Provision

I crossed the road to the beach in front of my apartment building with no specific aim or purpose. As I strolled up and down sand, I was struck by the abundance of fruit and vegetables that had washed up. Here a yellow onion, there a cob of maize, then a small bunch of plump green grapes, an orange. A kohlrabi, another onion (this time purple), and some indeterminate greenery. A few ordinary pippins, and then, and then, the verdant green of a granny smith, well-knawed and thus much appreciated--the bite-marks a clear testimony to its flavour and quality.

I am reminded of a cab ride to work years ago, when the driver saw a sack of potatoes in the road ahead, and with great skill slowed down the van, opened his door, and snatched the spuds like an Afghan buzqashi player. The driver exclaimed the wonderful chips he was going to make that evening. One of the passengers, not excited himself about eating food found in the road, turned to the driver and said, "maybe someone hit a cow and it'll be lying in the road somewhere up ahead, and then you can have steak with your chips."

Provision!

Proximity Talks

Incessant stillness

Raging in a silent place

Dry, timeless, painful rage

A Very Special Welcome . . . Mat

Bibi, this doormat is suggested for your use. Please place it outside whatever room it is that you use to meet with envoys and potentates from the Golden West who come with thinly veiled threats and ponderous ultimata for the Jewish state concerning peace, borders, defence, walls, home-building, state-building, international law, and final solutions. Mr Prime Minister, make each and every one of them knows that this doormat was placed there just for them.

HEAVENLY SPOTLIGHTS: A Room with a View

One can see the most amazing things from the front window, without even having to rise from the recliner. Some use the giant, mind-numbing flatscreen tv as their window. Some prefer the rear window, and glimpses of wife-murderers and other mysteries. I'll stick with the front view. More edifying.

I haven't had a television most of my adult life, and didn't grow up with one in the family livingroom, as the centerpiece and gathering point of life in the house. This doesn't make me superior, or in any way wiser. There are more ways to be an idiot by choice than there are cable channels, and that's saying a lot. Just that Teleos-vision is more my style. The view of the sea and the sky from my window is a form of perfection, as in something complete, lacking nothing, whole in and of itself. I'd rather be attracted to the high places, the places of brightness and colour, than to those dank, spelunkian, torch-lite dungeons inhabited by television. True, by my own choice I have not plumbed the half-centimeter depths of the American sitcom, or the latest too clever British humour offering; I have never watched Albania's Got Talent! and I live without game shows. I am denied the pseudo-analytics of the polished but uneducated suits and hairdos of corporate altnewsland. The jabber-jabber of the pundit does not assail my ears.

I think I can live with this lack.

Or maybe I can live because of this lack . . .

Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird, it's a Plane, No, it's . . .

Magen David--Shield of David--struggling to form over Haifa on Yom Ha-Atzma'ut, Independence Day. But no, it is just light, and hardly even an imperfect Magen David. Imagination grasping at a suggestion based on a hint come out of an emotion. Mother Mary in a Marmite lid. Baba Sali in a dish of khoumous.

Yeah, something like that.

We all see what we want to see.

And some people want to see Signs from the Heavens. And miracles. And things of incorruptable, everlasting value.

Geez, some people!

THE 1942 WANSEE VILLA CONFERENCE IN BERLIN: The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem

DIE ENDLOSUNG, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. This was the subject of the Nazi conference at Wansee Villa, Berlin, on 20 January 1942. Mass murder was the solution of choice, notwithstanding the fact that nearly one million Jews were already dead by less systematic, inefficient means than were to be used later.

I am very sorry to report that, over the past month or so, I have heard a few of my fellow Israelis wonder if Obama has already had his own version of a secret Wansee Villa conference on a final solution to what is euphemistically called the Arab-Israel problem, and increasingly, the Israel problem. And starting to sound like a cynical reworking of the infamous Jewish Question. (Which once rated a Library of Congress subject heading all its own.)

Of course I am bound to admit that only a very few have uttered this fantastic notion. Surely this statistically irrelevent count means nothing? (Not that the establishment of truth is ever a popularity contest.) This is too much to accuse even an unfriendly American president of, is it not? The idea that the permanent solution to the so-called Arab-Israel problem is, for some leaders, such as Obama, part of an attempt at removing Israel by stages from the family of nations is unthinkable, or nearly so. Isn't it?

Shall we ask Mr Biden?

Say it ain't so Joe!

חג פסח שמח HAPPY PASSOVER

Burning the hometz (chametz, khometz etc), any food with levening in it, is an ancient Biblical commandment for the Feast week of Pessakh, or Passover. Not everyone goes through this ritual, but it is amazing how many do. The spiritual significance is great: yeasty things represent arrogance and puffery, whereas humility is a requisite for approaching God in a spirit of heart-felt gratitude during the Pessakh week. Humility is the basis for honesty in all the doings of man, secular or spiritual. Honesty is a way of life for all who fear God. God is the source for life itself.

Cleansing the soul by burning bits of bread and flour: A mere tradition, an arcane ritual from the ancient dawn of Semitic spiritual awakening? Or a remarkable moment for grasping reality?