This is Melvin Jules Bukiet ‘s note paying tribute to his friend Allen Hoffman—writer, teacher and mentor in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. The Program honored Hoffman’s  retirement at the Tsuris and Other Literary Pleasures Conference, May 6-8, 2012.

 Linda Zisquit read notes of appreciation from some of the Program’s former visiting writers and friends: Bukiet, Mark Mirsky, Steve Stern and Sidra Ezrahi . Below are excerpts from Stern’s note.  Enjoy.

 …I had been frankly afraid to meet him. I’d read the stories (Kagan’s Superfecta and Other Stories, 1981. JL)—written in a language that fluctuated between a wise-cracking, street-savvy colloquial and the lyrical grace of the Psalms; it was a language that embraced extremes, passing from mood to mood in a single sentence with the deceptive ease of a pirouette on the flying trapeze. These were stories in which the smell of delicatessen and the stinky underwear of old men mingled with the scent wafting from Isaiah’s beard.

Stories in which gamblers, arsonists and survivors rub shoulders with angels, and Einstein Moses and Babe Ruth occupy the same turf at the same time; stories in which Uncle Maxie and the Messiah are interchangeable. And those sentences! To each of which the long train of tradition seemed to be attached, and yet, as if the tradition were the tail of a kite. Allen’s sentences remained lighter-than-air. I’d read the novels (Small Worlds series, JL) that set about visiting every historical station along the entire trajectory of the Diaspora. Books whose essence constituted a marriage between the haimish and the sublime, a wedding at which all the guests trafficked in magic. I read and thought: God help me; this guy’s the real thing. Having poached for years from those provinces of the sacred and profane that Allen Hoffman bestrode, I thought: he’s going to unmask me for the amateur that I am. He’ll make me eat every page I’ve ever written.

So I wasn’t prepared to meet the prince of menschlikeit. More than tolerating me, he embraced me like I might be Elijah in disguise, made me feel I was welcome to continue stealing fruit from the orchard wherein he dwelled. Still I was on my guard. I mean, the guy was formidable, a force of nature, with the energy and ready wit of a Borscht Belt tumbler spouting jokes fresh and stale from the eye of a hurricane. So accustomed did I become to his humor that only later did I realize how his jokes were disguised midrashim, how he leavened with laughter the wisdom he so casually imparted. And Lord, was he learned! He quoted Talmud and baseball stats with equal fluency, modulating his conversation between the Western canon—from Don Quixote to Don Drysdale—and the table talk of rabbis both ancient and still kicking. A tireless performer, he was a listener as well, and I think that I’d never been taken so seriously. But there was the rub: because to be in Allen’s company was to have to take one’s self seriously, and to assume the responsibilities attendant upon that humbling experience.

Whereas I was busy playing at being an obsessed and self-absorbed scribe, Allen was much more ambitious: he had undertaken to be a good man. An artist to be sure, he was equally committed to being a father, husband, teacher and friend. Go figure. The cliché is to say that Allen Hoffman lives in two worlds—past and present, earth and air, and so on. But that’s not really the case; because for Allen there’s no commute between worlds; antiquity and the current moment inhabit the same place and time. He lives in the Old City of Jerusalem as it was and as it is; myth and reality coexist in a timeless harmony….To sit at his Shabbos table is to be situated at once in the bosom of a family while at the same time participating in a séance at which David and Ezekiel persist in tapping the table. I’ve never known anyone whose nature combines in such equal portions the messy terrestrial and the giddy atmosphere of the upper Eden.

… Let my voice join the chorus; heap praises upon his hoary head and let them rain down upon his dandruff-sprinkled shoulders until he kvells to bursting and hemorrhages internally from overmuch affection. I haven’t seen Allen in several years, yet he’s become an irrepressible facet of my consciousness, part conscience, part guardian angel. There’s nobody like him. God bless his incandescent pupik.

The yoga retreat in Clil with Sandra Sabatini enlivened not only the spine, but also the ears. Sink-a your foot-a into the ground-a, sang the Italian white-haired woman. Her song erased any strain on the coccyx, my spine straight as a cedar overlooking the Mediterranean forest, sea and sky.

 At Sandra’s instruction, I massaged the back of a woman who told me she was from Beit Lechem. Since we were in the Galilee, I assumed she was from Beit Lechem Haglilit. But no, Nahed was from the original Bethlehem. This made everything Sandra said about the ground more meaningful. In yoga, the ground has no borders; it is neither holy nor profane,  Jewish nor Arab. Rather, the ground is the place where we meet  gravity, that invisible force that pulls us to earth. Gravity behaves equally towards all humans, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.

Nahed, it turns out, like most of the other participants in the yoga retreat, was a yoga instructor.  My daughter and I were beginners, but because we both have two feet planted firmly on the common ground, we did not feel inept. Gravity loves beginners as well as the advanced.

I offered Nahed a ride back to Jerusalem after the retreat. During our three hour drive  we decided how to end the occupation: through yoga and creative writing.

On the following day I floated into Bar-Ilan University for the opening of the conference I had organized: Tsuris and Other Literary Pleasures. I stood solidly as a cypress, never once fearing I might fly away. Nothing swayed me left or right – not an angry cabbie, lost key, dirty carpet or broken mike. I was so cool people thought I was stoned.

It’s my spine, I explained. It’s holding me up. Those who didn’t understand got the following explanation: Gravity is pulling me down, so my head can soar upwards. Quite miraculous, no?  When the caterer tried to push me over, I breathed in through my stomach, held the air for a second at the top of my head and blew out into his face, cleansing my body. He turned to jello.

The conference was an enormous success. Everyone commented how smoothly it went. I didn’t tell them it was because-a I was sinking  my feet-a into the ground-a.

So you can understand why I said Yes as soon as my daughter suggested I join her for a three-day yoga retreat right before the conference up north in the tranquil Galilee at a place called Klil.  I’m going to drive three hours to a tent that overlooks mountains and Mediterranean so I can breathe deeply and relax. I’m taking my laptop with me in case there are last minute emergencies, but Klil probably doesn’t have wi-fi so I’ll have to drive to Nahariya to some coffee house and miss some yoga sessions.  I’m sure I’ll arrive home on Motzei Shabbat totally relaxed after a three hour drive down the coastal road with the rest of the half million Israelis who tiyul on Shabbat in the north and all go home together, relaxed, to start another week.

See why I haven’t blogged for so long? My mind is racing. I have to empty it in Klil. I’ve written several blogposts in my head and some might even make it to the page. I’ve thought about my moving to Times of Israel and now want to move back home after only three posts there. This reminds me of my daughter, who when she was thirteen went to summer camp for a month and returned after a week. It took me a long time to realize, to really get how different my daughter is from me. When I was thirteen, I went to summer camp for eight weeks and could have spent the whole year there.  We’re very different, even though we both have left places quickly, before giving them, or us, a chance. For years I couldn’t see how different we were  because I was so caught up in myself. Now I see.  We’ve come a long way, my daughter and I. Tomorrow we’re going to do yoga together for three days in the Galilee. Is this not cause for rejoicing?

The blog will return home to writeinisrael dot com. Hurray! I will call it a boutique blog with irregular hours. The conference will end. The guests will return to their homes abroad and wonder why that organizer was so uptight. Didn’t she know how to relax?   I will call my daughter on the phone and we’ll laugh and cry and devote a few seconds to trying to remember what the yoga teacher said about practicing that funny word. What was it? Yam?  Yum? 

“Tsuris,” she’ll say.

For full Tsuris see http://english.biu.ac.il/creative-writing/361

To read more, go to http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/finding-shelter-in-the-writing-workshop

 In a family of five, one is always an outsider. This is the child who shies away from the camera, goes abroad and stays.  Often it’s the middle child; she can’t find her place. The eldest has a role; the baby takes center stage. The middle one is neither this nor that. So who can she be? Annie Oakley? A  Zionist?

How many new immigrants in their twenties are middle children? All their lives they search for a home, often unconsciously. Then they visit Israel and something clicks. Nobody else in the family even entertains the fantasy of actually leaving their American birthplace. Israel was created for the downtrodden Jews (so Rabbi Silver taught), the ones with nowhere else to go. But the outsider child finds a home on the edge of a desert. This makes her unique. She could be earning below minimum wage as a waitress in a filthy Jerusalem restaurant, her BA with honors in American Culture stashed in a moldy box under her (rental) bed, but she’s Living In Israel!

After the initial shock, her parents are proud. She has joined the downtrodden people to, if not exactly make the desert bloom, at least serve kubeh soup and humus to American tourists.

Does this make her a Zionist? During her first three months in the country, she bought the book The Zionist Idea and even read most of it. She also read Amos Elon’s Herzl and cried when in 1898 young Jewish men on horses galloped to greet their savior, Theodore Herzl, on the outskirts of Rishon L’Zion. But is she a Zionist? Does she believe? Did she throw in her hat with the Fate of the Jewish People?  Does she love the Jewish People and does she have to or was she just trying to solve her own unconscious problem of her place in the family?

Fortunately, now she has criteria to measure her Zionist identity, thanks to the Minister of Education Gideon Sa’ar. He wants all Israeli children to learn that a Zionist is someone who settles (and is then removed from) Gush Katif. A Zionist is someone who believes that God gave the West Bank to the Jews and therefore they have every right in the world to build their homes on every mountain top and pray under every leafy tree, even if said top or tree belongs to the Other.  

The Other? What’s that, ask the fervent downtrodden Jews in Israel.   Only Jews are the downtrodden. Only Jews suffered more than anyone else and longer. Only Jews are God’s wandering pathetic impotent helpless vulnerable Chosen People and as such, are entitled to spit on the rest of the world.

The new immigrant, now an old immigrant, has had time to ponder these things and search her soul. She has outgrown seeing herself as the marginal child, the lost victim. Now she values her nuclear family of five, accepts her parents with all their strengths and weaknesses. She no longer accepts the role of helpless victim in a downtrodden people. She values the concept of home and believes all people should have one.

She built one in Israel, but, according to the current government, this no longer makes her a Zionist.  

Read more at http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/first-jewish-memory-seeks-home/

Jeremiah parked his van at the end of Haelah Street in Moshav Beit Zayit. He locked the door to his van and walked …   

To read the complete story, go to http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-key-on-the-almond-branch/

To read the full prayer, go to http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-writing-workshoppers-prayer/

 I like the banner on my web site, my photo of a piece of Palestinian embroidery from a dress I bought in the Old City in 1968. I like the writing implements on the right side  of the banner, sitting in a cup (which you can’t see because my talented daughter cropped it.) The cup was a gift for my fifth birthday. Certainly you must have noticed by now that one of the writing implements is a kulmus. That’s a Greek word for a pen made from a reed. The kulmus, like the feather of a kosher bird, is deemed kosher for writing mezuzot and Torah scrolls. I like the fact that this particular kulmus has accompanied me from my days as a guide at Neot Kedumim, The Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel  (1993-2000) straight into the digital age of blogging. If I join the The Times blog page, I will have to leave these images behind.

Moving to The Times, should I decide to do so, is like taking the blog out of the country and sticking it in an office on the 44^th floor of a hi-rise building on a block with twelve other hi-rises in the midst of a bustling city. The blog looks out the window and sees only windows and more blogs, while today, when it looks out the window,  it sees vineyards, blossoming almonds and pines.   

View from Write In Israel

 The Times of Israel aspires to be a serious online daily.  One of my favorite writers, Mitch Ginsburg, is the military correspondent over there.  I love the fact that the military correspondent writes and translates fiction in his spare time, of which he will have little now that he has taken this job.

If I decide to blog with The Times, the blog editor will need a photo of my face. I can’t decide which image I would like to offer my potential new anonymous public. Should I let my hair hang over half my face — the right side with all the pock marks from adolescence — giving the impression of a mysterious ingénue? Or should I pull my hair back with conservative barrettes and play the wise old gray-haired woman? Should I smile or sneer? These are serious considerations.  

If I decide to move, it will be hard to say good-bye to my baby blog. It’s still learning to walk. Who will pick it up over there at The Times?

All these concerns prevented me from giving a spontaneous Yes to the blog editor when we spoke last week. I know The Times needs women bloggers and they probably need bloggers to represent the over sixty-five crowd and they certainly need bloggers who do not voice opinions on Iran, anti-Semitism and strawberries.  They want bloggers who react to their inner conflicts rather than geo-political, macro-economic and international conflicts. Still, do I want to fill the gap of soft news?   

And then there’s the problem of fame. I’d hate to be driven to drugs like Whitney Houston and end my career in a Beverly Hills bathtub. Somehow, staying in the woods outside Jerusalem and keeping a low profile (about forty-four meters below the rader) suits me.

 Then again, isn’t a writer supposed to want a large audience? If I don’t crave a large audience, am I still a writer? Can I learn to accept having more than 120 readers?

So goes my ambivalence. I share it with you today just in case I decide by the next post to cross over. Should that happen, you will receive the first two sentences of a blog post from writeinisrael.com followed by the line: To read the rest of this blog, click www.timesofisrael.com  If that should happen, know that I will always remain faithful to you, my first readers.

     Under the other ledge for filling out requests lay another well-used Book of Psalms, this one black and clean. I wondered if someone had lost these books or if the Income Tax Authority, perchance, had strategically placed this reading material for the anxious public waiting in line for assessment. I was #175.  #132 had not yet been called.  That’s  a waiting period of  6-10 psalms, I calculated, in Jerusalem’s temple of calculations.

     I gave both books to the young woman handing out the queue numbers and directing people to a working photocopy machine on the 2^nd floor. (Tip: Whenever you go to the Income Tax Authority, take photocopies of your last salary slips. The in-house photocopy machine is often out of order.) The young woman didn’t know who owned the holy books which led me to believe she had not placed them there. She suggested I leave them on the counter above her desk, confident their rightful owners would return.

     Years ago when I was waiting for my get ceremony to begin at the divorce court of the Jerusalem Rabbinate, I looked around the room for reading material.  The tables were empty, save for one Book of Psalms. I opened it randomly and began reading.

     A week before the visit to the Income Tax Authority, I was present at a medical procedure carried out on the body of a person I love. The officiating doctor joked while he worked and before I knew it, we were walking out of the treatment room as another patient walked in. For the first time in my life, I felt the need for Psalms. I wanted to pray and thank and beseech and bless, but there was not 1 Book of Psalms on the 4 tables in the hospital waiting room. Magazines on design and home, fashion and food lay scattered around the waiting room, but the moment called for something more. I wanted lines of poetry with no specific connection to 2012. I sought rhythms that had survived  centuries and styles. I needed words like the ax that cut through “the frozen sea in us.”

     Yesterday I walked along the beach in Tel Aviv at 8 in the morning. Heavy gray clouds like mountain ranges invaded from the west. White waves rose like loud chords on the turquoise water. The sandy beach was nearly empty, save for a man facing the water doing Chi Quong. I walked to stand behind him, put down my purse and imitated his movements. Two or three other people joined the silent group. The waves became violent  and the clouds darker. Winds picked up as we moved our arms and torsos in a stationary backstroke. I cleared my mind of thoughts about the night before, the breakfast to come, the afternoon visit. I became rooted movement in a whorl of movement, a stone in a storm.

      Another moment, I thought, for Psalms.