WRITE IN ISRAEL

Hi there. Judy, here. Author of Our Names Do Not Appear. Fighting a cold in Tel Aviv and winning! That’s because I’m siding with my immune system and taking massive doses of pills that contain mushrooms, aged garlic and astragalus, in addition to going regularly to my acupuncture guru who has balanced my life. Now, though I know the Evil Eye is watching, I will declare that for the first time in recent history, a slight cold is not developing into something worse, but remains a slight cold. This, for me, is a victory and because this victory is accompanied by a burst of energy, I am going to write another short blog post about my astonishing and emotionally wrenching memoir, Our Names Do Not Appear.

In the last short blog post I wrote that I have been writing this book for thirty-four years. After reading about Helen Epstein’s new book, The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma, in Tablet Magazine, I realized that, thank G-d, I have not been writing the same book for thirty-four years. Rather, like Epstein, and unbeknownst to me at the time, I have written a trilogy. The first book in the trilogy was called Primary Sources. It is an exuberant book about a crazy Israeli psychologist delivering a talk in Cleveland, Ohio about a rare case of mixed identities. Readers have been riveted in their seats while reading this first book in what I have now come to call “the Joey trilogy.” Unfortunately, I was too busy to publish it and preferred to keep working and writing.

The second book was Diving Into Mount Zion, a braided-style tear-jerker, part travelogue from early pilgrims in the Holy Land and part pilgrimage to the inner interstices of my soul. A knockout of a book that exhausted me such that I had no strength left for the publishing game.

This third and final book, Our Names Do Not Appear, is the original story I wanted to tell back in 1985, but lacked both craft and maturity to do so. It is highly focused and multi-generic in the best sense of that word.

So thank-you, Helen Epstein, for helping me realize I have  written a trilogy. I just ordered The Long Half-Lives and look forward to reading it.

Hopefully, I will hear from “my”publisher by the end of January 2019. If it’s a go, I will force myself to stick to the self-aggrandizing short blog format. If it is not a go, I will be happy to tell you about my music theory lessons, piano lessons, dancing lessons, song writing and other creative endeavors I have discovered in miraculous Tel Aviv.

These endeavors do not demand new words. In a prescient and perspicacious move, I am preparing myself for when the brain plaques that have already formed in my brain start multiplying and my vocabulary shrinks to nothing, when I will revert to using the word “territory,” as my late mother did, for every time I refer to any place.

Until then, don’t forget: Judy Labensohn, author of Our Names Do Not Appear.  Not yet on sale anywhere.  Including Tel Aviv.

It’s my using your interest in my writing to share with you an on-line discussion in which I took part that appears here in The Brooklyn Rail, because I think it’s a fascinating discussion and always timely.

Thank you to Catherine Parnell, Senior Associate Editor of Consequence, An International Literary Magazine Focusing on the Culture of War, who initiated and edited the discussion, based on writers who appeared in the Tenth Anniversary Spring 2018 Issue of Consequence.

Google Consequence and/or Catherine Parnell for more details. I’m just glad I was able to create a link with “here” on a blog post. First time!!  I am such a late bloomer.

Thank you all for being faithful readers of WriteInIsrael.com.  Upcoming posts will probably be about my adventures in dancing with Galit Liss in a group of women 50 and older, and/or studying music theory at BPM in a group of mixed gender 30 and younger, and/or the Tel Aviv municipal elections in which I may vote for a young man who, like me, wants to get rid of automobiles in the city, encourage public transportation, better relations between Tel Aviv and Yafo, and MORE diversity, not less.

How’s that for leaving you breathless?

PS – If you live in a university town in the US, see if you can find the latest issue of Harpur Palate, a bi-annual literary magazine published by Binghamton University. (not Birmingham, you stupid British word checker!)  I have a piece in there called “Side Effects.” It describes the initial barriers that make it so hard for women to come forward and speak openly about sexual assault. We’ve come a long way since the ’50s, but we still have a long way to go.

Over the past five years I have let go of things I’ve loved. The first thing was television. I grew up on American TV from 1948, but I could not stand watching Israeli news delivered by men and women who commented on each item with  squints. Moreover, TV watching demanded sitting and, as a writer, I had enough sitting.

I let go of my car, a machine I once imagined was my key to freedom. Whenever I turned on the ignition, I became a monster, fighting for space on the road, swearing at strangers. Walking, riding a bike and taking buses felt  healthier. Moreover, driving demanded sitting and I had enough sitting.

Recently I stopped wearing earrings because it took me too long to find the holes that have been in my ears since 1960. I do not enjoy feeling incompetent, so I gave up earrings. No biggie.

I’ve given up all subscriptions to concerts, lectures and gyms. For classes, I only do those I can enter randomly on a ticket with ten entrances. There are always exceptions: “Songwriting” demanded a commitment of fourteen sessions. I complied and didn’t miss one. Should I ever be accepted into a modern dance troupe or rock band, I will sign up for life.

Last week I unsubscribed to thirty-five lists and newsletters that flooded my inbox daily. These mailings once made me feel popular, connected and needed. Lately, they made me feel lost. Without this clutter of  upcoming events in Vancouver, Berlin and Hebron, my chances of remembering why I approach the computer in the first place are greatly increased.

I have let go of the belief that western-trained doctors know what is best for me. I go along with such doctors only for diagnostic purposes. Then I turn East. Thus, I stopped taking statins and aspirin. The stars on most of my blood tests fall within the healthy parenthesis. The rebellious, wandering stars get treated with needles, ginger and supplements, and then, only half of the recommended dosage.  Naturopaths and acupuncturists have greatly improved my quality of life

Decades ago I let go of whites– sugar, flour and rice. For the fourteen years during which my mother deteriorated from Alzheimer’s, I became, in chronological order macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan and paleo. Since her death, I have regained balance by eating vegan at least four days a week and adding eggs, fish or cheese when necessary. Once a month I eat four kebabs and one hamburger when my son invites me to a cookout at his house. I will always take at least one bite of a pistachio cake, lemon meringue pie, or anything chocolate of 70% or higher

Coffee. I am on and off, but only before ten a.m.and only black with cardamom, ground in front of my eyes by Honi at 79 Jerusalem Blvd. in Jaffa.

I have let go of travel abroad because I have everything I need right here on the corner of Be’eri and Szold. Airplane travel seems like an assault on my healthy, aging, and only body. (A month of Jewish holidays may be the exceptional trigger, though, to get me to an airport.)

After letting go of so many things, I bought something that dramatically changed my life: a standing desk. This mechanical wonder also enables me to regress to the sitting position with a gentle clasp and clench of both still-functioning hands. My VARIDESK has become my Mercedes.

In a week, I plan to buy a simple keyboard so I can take up piano lessons where I left off in sixth grade. I want to advance to seventh grade, which was too hard at thirteen. Now I am motivated, because I want to create melodies for songs I write. If I can learn to harmonize too and all that complicated theory, which is like a new language, I will become very rich. Certainly, I will buy a sitting/standing base for the keyboard, so that I will be able to move my torso every thirty to forty-five minutes. I am confident that I will succeed because now I understand the value of practice. I learned it through Jeremiah (the prophet) when I celebrated by bat mitzvah at sixty-five. (After that, I pretty much let go of religion.)

Maybe my own letting go began not five or ten years ago, but twenty years ago, when I let go of a non-nourishing relationship. At that time I also gave up living in a house I owned. There’s another belief one can give up: private property.

For those of you not yet over seventy, know that getting old can be the best part of your life. Your fingers might hurt, your back buckle, and knees fail. Certain body parts will need an oil job, but if you nap and get 6-9 hours of sleep a night to renew your naturally fading resources, you can create your outer world to suit your inner needs.  Even in a world that is self-destructing, even in a democratic country turning into an autocratic one that makes you ashamed at least four days a week, well-being and renewal can be yours.

This wisdom is not new. It is only new when you discover it for yourself.

Letting go demands practice. Often I think I am preparing myself for the finish line, though I have no idea when or where that will be. When I get there, though, I know I will be ready. “…rich,” to quote Rebecca Solnit, “in loss.”

I sat at the bus stop waiting for the number 46, wavering if I would tell my hairdresser to give me a ‘hawk, given Tel Aviv’s rising humidity, when three teenage girls ran towards the station to grab shade. All three wore jean shorts that barely covered the tush. All three had long brown hair, one straight, one wavy and one curly. The straight-haired one sat next to me. The wavy one leaned against the glass wall of the bus station and the curly girl stood in front of us, grooming. With a brush she collected the layer of hair covering the top of her head, twisted it and wrapped it into a tight bun that sat on her head like a small crown. She held it in place with a brown band that she slipped from her wrist.

Come here, she commanded her leaning wavy friend. Let me look into your sunglasses. The friend stood up and positioned herself so the groomer could see her reflection in the friend’s sunglasses. It reminded me of another woman I had seen on the 239 bus last week. She was concentrating seriously on her cellphone screen and when I sat behind her I saw she was studying her face in real time on her phone’s camera.

After looking from all angles, the grooming girl undid the bun she had just made, lowered her head and flipped all her long curly gorgeous hair over her face with both arms. She succeeded in collecting the heavy mane into both hands, arranged it into a ponytail and proceeded to twist the mane into one large bun on top of her head like a ballerina. The band slipped off the wrist again to hold the hair and the girl asked her friend to position herself again for another look into her mirrored glasses.

She seemed satisfied, so pulled down the legs of her shorts, as if there was what to pull. Her crotch must have been most uncomfortable. Maybe she was trying to loosen the grip of the shorts. All three pairs of shorts were cut so that the inner lining of the back pockets were longer than the cut off line of the shorts. Did I mention that all three shorts were skin tight?  This girl with the ballerina hairdo had watery eyes that sparkled in the mid-afternoon sun. Her soft thick lips looked even thicker because she used a lip liner to outline them slightly above and below her natural lip line. A thin film of gloss covered both lips and they too shone in the sun. Even her pearly iridescent skin shone. A few freckles scattered recklessly on her cheeks must have caused this young girl endless anguish. She was a beautiful girl and she held herself as if she knew this and wanted others to know too.

The straight-haired girl sitting next to me, pretty too, seemed more personable.  I asked her what bus they were waiting for. She said the 111 to Modiin. Then they began or continued talking among themselves, as they had never really stopped talking from the moment they reached the bus station. The beauty confided that she often went to school without combing her hair. Sometimes she even appeared in her pajamas. The wavy-haired one said that she too went to school without combing her hair. The subject switched to driving and the one who did not yet have her license said ooof and bassa a few times.

The conversation glided naturally to the guys in the graduating class. When the girl sitting next to me  mentioned a particular guy, the one leaning against the wall, the smart one with narrow lips and intelligent eyes, the one who could read the bus schedule and seemed more in touch with the outside world and capable of navigating there, asked if the other girls had heard what had happened. No, said the beauty queen.

Hitnashaknu, she said nonchalantly, as if she were saying, the bus would be here soon.

As if nothing had happened, the girls started to sing the 12^th graders’ graduation song from the all-school party and skits, held recently in honor of the graduating class of 2018.  It was the best class the school had ever had, they all agreed, and quoted teachers who thought so too.

I waited for more details about the kiss. A kiss with a graduating senior was the kind of revelation for which you would stay up all night on the phone in, say, 1958. Had that kind of excitement been erased during the last sixty years? Wasn’t it still the beginning of the story?

These girls swung back to the party and the ditty. They sang, smiled and laughed and those with free-flowing hair swung their tickets to sex all around the bus station. A rare tenderness pierced the hot afternoon air. Perhaps it stemmed from the girls’ uneasiness—Was it fear?—of their going into 12^th grade.  In twelve months they would be wearing uniforms in the army, their hair always in a ponytail, or still wearing shorts in a gap-year leadership program, their hair flying in the wind. The underlying innocence they gave off, much like a rose gives off its fragrance, was due to the girls’ lack of self-consciousness of their age, their blindness to the fragility of that horrible wonderful age.

The girl standing against the wall assured the other two that they were at the right place at the right time. Soon their bus would come.

Forget the thirty-nine titles for the memoir I’m currently submitting to independent publishers, I can’t even settle on the author’s name.

Ahhhhrr. That’s me, dressed up as the MGM lion, saying I’m confused.

My father told the officiating rabbi thirty minutes before my chuppa that I was “christened” Judy Stonehill.

For twenty-six years Stonehill tailed my Judy. One of the reasons I came to Israel fifty-one years ago was to find a nice Jewish name.

Labensohn works in English, but Israeli clerks invariably turn me into a Levinsin or a Lavinson by inserting yuds in various syllables and deleting the dot from the bet.

After I divorced twenty years ago, I was free to change my name, but didn’t. There were enough changes to deal with and bureaucratic issues to settle.  I was not about to add another challenge. “It’s bad enough you abandoned us,” said my daughter. “At least keep the same name.”

Eventually,  she got married and changed her name.  Years later my first-born cut and Hebraicized his name to Lavi. National brit as rite of passage.

My first option for a pseudonym is Judy Steinberg. My father’s name was Steinberg until 1927, when he Americanized it to Stonehill.  But Steinberg was a name his own father had picked up  from some nice Jew in Hamburg who helped Joseph Gyshinsky board a trans-Atlantic boat.

Judy Gyshinsky, my second option. I’ve been rolling that around my tongue for several years, but it still feels too Ukranian for me.

When I’m in a heavily mother-loving mode I think about adapting my beautiful late-mother’s maiden name. Judy Grossman, option three. I could live with that Hungarian name, though I have too much antipathy towards Hungary lately.

Since I’ve been living in Israel for half a century, maybe it’s time to Hebraicize my name. (No, Word Check, not Herbicide).  Throw out Stonehill and Labensohn and become Har Evan. This is a Hebrew translation of Stonehill and Steinberg.  But then I am confronted with the contradiction in having an American first name and a Hebrew last name. “Judy?” Israelis say, looking at me as if I’ve made a mistake. “You mean Yehudit,” they declare, everyone a know-it-all.

It’s probably time to own that contradiction of identities and rename it. Plurality of identities. Wealth of identities. Acceptance of multiple and porous identities. Judy Har Evan. Or Judy Lev. I rather like that last option. It would look good in 16 pt. white Calibri print, boldly covering the bottom third of my memoir’s front cover.

Who’s she? Never heard of her, publicists will say. Not one item on Google. No Facebook. No platform.  Nada. Must be a new Israeli upstart.

No worries. I’m used to being an unknown entity. When I had my winning essay anthologized in In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction (Norton, 2005) and two other college writing texts, I published under the pseudonym Judyth Har-Even (sic).  The publishing world has never heard from her since.

In small print on the back cover of In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, the publisher describes the book as “A cross section of the famous and those bound to become so . . .”

If you haven’t heard of me yet, wait and wonder if, when Yudit Buckeye’s memoir hits the bookstores, it’s not the same old confused Judy from writeinisrael.com, bound for glory and fame, wearing a new dress.

Curb Your Kvetch      parking lots for the short and sour

Home Page

Welcome! If you’re like me, sometimes something in Israel riles you. If we were activists, we would do something to right the wrong, change the wording, protest the incompetence. But as people prone to kvetching, we just get it off our chests.

At www.Curb Your Kvetch you can park your kvetch in a safe lot.

Submission Guidelines:  Email your 250-word kvetch in the body of an email to administrator@CurbYourKvetch.com Anything over 250 words (including title) will be deleted unread.  In the Subject line of your email, designate one of the following parking lots for your kvetch:  Business, Education, Entertainment, Environment, Governance, Religion or Relationships.

As Chief Administrator I will upload your kvetch to the appropriate lot where other kvetchers can commiserate. We at Curb Your Kvetch see both sides,  or all seven, of every incident, misspelled sign, undemocratic law, insensitive doctor, racist rabbi, sexist member of Knesset or corrupt prime minister.

Rules of Conduct:  CYK is not a platform for lashon hara, which, according to our sages, is akin to murder. Posts on Curb Your Kvetch do not blaspheme any named individual. Rather, your posts should point out deficiencies, incongruities, incompetencies and stupidities.  We prefer writing to killing.

FAQs

What is a kvetch? A kvetch is a complainer and/or the complaint. A kvetch has more to do with the kvetcher than the kvetched or kvetchee. It cannot be used as evidence in legal proceedings. You cannot lose your citizenship due to a kvetch. Kvetch derives from the Yiddish kvetshn, which means to gripe or mutter, as the Israelites did in the Sinai during the forty-year trek. We are continuing this ancient tradition.    Antonym: praise, celebrate

Why Curb Your Kvetch?  I live with a noble man who hates complaining. His motto is, Don’t complain unless you plan to change the situation. For ten years I have been trying to curb my kvetch. Enough! No more. I now open the gates to legitimize kvetching for those who are not going to change the world.

Do you have to be short to submit?  No. Only the submission must be short.

Do you have to be sour to submit?  No. Only the submission has to express a passing or chronic sour thought.

Do you pay? No. Your reward will be in freeing yourself to go on to kvetch about other things.

Can people who don’t live in Israel submit? Yes, but the object of the kvetch must be Israel.

Can anyone comment on the kvetch: Yes, but the Rules of Conduct (see above) must be followed or the Chief Administrator will delete your comment, affording you something else about which to kvetch.

Do you have to sign your real name? Yes. No fake names.

Ideas for how to begin a post:

Start with an I statement, i.e. I can’t stand greasy shwarma . . .

Start with a question, i.e. Have you ever seen the stupid sign on Highway One that directs you to the airport?

Start with something positive, i.e. I love Tel Aviv, but . . .

Start with a fact, i.e. Horns are made for honking . . .

Start with history, i.e. During the Middle Ages a tradition grew up that King David was buried on Mount Zion.

Start with description, dialogue or setting. Be creative, but don’t make up the facts and don’t fabricate your kvetch. CYK only accepts real life gripes that can be corroborated.

At the beginning of this new year, the whole staff at Curb Your Kvetch wishes you a sweet and sour year of kvetching. If, during the coming months, you find yourself losing your spouse, friends, neighbors,  country . . . , know you will always find an enormous parking lot here at www.CurbYourKvetch.

With blessings,  

Judy L.

Chief Administrator, Curb Your Kvetch

(Ooof. This is not what I meant at all…)