling that was for some time unspoken, but now, tellingly, is being articulated in the media as well as on the street. A prominent radio pundit last week baldly stated that it is completely unrealistic to think in terms of an Entebbe-type military rescue. The conditions under which the abductees are undoubtedly being held, the alertness of their captors, and the complexity of the terrain in which they are being held, all confirm what he said.

As for negotiating their return, it now appears that Hamas is not interested in the release of security prisoners (which, if Netanyahu were to agree to it, would probably bring about the collapse of his coalition). Instead, they are looking for a protracted ceasefire – possibly over 50 days – with a staged release of all of the abductees in return for increased humanitarian aid,

These conditions would, of course, allow Hamas to regroup, repair and recruit. Resuming hostilities after such a break would be, for Israel, like starting from square one again, All of our fallen soldiers to that point would have died for nothing. Not resuming hostilities would, of course, make their sacrifice seem even emptier.

Add to all this the fact that a significant number of the abductees are probably already dead, with more liable to succumb with every week that passes. This horrible situation offers no glimmer of hope that I can see.

Meanwhile, on the Northern front, it can be convincingly argued that Hizbollah has already won the war that officially has not started. They have advanced from North of the Litani river (as per international agreement) to the very border with Israel. The buffer zone has now moved from Southern Lebanon to Northern Israel. With almost 100,000 Israelis evacuated from Northern Israel, and with no indication of when, if ever, they might feel able to return, Hizbollah has effectively taken territory from Israel to a depth of several kilometres south of the border.

Can We Start Again?

Before turning my attention to other matters, let me leave you with a flicker of better news. Like the first saplings emerging in a forest ravaged by fire, here and there are signs of a possible direction for Israel’s political future. I heard today on the radio of a grassroots initiative to create a dialogue between religious and secular elements in Israeli society to explore common ground in the hope of being able to agree on a shared vision for Israel. There are, from various directions, calls for entirely fresh faces to enter the political arena: leaders of industry, organisers of voluntary initiatives, social activists.

Meanwhile, on Another Planet…(It Sometimes Seems)

Every now and again some philistine argues that state education should focus on ‘real’ subjects (like sciences and maths), instead of wasting time on ‘soft’ subjects like music and art. This month, the power of the arts has been demonstrated resoundingly in Britain…and Zichron Ya’akov.

Let’s start with the big story. (Those of you who live in Britain can safely skip the next three paragraphs.)

Between 1999 and 2015 an estimated 4,000 branch owner-managers at the Post Office were accused of wrongdoing after faulty IT software showed errors in their accounts. Many were sacked, chased for money, or accused of crimes such as false accounting, fraud or theft. As many as 900 were prosecuted and 236 sent to prison. Others were ordered to pay back substantial sums, leaving them financially ruined. Some of the accused have died without clearing their names, at least four are known to have committed suicide and others have been shunned after being convicted.

Horizon was the largest non-military IT system in the world in operation at the time and had been designed to deal with transactions, accounting and stock taking. It covered each of the 20,000 Post Office branches in the UK. From early on, many workers continually reported bugs in the system, with unexplained shortfalls in their accounts, but these were ignored. The Post Office allowed many of these workers to think they were the only one reporting faults.

In 2009, after being contacted by seven postmasters, the website Computer Weekly ran an article detailing their struggles with the system. It led to the formation of a campaign group, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), which began talking to MPs and fighting in the courts. Eventually, the High Court ruled that there were IT problems in the system, the Post Office apologised for the suffering caused, 10% of convictions were quashed and, in 2021, a full public inquiry was initiated.

However, all of this was much too little, and, for many involved, much too late. Despite the very real concerns being in the public domain, the powers-that-be seemed to still be wishing the story would go away, and stalling.

Then, in the first week of January this year, the mainstream TV station ITV aired a four-part dramatization of the postmasters’ struggle for justice, with the title Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Overnight, this changed the entire status of this story. Within days, the Government announced that a new law would be passed “within weeks” to achieve a blanket overturning of convictions, the former Post Office boss returned her CBE (a middle-order rank within the British Honours system), and the public outcry generated new interest in the case on the part of the police, the public inquiry and the press.

There is a long tradition of British television drama exposing injustices. The first prominent example is probably Cathy Come Home, which was a 1966 BBC television play about homelessness, unemployment, and a mother’s right to keep her children, topics that were not until then widely discussed in the media. The play produced a storm of phone calls to the BBC, and discussion in Parliament. For years afterwards Carol White (who played Cathy) was stopped in the street by people pressing money into her hand, convinced she must be actually homeless.

In 1990, the TV film Who Bombed Birmingham raised serious doubts as to the guilt of the Birmingham Six, six Irishmen who had been sentenced to life in prison in 1975 after two IRA bombs went off at pubs in Birmingham, killing 21 people.  The film led to their subsequent release after 17 years of wrongful imprisonment. The film discredited the government’s most prominent forensic investigator and went as far as identifying the actual culprits.

Cathy Come Home was watched on its first broadcast by 12 million people, a quarter of the British population. In 1966, when Britain had only two television channels, such an audience size was impressive, but understandable. In 2024, the British public’s home viewing options seem almost infinite. The average viewing figures across the four episodes of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, of over 9.8 million, are therefore arguably even more impressive.

The question I have been asking myself is: How is it that a dramatization that presented no new facts, that did not, essentially, tell the public anything that they did not already know, succeeded in igniting a nation in this way? The answer, it seems to me, is that the sheer scale of the impact of this miscarriage of justice made it more difficult for people to conceptualise. Mr Bates vs The Post Office, as the title suggests, personalised the story. It focussed on an individual story (that of one victim, Jo Hamilton, and one – albeit the central – campaigner, Alan Bates) that served to represent the total picture.

This is, of course, part of the magic of drama: its ability to capture the universal in the particular. Viewers were able to identify with the plight of one victim and extrapolate from that, in a way that the story as reported in the media had failed to make them do.

At a time when funding of the arts in general is under attack in Britain and Israel, this month has given us a timely reminder that a healthy democracy needs a thriving and independent art culture, not least to ensure that stories that need to be heard are heard.

And Closer to Home

On a not dissimilar note, Raphael’s fancy has been taken in recent weeks by a charming book entitled What’s Cooking at 10 Market Street. Each flat in the eponymous brownstone is occupied by a family with a different ethnic cuisine, and each double page of the book visits one family to see what they are cooking, and includes a recipe. Raphael, who, it’s fair to say, is fascinated by food preparation, adores the book. Here is the double-spread devoted to the Pings, and their stir-fried broccoli.

Under the influence of this book, Raphael is now a great fan of broccoli. Such, dear reader, is the power of art.

Meanwhile, Tao seems to be fascinated by a very grand-looking cake at a friend’s recent birthday party, Ollie continues to find the world a really fun place, and Raphael really enjoys his new sponge paints.

Week 15: Monday

Yesterday marked 100 days, a figure which not only resonated here in Israel, obviously, but which also echoed worldwide, in a variety of ways. Most notably in Turkey, perhaps, where Sagiv Yehezkel, an Israeli footballer playing for local team Antalyaspor, dedicated to the hostages a goal he scored, displaying on a bandage on his hand the inked message ‘100 days 7.10.’ As a consequence, he was suspended by his team and detained by the police for questioning with regard to a possible charge of incitement against the state. We have just heard that he has been released by the police and is expected to be expelled from the country. (Update: he has landed safely back home.)

In South Africa, the Jewish captain of the national under-19 cricket team was relieved of the captaincy on the eve of the Cricket World Cup being hosted by South Africa ‘for fear of endangering his safety in the face of expected pro-Palestinian protests at the event’.

In Mauritania, the exhibition that an artist friend of ours was invited to make, after travelling in West Africa and painting what she saw, has been cancelled for fear of antisemitic and anti-Israeli demonstrations and a real worry that the gallery would be burned down if it displayed non-political paintings of West African scenes by an Israeli artist.

And, of course, in The Hague, the International Court of Justice is trying Israel for genocide. Israel agreeing to this Orwellian trial is either a very smart or a very stupid move.

The statement from the German Government spokesman, when discussing his country’s request for third-party status at the hearing, was very encouraging: “In light of German history and the crimes against humanity of the Shoah, the German government is particularly committed to the [UN] Genocide Convention…We stand firmly against a political instrumentalization [of the Convention]… The German government decisively and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice.”

David Cameron, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, when asked whether he thought Israel has a case to answer in the ICJ, stated: “No, I absolutely don’t. I think the South African action is wrong, I take the view that Israel is acting in self-defence after the appalling attack on October 7… To say that that country, that leadership, that armed forces…have intent to commit genocide, I think that is nonsense.

The US has stated that the allegations against Israel “are unfounded” and has called the submission at the ICJ “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

So far, so good. Naturally, the hearing also gives Israel an opportunity to make its case before a world audience that may find it difficult to ignore that case. While many of the ears Israel’s presentation of its case falls on will doubtless be deaf, there may be others that are prepared to listen.

The make-up of the justices hearing the case suggests that South Africa’s claim may even be rejected. While the judges do not represent their governments but are independent magistrates, nobody is under any illusions that Iran and its axis of evil partners will be swayed by Israel’s arguments. However, among the nationalities of the judges are several whose governments are not irrevocably hostile to Israel.

The 15 permanent judges hail from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, Russia, Slovakia, Somalia, Uganda, and the United States. In addition, the parties to the hearing (South Africa and Israel) are each allowed to nominate a judge. It is not impossible to imagine a scenario where that panel votes 8-7 to reject the South African claim of genocide.

As I remarked to Bernice the other day, either the claim is rejected, which will be a good thing, or we will have an even clearer understanding of who our enemies are, which will be a good thing.

Meanwhile, in today’s (Monday’s) Jerusalem Post, Senior Editor David Brinn makes the excellent point that the slogan ‘Bring Them Home Now’ implies that the obstacle to the return of the hostages is our government or our army. Of course, this is not true. “The enemy is Hamas, and they would like nothing more than for the internal struggles that gripped Israel before October 7 to reemerge as a dominant force, with blame replacing unity as the primary fuel running the country… Hamas…could spare their people unimaginable suffering by simply doing one thing:” releasing the hostages. That, argues Brinn, needs to be the slogan going forward. Let us call on Hamas to ‘Let Our People Go!’ He makes a lot of sense.

Happy Talky Talky

After due reflection, we have come to the conclusion that we are a family for whom language matters, and one of the joys of this visit has been observing the language skills of all three of the boys.

Tao has spent most of his first four years with his parents, both of whom – Micha’el in English, Tslil in Hebrew – have avoided talking childishly to him. He also seems to have inherited his parents’ relish for language and his father’s ear. As a result, his command of English is very impressive. This obviously includes a mature vocabulary, but also an ear for accents.

Exposure to American children’s videos means that for his own imaginative play, when he is pretending to be a super-hero (or, more often, a super-villain such as the Green Goblin or Dr Spooky), he speaks in a pretty convincing American accent and register. In addition, when he combines his language skills with his considerable negotiating skills, he is often able to persuade his parents to see his point of view on issues such as bedtime or food treats.

Tao’s Hebrew is not as strong as his English. Although Tslil is very disciplined about always speaking to him in Hebrew, he usually answers her in English. One considerable side-benefit for Tao of his visits to Israel is that his interactions with his mother’s family, and with children of friends, help his fluency and confidence in Hebrew.

While his Portuguese is currently very much his third language, this is something that will, naturally, become stronger in the years to come.

Ollie, on the other hand, gets by at the moment with basically one sound: the schwa. (This is the sound of the second ‘a’ in ‘America’ or the ‘e’ in ‘item’.) Remarkably, Ollie can use this single sound, in combination with a set of hand signals, head movements, and body postures, to convey almost anything he wants to express.

While he usually only verbalises this one sound, there is nothing that Ollie does not understand. Indeed, the gap between his listening comprehension and his spoken expression sometimes seems ridiculously large. However, Bernice keeps reminding me that Micha’el did not speak until he was almost three (since when, of course, he hasn’t stopped).

What is slightly surprising, given his current limited range of speech, is that Ollie is quick to mimic, and has a good ear for mimicking, sounds that he hears. His animal sounds are very good; he quickly copied my tongue-clicking when I was imitating a horse’s clippety-clop; he adopted his brother’s raspberry blowing depressingly quickly; and, when Tao blew through a long tube and produced a note something like that from a shofar, Ollie immediately reproduced a remarkably similar sound without any tube or other artificial aid.

On our weekly visits to Zichron, we of course have the opportunity to see Raphael’s progress, in language acquisition. Like Ollie, he understands everything, and, unlike Ollie, he has a rapidly-growing vocabulary. While he very much favoured English until a couple of months ago, the influence of his gan has brought his Hebrew on tremendously (not least with such phrases as “בא לי” (I’d like…) or even, occasionally, “לא בא לי” (“Don’t want to). Paradoxically, what was always “מים” has now, for some reason, become “water”. He has also now graduated from a generic term that covered both Esther and Maayan to referring to Esther exclusively as “Mummy” and Maayan exclusively as “אמא” (Ima).

In addition, Raphael is now moving from single word statements to two- and three-word sentences, which he does not really appear to find quite as exciting a development as I do. Indeed, rather like his, and Ollie’s, ever-advancing walking skills, he seems to take it all in his stride.

As always, to spend any time with young children is to stand in awe of how they achieve what they achieve, at what speed, and with what apparent lack of effort.

A House Full of Action…and Then It Wasn’t

From Shabbat afternoon until Sunday morning, we had a houseful. Esther, Maayan and Raphael arrived to join Micha’el, Tslil, Tao and Ollie for a last overnighter. What a joy to see the three cousins interacting!

Then on Motzei Shabbat we had all the adult extended family round to see our lot, and for us to celebrate, very belatedly, Esther’s 40^th birthday. Uncharacteristically for us, the evening was marked by no formality: no speeches, no music, no presentations; just an opportunity for everyone to catch up and make a fuss of the three boys, all of whom stayed up and sociable way past their normal bedtimes.

The following morning, the kids somehow managed to keep the grandkids away from Nana until 8:30. When they could contain them no longer, they erupted into our bedroom, and we were soon up and into action. After Esther and family left mid-morning, Bernice and I spent the rest of the day with Tao and Ollie, while Micha’el and Tslil somehow managed to condense all of their varieties of stuff, including the many gifts the boys had been given by generous family and friends, into their cases and rucksacks.

This morning, after a last breakfast, and games, and stories, and one last puppet show from Nana (with Zippy – a shout-out to all the Rainbow fans among my readers), the taxi arrived at 9:45 and suddenly we were, once again, two old fogies banging around our suddenly huge house.

Games, toys, books, trikes, baby chairs, floormats, kids’ table and chair were all stowed away in record time. Birthday banners and balloons were taken down; floors were swept; kinetic sand was cleaned from Lego cars; marbles were retrieved from under sofas; the extraordinarily loud and aggravating battery-operated noise-maker toy that Micha’el and Tslil conveniently omitted to pack was discreetly disposed of. Finally, Bernice and I sat down to a quiet and leisurely breakfast.

…and in five weeks we fly off to Portugal.

Meanwhile, some photos, including a rare one of all three boys together (at Esther’s last week).