The Monetization of Life

There used to be something we did called work.

Work was how you made money to pay for life’s expenses.

These days, work is increasingly being replaced by the concept of monetization. The reason is simple: almost anything can be monetized. The things we used to call work, but also the things we used to call leisure, entertainment, friendship, attention, personal expression—and increasingly, even our bodies.

In fact, monetization is gradually taking over more and more aspects of our lives. It is encroaching on everything.

I started thinking about this because my brother sent me an Instagram link that disturbed me to my core. It was a man talking about the blood-products industry, particularly plasma.

The United States is the global powerhouse in the supply of blood plasma and plasma-derived products. It supplies a huge proportion of the world’s plasma, up to 70%, in large part because people in the United States are permitted to sell their plasma, unlike in most other countries. Blood plasma is a commodity in the United States.

There are more than a thousand commercial plasma-collection centres across the country, many of them operated by for-profit companies. Studies have found that these centres are disproportionately located in economically disadvantaged communities, where the financial incentive to sell plasma is presumably greatest.

The point of the Instagram poster was that capitalism is an exploitative and inhumane economic system. When it is done with your labour, it takes your time (and your soul). When it can’t suck anything more out of you, it comes for your blood. And it relentlessly seeks out those who are most economically vulnerable.

It is an important perspective. And it raises many more complicated moral and ethical questions.

How can we condemn the commercialization of blood products when the need for them is so great and the demand is not being met by voluntary donations? If people need plasma to survive, and there isn’t enough of it, then paying people to provide it does solve a real problem. But it also means that one person’s economic desperation can become another person’s medical supply.

As a Canadian, currently feeling angry about the economic pressure being brought to bear on our sovereignty by the Trump administration, I was particularly shocked to learn just how dependent Canada is on the United States for plasma-derived products. We important 83% of our blood product from the US. 

Canadian law does not permit the commercial sale of human blood and plasma in the same way that it is permitted in the United States. The underlying concern is that once we begin treating parts of the human body as commodities, where do we draw the line?

And yet we import American plasma products to meet our needs.

Isn’t that hypocritical? More importantly, isn’t it a national-security vulnerability?

A country should probably think carefully about depending on another country for something as fundamental as the biological material required for its own health-care system—particularly when relations between the two countries have become as unpredictable as they are today.

But the larger point is more instructive.

The story of modern life is, to a considerable extent, the story of the monetization of everything.

Our labour was monetized long ago. Now our attention is monetized. Our preferences are monetized. Our personal data are monetized. Our identities are monetized. Our relationships increasingly become content. Our private lives become brands.

The monetization of our bodies and blood seems to be a logical extension. The separation between the personal and the marketable has gradually disappeared.

There used to be boundaries around what we considered appropriate to buy and sell. Some things were simply not supposed to be commodities. Human organs, for example. Intimacy. Friendship. Personal identity. Perhaps even leisure.

But those boundaries have been under relentless pressure.

Remember leisure time?

Since the Industrial Revolution, it has gradually been squeezed out of our lives. One of the great labour debates of the past century has been about reducing the working week—from six days to five, and now, increasingly, from five to four.

How quaint.

What if I told you that medieval Europeans had something like 140 religious feast days and holidays every year, according to the nineteenth-century historian Pierre Émile Levasseur? That is an astonishing proportion of the calendar devoted, at least officially, to celebration, worship and communal life.

The picture gets even stranger when we go further back.

This comes from an interesting essay by Ted Gioia, who cites the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’s argument that some hunter-gatherer societies spent only around 15 to 20 hours a week obtaining food and meeting their basic material needs.

There are obvious qualifications to this comparison. Life expectancy was brutally low, infant mortality was extraordinarily high, and “work” is not necessarily an easy thing to define across radically different societies.

Still, the broader point is worth considering.

For most of human history, the objective of economic activity was not necessarily to maximize economic activity.

The Industrial Revolution changed that.

We made extraordinary gains in sanitation, medicine, food production and life expectancy. We became wealthier and, on average, lived much longer.

But somewhere along the way, we developed the strange idea that the additional time we had been given should be spent producing more wealth, consuming more, and growing the economy.

In the age of tech, that has transformed into the invasive and ubiquitous concept of monetization.

The new technologies ensure that virtually everything can be monetized, even leisure.

We go on vacation and take photographs for Instagram. We exercise and post the results. We have hobbies that become side hustles. We turn our opinions into content. We monetize our attention by watching advertisements and monetize our creativity by building personal brands.

The Industrial Revolution gave us more time alive. The modern market has spent much of the intervening period figuring out how to put a price on that time.

And perhaps that is the real paradox of modern life.

We conquered scarcity, increased our life expectancy and acquired more leisure than almost any generation before us. And then we built an economic system that taught us to regard all of it as an opportunity cost.

The question is no longer simply whether we work too much. It is whether there is anything left in our lives that we are allowed to do for no economic reason at all.

Theory of the Case

There's a body at the bottom

of the stairs lying

in a pool of blood.

You call 9-1-1

and say there's been 

an accident.

Someone's fallen 

down the stairs,

don't mention

the pool of blood.

An accident?

(you let that slip out) 

All you see are a body,

some blood,

and a set of stairs.

Maybe she was pushed.

Maybe she threw herself

down the stairs.

Maybe she was brought there.

You see a body you recognize,

you see stairs

and immediately a story 

takes shape.

Like when you see a piano, 

rows of black and white keys,

you put them in order

in your mind,

think musical notes ascending 

and descending,

start hearing a familiar song

in your head. 

You see stairs

think up and down,

think stories,

and fill in the blanks

to the 9-1-1 operator;

Her body is pale, 

cold to the touch

and you remember 

what it felt like warm.

Blood is sticky.

You say, send help, please,

give your address, please,

you say, she's not breathing, 

send help soon

please,

and hang up.

The newspaper will write

'found dead'.

They will never know 

what you know.  

You will say only

what you've already said, 

please, send help,

please,

because you know 

when called they come.

They will climb the stairs

with their questions

collect evidence

they will construct

a plausible story

a theory of the case

to convince the jury

to get the verdict

they want,

they will say 

what you are capable of,

assemble witnesses to testify,

to cast doubt on your love,

your story

and you're prepared for it.

Husk by Corey Redekop

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Zombies are hip. They're in now, the way vampires were in 15 minutes ago. What is it about the undead that appeals to us? Gamers know how prominently zombies figure in today's culture. As the last time I played a video game it was on an Atari console, I was utterly oblivious. It was serendipitous that the charms of a video game called Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 were revealed to me by a work colleague's 14 year old son who is an aficionado. In BO2 the player finds him/herself in a post-apocalyptic world populated by killer zombies wanting to feast on his flesh. Fortunately, each player is armed to the teeth with every imaginable weapon and a potentially endless supply of ammunition. The result is a never ending orgy of gory carnage. My young friend's revelation completely altered my view of the novel Husk by Corey Redekop. I already felt that Husk was one of the most enjoyable novels I'd read in a while. Using exuberant prose, a satirical viewpoint and darkly sly humour, Redekop makes a devastating statement on modern consumer society along the lines of the classic B-movie "Dawn of the Dead" (my era) in which zombies invade a shopping mall. I get the point that consumer/entertainment culture subsumes and mesmerizes us into a self-indulgent stupor, driving an innately self-destructive instinct that morphs us into insensate, ravenous sub/superhumans. But I had no idea that there was something else going on in Husk, an altogether more subversive ambition. By flipping the perspective around and taking the zombie's point of view, making him a thinking, feeling, sympathetic being, and doing it in a writing style that is vibrant and lively, Redekop is ironically transforming the sense-deadening, ultra-violent culture of the screen that obsesses millions upon millions of mostly young men into something that approaches art. Sheldon, or 'Shel' as he likes to be called (ha ha) is a gay zombie with a heart. We know this from the first pages when he awakens mid-autopsy, his organs removed from the cavern of his body, and after ripping the arms off the attendant and getting ready to flee, hesitates to retrieve his blood-pump from the floor; he may not physically need it, but he won't leave it behind. Husk is a also scathing satire of the celebrity industry that feeds the pop-culture meat-grinder; shlock-producing directors and manipulative agents, 'reality' tv that isn't real, and talk shows that are dysfunctional freak-shows. This, as it turns out, works to the advantage of a zombie actor trying to resuscitate a moribund career. Redekop is a smart, prodigiously talented prose stylist. He takes gleeky (geeky + glee) delight in describing biological matters, for instance, exactly how the zombie who has no functioning organs, whose veins are filled with formaldehyde and whose muscles should be useless atrophied slabs, manages to move, speak, eat and defecate. And that's another of the many pleasures in reading this novel; Reading about someone whose basic bodily functions provide a challenge reminds us that we are feeling, breathing, flesh and blood beings who can rejoice in the miracle of our bodily capacities. I know this doesn't sound like much of an insight, but part of Redekop's literary achievement is to show how we've lost touch with our essential physical selves in a world in which so much of our time is spent in our own headspace, in front of a screen, in the realm of virtual reality, or subsumed in glossy celebrity image-based media. Maybe pop-culture is ultra violent and sexually charged precisely because we so desperately crave genuine physical experience, the ultimate irony. My one gripe with the novel is the ending. While Redekop brilliantly walks the fine line between high art/low culture for most of the novel, in the concluding sections he succumbs to self-indulgence with a climax that matches Black Ops 2 for absurd over-the-top grotesqueness. The core of the story, Sheldon and the fascinating questions he raises about human frailty and the nature of consciousness, gets lost in a torrent of horrorshow violence mimicking a CGI-generated movie.

One last note. My Amazon-ordered copy arrived with inconsistent print quality, some pages were faded. Fortunately, the publisher offers a digital copy free with proof of purchase of a print copy. For a guy like me whose eyes aren't what they used to be and who reads by a dubious bedside light, the ability to enlarge font is a godsend. 



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Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy


Either this is the classic of American literature that people say it is, or it's a bloated, essentially characterless, thinly-plotted, portrait masquerading as a novel. I'm not sure, so no stars, but it's probably both. One thing I do know is that reading this novel was an ordeal in almost every sense of the word, no doubt intended by the author, which is why it's hard to recommend. It's unlike anything I've ever read. There are characters, but they remain essentially faceless throughout. There is gory violence on virtually every page as the narrative meanders through the starkly beautiful epic landscape of the American west circa 1870s. The mountains, plains and deserts are in fact the only relatable character, and they are rendered in a language that is lushly gorgeous and draws attention to itself with jargon and syntax that is almost biblical - echoing a biblical/religious subtext and theme throughout. I have no doubt that this depiction of the bloodlust, brutality and immorality that characterized the conquest of the American frontier is closer to the truth than anything that has been written before, or perhaps since. So is the novel important? I guess so. But unless an ordeal is what you're looking for in a novel and one without characters to relate to, and very little in the way of plot or redemption, I can't recommend it.


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Ezra Rotchin z"l (1928 - 2012)

On the evening of March 31st my father passed away at the Jewish General Hospital. I may post some personal thoughts (or not), but in the meantime I thought I'd share the eulogy which we composed and was so ably delivered at the funeral by my older brother Randy. The eulogy begins with Rabbi Ron Aigen's introduction at 2:10 after the cantor's chanting.

Ezra Rotchin was born Israel Rotchtin on February 14^th 1928. He was the youngest of nine siblings, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Born with one ear to a mother in her mid-forties, Ezra grew up in the hardscrabble neighborhoods of the Plateau where he learned to resist the taunts and teasing of his peers, and learned quickly that blood was thicker than water. If he lived by any one credo for the rest of his life it would be this: Family above all else.

He was the ‘baby’ of the family, loved all his older siblings (Sarah, Ida, Charlie, Jene, Hy, Florence, and Marcia) and admired his mother Leah for her strength, business acumen and strong-mindedness. But as a child who was regularly victimized for his perceived inadequacies; it was with his father, Abraham affectionately known as Popsy, with whom he developed a special bond. Popsy was a peddler and a young Ezra would often accompany his father on his neighbourhood rounds to take orders and collect monthly payments. Popsy sold well, but when it came to collecting he wasn’t as adept. Leah complained that not enough money was coming in. So one day when Popsy was too sick to make the rounds Ezra went in his place. When Ezra returned home with pockets full of cash, more than Bubbie had ever seen before, Popsy - the big-hearted Socialist that he was - was horrified. “How can you take the money from those poor people?” he protested, “They need it more than we do.”

The experience with Popsy would be one that dad would never forget for the rest of life. Family comes first, but never forget those less fortunate than you. As an adult Dad was involved in several philanthropic organizations including the Knights of Pythias, Camp B’nai Brith and, more recently, as a benefactor of the Montreal Oral School for the Deaf. The people he empathized with the most weren’t his golfing buddies at Elm Ridge, or his ski buddies - though he certainly loved skiing and playing golf with family and friends - it was the buddies who’d fallen on hard times, guys like his dear friend the late Joe Saad who he brought into the business after Joe had suffered business and personal setbacks, and in the last decade, his neighbor and close companion Emile Annatone who loved Crown Royal almost as much as dad did, and watched out for dad through his years of declining health like a blood brother.

After Popsy died in 1949, Ezra was devastated. He ran off to California but soon had to return when things didn’t work out as planned. He was immediately taken back into the family garment business founded by Hy, no questions asked. Aside from Popsy and Bubbie, no two people were more important in dad’s life than Charlie and Hy. He loved them, felt indebted to them, and ironically, fought with them more than anybody else.

Being a Rotchin meant many things to dad. It meant taking care of one another. It meant absolute loyalty. It meant you drove to work together, you worked hard together, you fought for what you believed in, and at the end of the day, you resolved your differences and drove home together in the same car as you came.

In the business, Charlie handled sales, Hy took care of styling and production, and Ezra was the numbers man. He was the innovator, the one who convinced the brothers that they had to adopt new production and costing methods to meet the changing times, and to invest in technology; they had to adapt if they were going to remain competitive. Adapting, staying a step ahead of the competition, creating new strategies, these were skills that might have come in handy to a one-eared boy trying to make his way on the unforgiving streets of Montreal in the 30s and 40s. Whatever the recipe, part innovation, part love, part battle, the brothers somehow made it work, and the company, now in its third generation, has been in continuous operation since 1947, an astonishing 65 years. Billy, Michael and Jeremy's choice to enter the business, and their commitment to continue it - an achievement not often seen in family businesses - is a testament to the legacy of family devotion and loyalty. The cousins always appreciated what the 3 brothers built, and they were appreciated in return. I was fortunate enough to be a part of it for a time. I worked with my dad for more than a decade, and shared lunch with him together with my uncles and cousins nearly every day for the past 25 years.

Dad loved business almost as much as he loved the family itself. He started several different businesses during his lifetime, some more successful than others. And he involved family in each and every one. To him, there was no benefit unless the family benefitted together. He never forgot the break given him by Charlie and Hy, and the moral and financial support he’d enjoyed from his sisters and parents.

Dad possessed an odd mix of hope and cynicism. He believed there was always an angle; if you were creative enough, you could always find a way to get things done. For instance, two years ago, when his legs were failing him and he relied on his wheelchair to get around, Glen took him to get his driver’s license renewed. Before getting into the car to take his road test, Glen caught sight of dad secretly slipping the examiner a rolled up $50 bill. He told the examiner with a wink that it was a token of his appreciation, and he suggested the examiner take his wife out for a nice dinner. Of course, the man refused. As the test began, Dad admitted to the examiner that he had limited movement and sensation in his legs, was unable to turn his head to look behind him, and had hearing in only one ear. He passed the test anyway, and his license was renewed for five more years.

The point is, that for dad, trying and failing was admirable. Not trying at all was inexcusable. He knew that whatever you chose to do in life, it was not going to be easy. He understood that everyone had shortcomings, and felt that focusing on them was fruitless. There were no free rides in life. You had to earn every inch.

When he finally left home at the age of thirty-three, Ezra knew that above all else he wanted to be a father and a family man. Weeknights, he coached the neighborhood hockey teams on Hampstead's outdoor rinks, and every weekend he took us skiing to Jay Peak. He took us on fishing trips to such exotic places as the Maritimes and northern Quebec. Our home at 92 Hampstead Road boasted the town's first driveway basketball court - attracting kids from around the neighborhood and beyond. His greatest joy was to spend time with his children, and growing up we felt loved, wanted and respected. He fought for other kids too, briefly getting involved in municipal politics, battling with the mayor and town council to acquire the vacated Heather curling club because he felt the kids deserved a community center and indoor rink.

Our parents worked as a team, during those years. We did everything together. One summer dad reasoned that for the price of expensive summer camps, a family car trip could be afforded and then some. With my brothers and I, ages 8, 9 and 10, the station wagon was packed up and our parents took us across the continent on an unforgettable six-week 5000 mile journey covering central and western Canada and more than a dozen states in the US.

Dad was an extraordinary family man, and it was one of the great disappointments in his life that our parents’ marriage was ultimately unsuccessful.

But dad knew that when you threw yourself wholeheartedly and passionately into any endeavor – and that was the only way to do it - you always risked disappointment. You had to keep going. And he was rewarded for his effort. It wasn’t long after his divorce from our mother Arleen that dad met Shirley.

In Shirley, dad found a truly remarkable individual and mate. They cared for each other through decades of ups and downs, physical difficulties, and many, many family celebrations, including the birth of seventeen grandchildren. In Shirley, he found someone who not only had an abiding capacity for love and devotion, but someone who he admired as an accomplished individual in her own right; who had overcome adversity, worked and raised a family singlehandedly, and possessed initiative, independence and fearlessness. She valued his strength, forthrightness, honesty and loyalty, and he respected that she was traditional, hardworking, loving and caring to a fault. In Shirley, dad met his true match, his basheret. Shirley gave dad renewed hope, not to mention a new family and sense of home. Shirley also gave dad Elana, the loving daughter he never had, but always wanted. Dad's devotion to Elana and her devotion to him was reciprocal.

Dad was a man of contradictions. He could be awkward in social situations and yet knew how to enjoy himself and relished the company of his closest family and friends. He was a man of few words, and yet had a lot to say, and when he spoke, he was direct, no mincing words. He was skeptical of organized religion, was never a shul-goer, and yet, I think appreciated the beauty of our ancient traditions. He viewed others with some cynicism and yet, never lost sight of the beauty of the world, particularly its natural beauty. He was never more at home (and spiritually at peace) than when he was at the top of a mountain, or skiing down it, and yodeling at the top of his lungs to the rhythm of his perfect ess-turns.

Dad enjoyed his crown royal. So much so, that he was convinced that his daily dose was lowering his blood sugar levels, reversing the effects of his emphysema, and reducing the inflammation caused by arthritis. If you were a betting person, you would have shorted crown royal stock when you heard of Dad's passing.

Dad was rock solid, an anchor. He commanded respect and expected others to earn his. He didn’t have much tolerance for outward sentimentality (although on the inside he was a softy), and so I’ll not dwell on the final weeks of his life; I’ll only say that his days ended just as he lived them, with courage, dignity and strength. He put up a great fight. And when it was time to stop fighting, he chose the moment, sparing his family the pain of witnessing it.

The final word must go - as he would have wanted - to family. Dad took so much pride in the accomplishments and achievements of his many nieces and nephews. We always knew it when the Gellers were excelling in sports, or how the Halperin boys were becoming doctors. He supported the business decisions made by Billy and Michael, even while pushing them to move the company in new directions, and when cousin Audrey struck it big with her illustrated children’s books a couple of years ago, dad planned to go into business with her on a line of children’s clothing.

How he would have loved to make it to this year’s edition of our legendary family seder. He was planning on it. He fought hard, but it was not to be. He was well aware that in life, you can’t win every battle.

The seder was all about family to dad. His greatest joy was to see the new generation of kids running around. Spending every Sunday with his grandkids in Florida was the highlight of his winter, and when he and Shirley bought their house in TMR, they knew it had to have a backyard pool, so that the Montreal grandkids would come over to swim on the weekends, which is what we did countless times.

Dad would want his main legacy to be the strong ties that bind family together; his children to each other and to their chosen spouses, his grandchildren to their parents, grandparents and cousins. And if that’s the ultimate measure of your life dad, you can rest easy: Mission accomplished.

25 Days in August: Diary of a Family's Journey in the Holyland

WEEK 3

DAY 14 - Thursday
Caesarea or 'Qisarya' in Hebrew is about 30 kms north of Tel-Aviv, about half way to Haifa. From Jerusalem it's about 90 kms, but it feels like it takes longer since you've got to drive to Tel-Aviv and the road tends to get snarled with traffic and periodic stoplights after you exit the fast four-lane highway "1" between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv to take route 4 north through a series of towns and Tel-Aviv suburbs. The most impressive of those communities is Ra'anana, about 20 kms north of Tel-Aviv, which gives one the impression of Boca Raton. I counted not less than twenty construction cranes for luxury apartment complexes going up, and there were the tell-tale terracotta roofs of sprawling upscale housing communities. It seems to be the community of choice for North Americans and apparently has a country club. We also noted a strong high-tech presence in Ra'anana, large office buildings with IBM and SAP emblazoned on them visible from the highway. The consensus about Qisarya is that it is not as impressive as Beit She'an, in terms of ruins, but the coastal setting is spectacular. Actually, I was quite disappointed. While Beit She'an is exquisitely preserved, Qisarya, which was once one of the Meditteranean Sea's most important port cities, has suffered for milennia. Built by Herod the Great with an amphitheatre, temples and bathhouses, as well as a hippodrome where thousands watched chariot races, the city was conquered and occupied and destroyed and re-built over and over and over again. There is evidence of Roman, Byzantine, Moslem, and Crusader presence. But perhaps the most devastating destruction has been the elements; the salty air and crashing waves, which have pocked and crumbled the remaining stonework. The natural conditions of Beit Shean were more favourable to preservation. One other aspect disappointed - Qisarya is very much being promoted as a popular tourist destination so there are art galleries, and restaurants and stores on the site. The offices of the Qisarya Development Corporation (founded by Edmond de Rothchild who dreamed of developing the city) are on the site as well. We expected to be able to spend the entire day at the archaeological site since a public beach was advertised, but found that it was closed. So after a lunch eaten among the ruins, we drove 5 minutes to the public beach in town. The consensus is that it rates highly, one of the better beaches we've visited. No crowd. Clean water. Huge beach. Pale, fine sand that gradually slopes into the water. No rocks. Where it fell short was that the beach was littered, and there were no public facilities at all - every other beach we've been to had, lifeguard, changing facilities, toilets, showers, drinking water fountains etc.

DAY 15 - Friday
The fourteen year old decided to take the day off, staying home to hang out with the sixteen year old (should I be worried?). The rest of us decided that we didn't give Tel-Aviv enough of a chance the first time around so back we went, in spite of the heat. Bathing trunks were brought along just in case we got desperate. We had no real idea about where we wanted to go and ended up at Shuk HaCarmel. Let me just say that I would take Tel-Aviv's market over Jersualem's any erev Shabbos of the week (erev Shabbos of the month?). It's cleaner, more presentable, significantly larger, and according to the eleven year old, a lot less smelly. The challah and sugar-glazed danish stalls are open but don't seem to have the same hive-like attraction to wasps. I may be imagining this but the fruits and veggies seem fresher, the throngs somehow calmer and more easygoing (incidentally Shuk HaCarmel was just as crowded, maybe even more crowded than Machane Yehuda). In a word, the Shuk HaCarmel experience just felt more civilized, especially since, once you've wound your way through it, you can find your way onto Nachlat Binyamin an adjacent pedestrian walkway with hundreds of artists and craftspeople displaying and selling their wares. The artists in Jerusalem sell almost exclusively to tourists and their designs and products reflect their market. Their product tends to be cliched and souvenir-ish; Jerusalem cityscapes and skylines, portraits of hasidic Jews, and other objects to instill piety or ward off the 'Evil Eye'. The artists in Nachlat Binyamin feel more legitimate. Selling to tourists and locals alike, what they offer has wider variety and is more interesting and creative. Tel-Aviv is a more interesting, more creative, more tolerant, and as the eleven year old remarked feels safer than Jerusalem. Granted this may be because she now sees every payas-and-beard-wearing male as a potential attacker. But I also think she senses what I and the wife do: Tel-Aviv is just a cooler, more energized and exciting place. People seem more laid back and less judgmental. Unlike Jerusalem, they also care about their appearance and style. From Nachlat Biyamin we walked up Sheinkin Street, which has all kinds of fashion boutiques, including many familiar American and European brands like Diesel and Aldo. Our real reason for traipsing up Sheinkin was to make a pilgrimage to Cafe Tamar. The wife had been telling the eleven year old about this legendary meeting place of authors, poets, musicians and artists that dates back to before statehood. A photo was taken, but the eleven year old was too shy to go inside and wasn't at all impressed with her namesake cafe. She described the scruffy customers drinking and smoking under the canopy outside as "washed-out druggie failures." I haven't a clue what else she might have expected. From there we went back to our now favourite restaurant in Tel-Aviv 'Yosveta' (the same place we lunched the last time) on the beach for amazing smoothie fruit drinks and American helpings of pasta and vegetarian sandwiches that rival Montreal's Cafe Santropol. Finally, the heat was too much and we decided to give the beach one last chance, at least the wife and five year old gave it another chance. The eleven year old and I found a shady seat along Shlomo "Cheech" Lahit Promenade where we could stand bikini-watch. They apparently don't make one piece bathing suits in Tel-Aviv, or have never heard of them, because no matter the age, shape or size, every girl, woman and grandmother was wearing a two-piece. Which either means there's a great opportunity here for a bathing suit manufacturer, or the women here have a ridiculously inflated view of themselves. Then again, the view was, for the most part, pretty good as fas as I was concerned. According to the bathers the water was super clean this time, giving credence to the report about our last experience being an aberration because of an offshore ship dumping garbage. As head judge of our 'favourite places to swim in Israel' committee the five year old has officially bumped Tel-Aviv's ranking to number three ahead of Qisariya (but behind Nitsanim and Ein Gedi) since the facilities are superior and the beach just as nice.

DAY 16 - Shabbat
I've decided to take my day of rest today on Shabbat, for a change. A day to stop and reflect. The wife and fourteen year old have gone to the Arab market in the old city to shop for tchotchkes: the Arab market being the only place to shop for tchotchkes in Jerusalem on Shabbat. The rest of us are hanging around the apartment. The sun is shining as usual, not a cloud in the sky, but the air feels slightly fresher today. The sixteen year old and her boyfriend are hunched over the living room table scattered with little plastic mosaic-like tiles with letters on them. Occasionally one or the other announces 'Peel!' They're playing a game called 'Bananagram' which is a combination of Scrabble and Dominoes and apparently de rigeur in every Shabbat observant home in Jerusalem. Listen closely and you may hear "Peel!" shouted triumphantly (it denotes some sort of spelling victory) in every quarter of the holy city, which is a bit funny when you think about it since in Hebrew peel means elephant. But I am not thinking about elephants or bananas. I am thinking of expectations, the ones I had in coming here, the ones I have in being here, and the ones I will have when I leave. The wife and I have continually talked about our respective expectations, and how well we're faring relative to them. If nothing else, this city, this country is all about expectations, and its opposite disappointments. In the modern art collection at the Israel Museum you find the surrealist artist Rene Magritte's famous 1959 painting called 'The Castle of the Pyrenees'. The painting depicts a massive gray boulder surrounded by clouds hovering in the air over rolling waves. On top of the boulder stands a non-descript medieval castle. The boulder defies gravity mid-air while the frothing, crashing waves beneath it articulate the very force threatening to drag it down. It is a dreamscape. Physically impossible, and by virtue of its impossibility suggesting the physical reality to which we terrestrial beings are bound. The boulder should fall, would fall into the sea if it were not in a painting and not solely a matter of artful depiction. This is not a boulder, and not a castle, this is paint on canvas, an artist playing with representation and our expectations. Which is exactly what Israel does; plays with representation and expectation. We constantly ask ourselves what this country represents and what we can and should expect from it, and what it can and should expect from us in return. Ever since we arrived, the big news coming from abroad and soliciting not less than three opinion pieces in the Jerusalem Post (the right one, the wrong one, and the one in the middle?) is about the Jewish-Methodist shidduch of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky. A lot of opinionated people seem to care. What does it represent? A step forward for Jews in America and a model for the kind of openness that does not currently exist in Israel (the only legitimate marriage here is one sanctioned by the Orthodox Rabbinate)? Or a step backward? An example of the dangerous pathway that ultimately leads to Jewish perdition by intermarriage? And what of the Rabbi and the Minister together under the chuppah on Shabbat?! And what of the fact that the groom insisted on wearing a tallit and kippah? It's a positive thing that Marc cared enough to wear those potent symbols of his Jewish identity, one commentarist wrote. Marc should be ashamed of himself for perverting those symbols, wrote another. Strangely enough, being here, in Jerusalem, I don't care. The hoopla and outrage seem equally silly to me. What happened (and will happen) between Chelsea and Marc is not the end of Judaism or the Jewish People, or a new beginning. And yet it's taken so seriously; representation and expectation. Some of my reactions to being here have taken me by surprise. I was overwhelmed emotionally on our first day at the Wall, and not by being at the Wall, this most hallowed, all-important spiritual locale, but by being there with my wife and four daughters. It suddenly hit me that the last time I was standing at the Wall (incidentally, during a freak snowstorm) I was alone (my girlfriend/wife-to-be, had returned to Montreal) childless and confused. Eighteen years later, here I am, returned with a wife and four healthy beautiful children. Unbeknownst to me, without even realizing it, I had spent the last eighteen years on track to completing a circle, and here I was standing at the finish line/beginning, a generation later. I felt the most profound sense of being truly and deeply blessed I have ever felt in my life. I was ambushed by the second most moving moment I've experienced so far. It was in the scupture garden of the Israel Museum. I took a series of photos of the girls standing in a variety of postures and positions on the famous scultpture by Robert Indiana that spells out the word LOVE in a square of Hebrew letters (AHAVA). The Judean Hills and the cloudless azure sky are the backdrop. Taken together, the photos evoke and represent exactly how I'm feeling; all the promise and possibility, the hope and expectation, of our four ladies finding their own place and positions around LOVE. What else really matters? I suppose that Chelsea and Marc must feel the same way.

DAY 16 - Saturday evening
We have to delay our trip up north by a day due to a nasty ear infection that the sixteen year old contracted some time Friday/Saturday. She had been complaining of ear blockage/water in the ear, for about 24 hours and, thinking nothing much of it, we tried a series of home remedies. By the end of Shabbat her mild discomfort had become exacerbated to genuine pain and so we knew that a doctor would have to be seen. Eight o'clock last night we rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, which is a newish and expanding complex of buildings in a suburb of Jerusalem. The donors wall at the main entrance indicates that North American money plays a huge role in the development of this impressive facility which includes an attached hotel and shopping centre. We were prepared for another adventure, this time trying to navigate the medical system as a tourist. It took us some time to make our way through the various buildings in the nighttime dark to finally arrive at the emergency admissions, which was not well indicated with signage. As Shabbat was just about to end it was not at all busy. At admitting we had to fill out a simple form and pay 1500 shekels (about $400 CAN, insurance reimbursable) right off the bat. Then we were ferried over to see a nurse who took us right away, asked a series of questions (staggering through half English half Hebrew) and sent my daughter to have an IV site put in. We thought it was overkill so we convinced the male blood nurse just to take a sample for blood tests instead - which they had insisted on doing even when we said that too was unnecessary - and if the patient needed an IV drip later they could jab her a second time. Up to that point we were all super impressed with the medical system. The facilities are incredibly modern, clean and efficient. But from that point on the waiting game started. We were told that we would have to see a doctor (duh, but what we didn't know was that they meant a specialist) and were asked to wait outside until he was available. We waited for about an hour and half until they called us again at about 10:30 pm. We were now told that we would have to go into the main building across the courtyard to the ENT (Head and Neck Department) on the sixth floor to see the doctor. When we got there the doctor saw us immediately (in fact he was standing in the hallway expecting us) and my daughter underwent a most thorough examination. Having been in such a situation with a child more than once before I expected the doctor to ask a few questions and then look in her ear with the standard handheld device that the doctor stuck in my ear as a kid. Not so. The young specialist laid the patient on the table and inserted a device which magnified her inner ear canal and projected it on a screen. I hadn't had this much fun since journeying through my intestines via camera during my colonoscopy. He explained the problem - a small pearl-like bubble could be clearly seen on her timpanic membrane (eardrum) which he said was caused by a bacterial infection. "If she says she is in pain she's not lying" he commented. He gave her an ear drop anesthetic to numb the pain, wrote a full report (in English), and wrote prescriptions for two types of antibiotic. He was patient, unrushed, and methodical. He said she would have to be seen for a follow-up in the next few days and provided the information to make another appointment. We then had to return to the emergency room in the other building to report back to the admitting nurse who would then give us some starter drugs to last until the prescription could be filled tomorrow morning. From there we had to go back to the admissions kiosk to check out. These last two steps took maybe ten minutes. We were out by 11:30ish total elapsed time from arrival to departure was about two and half hours. The last, and most challenging step was getting my car out of the parking lot. When we arrived it was still Shabbat so all the lots and gates were open and because I had no idea where we were going and the patient was in excruciating pain, I just dumped the car in the first available space. When we left it was business as usual, all the gates were down, and I had no way of getting the car out since I had no automatically-dispensed parking ticket. It took about twenty more minutes to find the attendant and pay the 36 shekels ($10) demanded to have the gate raised. It seems to me what we experienced stacks up quite well against the Canadian medical system. The examination and treatment were much more thorough than we would have received at home, to the point of overkill. The facilities definitely top any Montreal hospital (then again we'll have a brand spanking new super-hospital soon). On the one hand, all the running back and forth between buildings struck me as sort of unnecessary. On the other hand the emergency room and waiting area were quite empty, which meant more beds there for the real emergencies. My grade B to B+.

DAY 17 - Sunday

The sixteen year old stayed home and started on her antibiotics while the rest of us met up with Israeli friends, a husband, wife and three young boys, who were back home visiting family from the States where they now live. We ended up at The Bible Lands Museum located next to the Israel Museum. This was our back-up plan after our original choice for an activity was to meet at the Bloomfield Science Museum which turned out to be closed on Sundays. Bloomfield has a lot of hands-on type activities, and hence would have been ideal for three rambunctious little boys. Bible Lands has one of the country's most impressive collections of ancient archaeology dating back 5000 years, but is decidedly on the cerebral side. Our friends were late in getting into Jerusalem from Tel-Aviv and when they arrived we warned them that finding parking on site of the museum would be impossible. We parked our respective vehicles in the vicinity (ours around the corner directly across from the Knesset). Finally, the two families met at the museum, a place where I could have easily spent an entire day on my own. We managed to keep the kids semi-interested for about an hour and a half. From the museum, our friends insisted that we join them for an early dinner in Abu Ghosh, an Arab town fifteen minutes outside Jerusalem. They claimed that a restaurant there makes the best hummus in the Middle East. The hummus was indeed excellent, as were the unending variety of salads that arrived at our table non-stop. Tomorrow, all things being equal, we will be northbound for two days.

DAY 18 & 19 - Monday & Tuesday
It's been a whirlwind tour and we're back in Jerusalem. Everyone agrees that two days in the north was not nearly enough. Most of our time was spent trying to escape the heat. On the drive back today the car digital thermometer registered 47 degrees. While the girls napped I worried about the temperature at which cars overheat and tires start exploding on the searing pavement. What's more, the 47 degree point was reached just as route 90 southward dropped down into the Dead Sea region past the checkpoint which separates the mostly arab west bank from Jewish territory. I kept imagining scenarios where I would be asking a donkey-riding bedouin for help getting my wife and three daughters back to Jerusalem on whatever means of transport he might have at his immediate disposal. But my worry was all for naught and we arrived safely in the golden city in practically sweater-weather, 36 degrees. As for the north, yesterday was one of our best days in Israel. We stopped at Hamat Gader which calls itself 'Israel's Garden of Eden' and the claim could almost be believed if the garden of Eden came with an elaborate petting zoo and the Middle East's largest crocodile farm (200 of the beasts). There was also a parrot show and a huge 30 foot waterslide that only our eleven year old, from the family, was courageous enough to fly down. All to say that the kids were happy as mud-caked baby hippos. And the parents were happy too because Hamat Gader, located 10 kms east of the Kinneret in a rugged valley overlooked by Jordan and visible from Syria, is simply one of the most beautiful corners in Israel. It has been inhabited for more than 4000 years and was a favourite of the Romans who built an amphitheatre and baths there because the valley is fed by mineral rich hot springs that bubble up to the surface from volcanic sources. Yes, I said HOT springs. So there we were lying in spring-fed pools and waterfalls and jacuzzis in sulphurous water that was actually hotter than the 45 degree air outside. Luckily, there are also cool pools so hopping from one pool to the other we alternated feeling drained and invigorated. We stayed at Hamat Gader until closing time (5:00) and then headed up the eastern side of the Sea Galilee. We stopped at Kibbutz Ein Gev at a restaurant that according to Frommer's is Israel's largest with seating for 700. We weren't looking for more crowds, but we were looking for a place that catered to families and served fish (at least the wife and I were looking for fish) and this restaurant is renowned throughout Israel for fish cuisine, particularly their specialty, something called Saint-Peter's fish. People come from all over to try it. I don't know much about the New Testament reference but I can say that the species is native to the Kinneret. The wife and I can attest that their specialty is delicious, light, not fishy-tasting, not bony, gently seasoned with garlic and spices, and lightly grilled. It was the best meal we've had in Israel so far and the view from the shoreline, the Kinneret at sundown, added to an ambiance of day-ending satisfaction. Heading straight off to bed would have tied a ribbon on the perfect day. Unfortunately, there was the small matter of driving 30 km more north to Qatzrin in the Golan where we had rented a room at the field school. Qatzrin is the so-called 'capital' of the Golan. A town of about three thousand inhabitants, the government has poured money into the town to settle it, and it shows. A quiet, quaint municipality with a towncentre, schools, sports complex, a mall, all the needed amenities, and well laid-out neighbourhoods that bring to mind some of the Cote-St. Luc neighbourhoods developed in the mid-70s. Rolling down the main route into town I was excited to catch a glimpse of tanks on military manoeuvres on the adjacent field; Qatzrin is also the Israeli miliary headquarters of their Golan operations. While we drove through the Golan on the way to Safed the next day, along the narrow, swervy-curvy, rising and falling roads, Sidney noted how many fenced off fields there were with signs that warned against trespassing on fields that may be mined. The wife was underwhelmed by our accomodations at the Qatzrin field school, but I'm not sure what she expected from a facility used to board students. We got a 20 by 15 foot room with two single beds and two bunk beds. There was a small fridge, a bathroom with toilet, sink and shower, and best of all, air-conditioning! In spite of the three inch foam mattresses and plywood underpad, I was charmed. I was less taken with the joint the next morning, my spine was as crooked as a Golan sideroad - no chance my back would stand even a single more night - but the next morning Annetta said she was warming up to the place. The kids had a fitful night too, although Eden said she loved having 'a sleepover' with the whole family. A complete breakfast with scrambled eggs, various breads, yogurts and salads, was served in the field school dining room and we were out by nine for the drive down the Golan, across the north shore of the Kinneret, and up to the famed mystical mountaintop city, Safed. The view on the climb was spectacular. We parked the car and strolled through the artist's quarter of the old city. In one gallery/boutique the saleslady we met was a Montrealer who had moved with her husband to Safed a few years ago. It was already getting hot and the kids were losing patience so after a stroll through the narrow alleyways of the Sephardic quarter Safed would be history for us. A quick stop for ice-coffees and a drive-by visit of the famous cemetery where the great mekubalim (mystical rabbis) of the 17th and 18th century are buried and we were on our way. Safed was not much like I remembered it, owing I suppose, to Madonna's influence (our Madonna, not the first one); it was very touristy and built-up with residential buildings, houses, hotels and kabbalah study centres. What we really needed now was to come down from the mountain for a cooling off via immersion. Rafi, our host at the Qatzrin field school had recommended a reed-shaded estuary that feeds the Kinneret called Maj'rase as the perfect place for a refreshing dip with the kids. We had to drive back across the northern shore of the Kinneret from Safed, cutting across many famous Christian sites including the Mt. of the Beatitudes where Jesus gave the sermon on the mount. It seemed that with temperatures climbing into the low 40s we were not the only ones with dreams of baptism-style relief. There were buses and cars filling the lot and lined along the side of the road to the entranceway of the reserve. The wife and kids hiked the wet-trail, meaning they marched along the stream with the throngs, beginning in ankle deep frigid waters and ending an hour later in mid-thigh waters. I took the dry trail next to the stream occasionally dunking my head. It wasn't a long leisurely stopover, like at Hamat Gader, but the kids said they enjoyed it. The almost two hour drive back to Jerusalem in the heat of the day was described above. The ladies conked out in the car while I white-knuckled it.

Day 20 - Wednesday
I have finally done it. It's taken three weeks in Israel and I've finally found the happiest place in all of Jerusalem. It's a place where, like every public place, there are mobs of people. The religious are there with their straggling, toddling broods, their single, double and triple strollers, but unlike other places they're not rolling over toes and being jammed into thighs. In this place the religious and the secular, the Arab and the Jew, pass without seeming to notice one another, or rather there pervades throughout a tone of sobriety, a civilized sort of indifference that transcends cultural and religious differences, and simplistic opposing paradigmatic terms like tolerance and intolerance. The happiest place in Jerusalem, I believe, is the modern, fully air-conditioned, sprawling, multi-storey, American style shopping mall. Okay, I may be exaggerating on the basis of my experience this morning. After all the driving I did over the past two days up north, today was to be a break for me. The wife and two older daughters would spend the day shopping at the Jerusalem Mall, while I took the younger kids to an activity; our choice being the Bloomfield Science Museum, which was founded and endowed by Montreal's own Neri Bloomfield, and was highly touted as an excellent, fun hands-on activity for kids. The elder ladies were dropped off at the mall and we headed off to the science centre. Well, you have never experienced unpleasantness until you have stood in line for fifteen minutes in the hot sun, then paid $35 admission for the privilege of battling hordes of out of control Israeli kids clambering for 'another turn' at generating voltage by spinning a wheel, or lifting heavy lead weights using rope pulleys and levers and letting them crash to the ground. It was as if Jerusalem had closed every other 'family-friendly' activity in town, and since kids younger than 5 are admitted free (for absolutely no apparent reason considering that not one of the installations would be appropriate for that age), every diaper-clad Shmulik and runny-nosed Rivkele was brought along. My two girls took our experience in stride, better than I did. A choking claustrophobia got to me. I lasted a couple of hours by sheer fortitude and stamina - and because I dreaded having to leave the air-conditioned facility to go back out in the 40 degree heat. By lunchtime I was calling the wife in a controlled panic to let her know that we were on our way to the mall to meet her. It was like an oasis in the desert. I may be overstating one thing. I do believe with all my heart that the shopping mall is the happiest place in Jerusalem, not solemn, or morose, or unnecessarily serious, or reflective, with not a hint of anything spiritual. But the parking garage is absolutely the unhappiest place in all of Jerusalem, of this I am also completely convinced, which would be somehow fitting ie. to have to go through hell to get to heaven. Now I know why virtually every car in Jerusalem is dinged and dented and paint-scratched. It's because they've tried finding parking at the Jerusalem Mall. Jerusalemite drivers apparently don't agree with 'no parking' signs or zones, think their cars can fit in 'spots' of any size, don't believe in directional arrows or so-called 'exits' and 'entrances', and apparently the car manuals here, under the section entitled 'Horn', tells drivers that 'manic and inappropriate use is mandatory in the parking garage at the Jerusalem Mall'. We met the rest of the family for lunch at Yotveta, the Jerusalem branch of our favourite Tel-Aviv beachfront vegetarian restaurant. McDonalds this chain ain't - I mean this in terms of consistency. The menu is the same but, we may as well have been dining at McDonalds so non-similar was the quality. The aspect about the Mall that most differentiates it from other crowded places we've been, besides the ample space that better accommodates the numbers, is that I understand mall rhythm whereas I still can not apprehend the rhythm of other crowded Jerusalem places, whether the Bloomfield Science Museum or Machane Yehuda. The same goes for the traffic - different rhythm. I don't get the urgency. The bold, honking global intolerance that seems to extend to everything everywhere. Except in the mall where everyone seems to be content, blithely engaged in a hands-on activity for grown-ups, the religious and secular, the Jew and the Arab alike. We were only too happy to stay at the mall until late this afternoon - I have never been so happy to extend my time at the mall, ever, really. Those who've had me shopping with them, or to put it more accurately, dragged me along, know that five minutes more at the mall is usually wayyyy too long. Tomorrow, we are back to the real world, by which I mean, 200 CE and Massada.

DAY 21 - Thursday
There was a rude knock on our door at number 10 Aleph HaRav Chen this morning at 7 AM. Fortunately, The wife and I were already awake and getting the kids ready for our scheduled trip to Massada. We wanted to get there as early as possible. The prospect of being on the top of a desert fortress mountaintop in one of the hottest places on earth after noon didn't appeal. We thought that if we got an early enough start, we might be there by 9ish, spend a couple of hours visiting and then be on our way home by lunchtime. In fact, the knock on our door was about the heat. A fit-looking, tanned, grey-haired man introduced himself as Yehuda Bertinoff in thick Hebrew accented English, asked if we were who we were, and presented us with a document. He said that a special committee of the Prime Minister's office had been struck to deal with the problems arising from the heat wave that has settled on the country since approximately July 29th and that copious examination of travel records indicates this was the date of our arrival. Further examination by a team of specially convened Hebrew University meteorological-history graduate students (I didn't know such a field existed but apparently Hebrew U is a world leader) has revealed that individuals with our exact names arrived in Jerusalem from Montreal precisely eighteen years ago when there was another freak meteorological occurrence, in that instance, the heaviest snowstorn in more than a hundred years. The Prime Minister's office has therefore determined that we are a national threat and the only way to end the freakishly hot weather that has plagued the country for the past month is to expel us. The document Mr. Bertinoff presented, certified and stamped by the office of Binyamin Netanyahu himself, was an Order in Cabinet asking our family to leave the country within five days, the deadline coincidentally falling on next Tuesday, the very day of our flight. I explained that we were scheduled to depart anyway, and then Mr. Bertinoff turned to leave, looking satisfied that he had done his service for his country. The door was closed and I packed up the kids and we were off on the 100 km drive down to the Dead Sea and Massada. It was an excellent trip. Massada has developed an exquisite museum of archaeological finds on site which was not there when I visited last. We did manage to get there early and left by about noon. On the way back we re-visited Ein Gedi for a refreshing dip in the springs and waterfalls. On the drive back to Jerusalem the thermometer of our car hit 51 degrees. According to latest weather forecast for Israel this heat wave will in fact break the very night we leave, and August 2010 will go into the history books as one of the hottest on records. I just hope they allow us back into the country sometime.

DAY 22 & 23, Friday & Shabbat
We're definitely in winding down mode. On Friday, the wife and fourteen year old went back to Machane Yehuda to do some food shopping and then down to Jaffa street for souvenir shopping. I took the younger two to Kibbutz Ramat Rahel which is within the municipal bounds of Jerusalem, perched on a hill about a ten minute drive from our apartment. The wife heard that the kibbutz has a lovely pool with ample shaded grounds open to the public. So in an effort to beat the heat we packed a picnic and headed over. The kibbutz advertises itself as a 'hotel resort' and the claims are accurate. The facility is not 'luxurious' by North American standards (nothing here is) but the pool is large and the grounds feature beautiful views of the Judean hills - you can see all the way to Bethlehem. When we got there it was pretty crowded (as usual) but we managed to find a shady spot under a tree and the girls spent much of the day in the pool, while I dug into a novel by Eshkol Nevo, a hotshot new Israeli writer getting international attention. Last night we were invited to bring in the Shabbat at friends' apartment, for the second time this trip. She is an ex-pat Montrealer and her husband a transplanted American. They are the only two people we know who have toughed it out and made a life for themselves here. If they weren't so individually accomplished (she is a doctor of psychology and he works for the government in urban planning) we would admire them for that fact alone. As much as I enjoy driving on Shabbat in Jerusalem it doesn't look like I'll be doing much today. We're all moving very slowly and our only plan for the day is to start the new week with a 'sound and light' show tonight at David's Tower in the Old City, one of the few touristy things we've done here. But as we're winding down I thought as a means of summing up I'd share some numbers, compiled anecdotally and idiosyncratically:

Our Trip in Numbers Days: 24

Average normal temperature for August: 30 degrees centigrade
Average temperature August 2010: 34.3 degrees centigrade
Warmest temperature we recorded: 51 degrees centigrade (at the Dead Sea)
Average rainfall for August: 0 mm
Rainfall for August 2010: 0 mm
Kilometeres driven: 2021 kms
Highest geographical point reached: 900 meters, 3200 ft. (Sefad)
Lowest geographical point reached: -422 meters, -1385 ft. (Dead Sea)
Museums visited: 6
National parks visited: 10
Pools visited: 2
Hospitals visited: 1
Ice coffees consumed: 50 (estimate)
Restaurant meals consumed: 8
'Milkies' and 'Danies' consumed (pudding treats that are an Israeli favourite): 100 (estimate)

Litres of water drank per person: 80 (estimate)

Bottles of sunscreen used: 3
Weight lost (me): 7 lbs
Belt loops reduced (me): 1

DAY 24 & 25 - Sunday & Monday
Our winding-down pace has slowed to a crawl. I think everyone is pretty anxious to get home. The last couple of days - we head out to Ben-Gurion airport tonight for an early morning flight tomorrow - have been occupied with tying up loose ends and getting ready for departure. Yesterday, the sixteen year old and I spent another three hours or so at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital for her follow-up appointment. The patient has finished her antibiotics and says that the ear is feeling better, but there is a constant ringing. Another $85 USD to the Israeli medical system confirmed that her ear is mending nicely but there appears to be water behind her eardrum, which we are told will likely evaporate on its own, no further treatment necessary. However, the specialist we saw this time recommended that she have a hearing test. When I asked if this was absolutely necessary, and whether it can wait until she gets back to Mtl, the doctor said, "it should be done sooner rather than later "to rule out the one percent chance of a 'surprise'". Another example of overkill it seems. He also said that the infection probably developed when she went swimming in the Kinneret. If we choose to arrange the appointment for a hearing test it will have to be done with the assistance of the school where she will be studying beginning on Thursday. This is something we'll be discussing this afternoon when we visit Kibbutz Tsuva to meet with the program head and drop off her valise. Our daughter will be sleeping in the apartment in Jerusalem tonight and then she'll take a bus to the kibbutz tomorrow morning. Yesterday afternoon the wife and I went for a stroll around her old neighbourhood in Old Katamon/the German Colony. This area is Jerusalem's Westmount or Forest Hill, prime real-estate. We walked down clean residential streets with large houses on lots, as opposed the crowded apartment buildings one sees in every other neighbourhood. One street was as wide as a North American street with ample sidewalks - and for the first time I really felt the impact of the difference in scale from what we're used to in Canada. For a brief moment it felt like I was breathing easier. We spent our last full evening in Jerusalem having dinner at a lovely non-kosher Italian place called Foccacio's located downtown just off Ben Yehuda that was recommended by Frommer's. We sat on the terrace. The atmosphere was pleasant and breezy, the food was good and the price very reasonable. This is something that the wife has remarked on - the restaurants have really improved in the twenty years since she lived here. We haven't eaten in restaurants often to save on cost (and to experience fully the joys of market shopping for fresh locally-grown fruits and veggies), but most of the meals we've had have exceeded expectations with large portions (most times one dish was shared by two) at decent prices; our meal yesterday for example, including the wife having a glass of wine, cost 230 shekels with the tip which comes to about $65 CDN for the entire family. Service is also improving, although in general your waitress or salesperson still makes you feel like they're doing you a big favour. There never developed in Israel a 'customer is always right' consumer culture. It's been more like 'wait your turn and I'll come to you.' After dinner we walked around Ben Yehuda, mostly the sidestreets off Ben Yehuda actually, where there are happening restaurants, American and British style clubs/bars, and little shops with crafts and art. A few general observations, and misconceptions dispelled: The tractor-driving balaklava-wearing arabs we passed on our up north did not cover their faces for fear of being labelled 'colluders' working for Jews. Rather, the masks help with the heat - though I'm not sure how. There are many reasons for the dirtiness of the city, including the psychology of apartment living - nobody seems to think it's their responsibility to keep the communal garbage bins where each apartment dweller dumps his/her bag of trash tidy. But another reason, for the bad smell in particular, is the season/weather, specifically the lack of rain in the summer. I'm thinking that Jerusalem must smell much fresher in the fall, winter and spring. With regards to Israeli parenting, a woman named Sarit who we met at our friends' apartment last friday confirmed our experience that the kids rule the roost in the average Israeli family. Interestingly, she works as a parenting counsellor, a sort of Israeli super-nanny interventionist (which, incidentally, is a wildly popular tv program here). She told us that many Israeli parents have trouble saying 'no' to their kids, indulge them excessively, and do not know how to set limits. Ironic, considering that Israel is all about limits; walls and checkpoints - but maybe that's why parents don't impose many in the home. This explains the seemingly parentless kids we constantly saw smacking their siblings around and running between the tables in the restaurants. And finally, in many respects, I've gotten used to it here. I feel more personally connected to the news here than at home, daily and international events have greater immediacy and urgency. Although, it surprises me that the aspect about life here that matters least is that everyone is Jewish. The very fact alone seems to cancel out it's importance, at least on a daily-living basis. The wife is right when she says that because everyone here is Jewish the opportunities to live 'Jewishly' and the definition of what that may mean are much broader. To live as a Jew in Montreal usually means that you have to fit in one box or another. And yet, a few weeks here and what is mattering to me are not Jewish-specific aspects of social living, but rather, things like taking care of the environment and treating one another with politeness and basic decency. However, it should also be said that with everyone living on top of one another as they do here, it is astounding that they achieve the levels of common decency that they do. And with all we have in Canada, the resources and the space, it borders on shameful that we can be so preoccupied with pettiness, and do not achieve much much more.

Do Your Chores Old Man

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Do your chores old man,

And never stop.

The winter was hard,

Spring turns the clock.

The loam is gravy dark,

Sun stirs the blood like soup.

Get your shovel and barrow from the shed,

Sharpen and oil your tools.

You’re thinner and grayer,  

Than last you were seen.

Shambling through the flower beds,

In gloves and baggy jeans.

You pause to feel the lake breeze, 

Touch your sunken cheek,

Dry the sweat from your brow.

The crested Blue Jay in the tree - 

Squeaks and trills for his mate,

You look up to spot the wildlife. 

It's been a while since reciting the prayer,

After burying your beloved wife.

Like the snow she disappeared in layers,

While you tended her in linen.

Dusted the furniture, swept the floor, 

Counted the hours she'd be given.

These days you get fresh air, 

Hum a tune and turn the sod.

Slowly retreat into yourself,

Do your chores and curse God.

Excellent Stories

We all know that story collections don't get their due, except if you're Alice Munro. So many are published to relatively little fanfare and are quickly forgotten. It's arguably the most difficult literary form. With a novel you have to persist but at least, as Mordecai Richler once said, with novels there's room for error. Poems are compact and therefore manageable. Short fiction requires the author to have the plot/character sense of a novelist and the word sense of a poet. A tall order that has frankly confounded me. When they are well-executed short stories encompass entire worlds, entire histories and entire musical scores.

Some of the most memorable books I read last year were story collections. I wanted to recommend two of them which I fear are destined to slip away unnoticed. The first is Tamas Dobozy's "Last Notes and Other Stories." These are funny, witty, playful, serious stories, one of which is a comic masterpiece called "Into The Ring" about a husband and wife who settle their marital conflicts by boxing.

The second is a new collection I've just finished called "Blood Pudding" by Art Corriveau. A Montreal native, I'd never heard of Art, but he's been quietly garnering some impressive publication credits mostly in the US (where he lives) and the UK. These are beautifully crafted tales about fully-realized characters in which the author delicately maps out the emotional landscape of relationships. My favourite in the collection is "Loss of Gravity" about a woman who has lost her husband in a tragic car accident and decides to take action as a way of dealing with overwhelming grief. Both books are worth your time.

Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone

It is said that children are the best teachers. I have been learning from mine for the past nearly twenty-one years. I had to share my latest education. It came courtesy of my daughter Tamar who had to write an essay for her grade 10 English class on a work of art that was influenced by the social or political context in which it was created. An intriguing assignment from an inspired teacher, I thought, considering that so much of what passes for art these days seems to be insular, self-gazing drivel, more concerned with the promotion of personality than with social conscience. Tamar asked for my help to edit the essay, which was about a song by Nina Simone. Have you ever heard of her? she asked. How the heck did you ever discover Nina Simone? I shot back. Of course I knew of Nina Simone, especially her rendition of I Put a Spell on You. But the song Tamar had uncovered was not one with which I was familiar. And what a song it is. Essential. Tamar still hasn't revealed exactly how she found it. I guess for all those internet naysayers who lament that kids are wasting their time in front of the screen, here's the flip-side. 

With Liner Notes By: Tamar Black-Rotchin 

Picket lines School boycotts

They try to say it's a communist plot 

All I want is equality 

for my sister my brother my people and me

- Nina Simone, Mississippi Goddam 

In the 1950s and 60s, the civil rights movement had a major impact on artists. Musicians, writers and poets took the opportunity to express their desire for political equality and social justice, and to give voice to the historical pain and suffering endured by American minorities. One artist who rose to prominence in this context was jazz singer Nina Simone. Simone is an excellent example of an artist who was influenced by the African American struggle for civil rights, and her 1964 song, “Mississippi Goddam” demonstrates how historical events can inspire and motivate protest in the form of art. Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933 in North Carolina. She was a classically trained musician whose aspirations to be become a concert pianist were thwarted when she was denied admittance to a prestigious music institute reportedly because she was black. According to The Jazz Encyclopedia this event “...heightened her anger over the racism...pervasive in the United States during this period.” Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Simone made a name for herself performing and recording popular music that blended classical and jazz styles. As the quintessentially African American musical style with origins in the historical experience of slavery, jazz became Simone’s principal mode of musical expression. Two events inspired Nina Simone to write Mississippi Goddam. The first was the assassination in 1963 of civil rights activist Medgar Evers by a member of the Mississippi Ku Klux Klan. In the song, when Simone wails "Everybody knows about Mississippi," this is the event to which she is referring. Evers was a well known activist whose work in the civil rights movement made him a target of opponents. He was shot down in cold blood outside his home on the morning of June 12th, a few hours after US President John F. Kennedy made a nationally televised speech in support of a civil rights act. The Evers murder was a lightning rod for further protest, political engagement and artistic expression by musicians such as Bob Dylan and writers like Eudora Welty who responded to the tragedy with protest works of their own. The second event that inspired Simone’s song was the horrific bombing on September 15th 1963, of The 16th Street Baptist Church by four members of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, which killed four young girls and injured 22 others. The nation was horrified by this event. It was widely considered a turning point in the civil rights movement, and contributed to the support for passage of civil rights legislation in 1964. In the song Simone refers to the bombing when she sings "Alabama's gotten me so upset." Artists like Nina Simone who risk expressing unpopular political views in their work often do so at great personal and professional cost. When it was released in 1964, the recording of Mississippi Goddam was banned in several Southern states with the reason given that the title was religiously objectionable. In a March 1986 interview in Jet magazine Simone declared that although she does not regret her role as a civil rights activist, Mississippi Goddam probably hurt her career. “All of the controversial songs - the industry decided to punish me for and they put a boycott on my records.” Still, it seems to me that a genuine artist must speak honestly above all else. They must use their talents to tell the truth no matter how unpopular that may be. Protest songs have much importance because they convey powerful and purposeful messages to the public, letting the masses know that they are not alone in the hardships that they face and their daily battles for justice and equality. Protest music can bring a sense of unity and harmony to those who are suffering, and most of all, they can be a catalyst to major social change for the better. In this respect Nina Simone is a true hero. As she says in the song:

Lord have mercy on this land of mine 

We all gonna get it in due time

Beaufort by Ron Leshem

"You're a different generation, a generation that asks questions. And we are obligated to give you answers."

The quote comes from the novel Beaufort and is spoken by General Kaplan, the only character that the author claims was based on a real person. No truer words are said in the book. This novel questions the sacrifice made by a generation of Israelis who fought an eighteen year military stalemate against Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon. Lebanon has been called Israel's Viet-Nam. Until now it was a wound which was too sensitive to touch.

This bold, imaginative, raw and powerful story was a sensation in Israel when it appeared in 2006, and for good reason. Narrated by twenty-one year old second Lieutenant Erez Liberti it maps the loves, intimacies, fears and doubts of the commander and his squad of "puppies" (a dozen or so men barely out of high-school.) They are stationed at Beaufort, a real-life Crusader fortress located in the so-called "security buffer zone" north of the Israel/Lebanon border. The story covers two tours of duty ending with the harrowing withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

Erez calls Beaufort “a cage of ugliness right at the center of heaven.” It's a perfect description. The geography is magnificent, but just below the fortress in the surrounding villages terrorists plan ambushes, rocket attacks and plant roadside bombs along the access routes in and out of the outpost. The "ugliness/heaven" contrast also decribes the experience of the commander and his crew. War after all has its own absurd logic, breeding a kind of euphoria via a surreal co-existence of opposites; stretches of unendurable boredom and fatigue jutaposed with sudden, razor sharp life-and-death moments; love and mutual dependency between comrades juxtaposed with terrible pain and anguish when one is killed. Erez thrives on it. At least for a time. He says, “My soldiers – I was prepared to die for them, I swear it: I really was ready to die for them. That’s not just some slogan; I felt good about it. Seems to me they were willing to die for me, too, and that’s an incredible feeling.” And later, when his second in command is seriously wounded, “That’s Lebanon, you’re totally smeared in blood and the guy lying there is your best friend.” This portrait of these courageous young men is like the book itself, at once heartbreaking and exhilarating. Note: The movie on which this novel is based is up for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year.

Blood on the family doorpost

Tuesday. I step through the front door after work and Wife is at the sink straining spaghetti, looking like she's ready to strangle someone with noodles. She's screaming; at daughter one to get her butt up from the basement and clean the mess left on the kitchen counter, at daughter two to get off the computer and vacuum her room, at daughter three to cease reading Archie comics and finish her math homework, and before I can ask, in my most honey-dipped voice how her day was, she's commanding me to take daughter four to the bathroom before she pees in her pants. For the record, this is not my average welcome after a day's work. The household is thickly redolent with anxiety and resentment. More than usual. The children are ducking for cover, hiding in the basement, seeking safehaven behind bedroom doors. You never know when the next explosion might occur, a kitchen cupboard boobytrap, a livingroom sofa ambush. Best to stay away, steer clear of confrontation, navigate around danger. It's the week of double-work, night and day, of being under the ruler's merciless thumb, the taskmaster's cracking whip, the days of slavery, of waiting to be liberated, of aspiration and inevitable failure. It's not exactly Egypt. It's our house. And it's the week before Passover.

Back at the sink, her fingers are tangled in knots of drippy semolina, the dregs of a box dug out of the back of the cupboard from last summer, consumed now or else wasted in the name of religion. Wife has that pitiless look in her eye, tinged the red of fatigue. I know what she's thinking as she glares into the steam rising from the porcelain sink. I hate you. For making me do this. It'll never get done. The shopping. The cleaning. The dishes. It can't all get done on time. Again. And you're to blame. I hate you. Now I'm thinking back, sarcastically, what would getting ready for Passover be without a little slavery. And she's thinking back at me. Shut the hell up. Come down from your sanctimonious mountain you holier-than-thou, lazy-ass sonofabitch. The work all falls on my shoulders, not yours. I'm the slave here, not you. I'm the one who'll be dragging the three year old down the aisles of the IGA, dodging near-sighted bubbies, stacking the cart up with egg-matzoh boxes, macaroon cans, cellophane packets of gefilte fish and jars of horseradish, and picking through the shelves of condiments and spices looking for the "Kosher for Passover" seal of approval. I'm the one who'll be emptying the kitchen drawers and washing them out. Scrubbing under the fridge. Behind the stove. Inside the grates. I'm the slave here and I hate you for it! We say nothing to each other. But we know. This is the week of telepathic conversations with burning bushes; remove your shoes, step carefully, don't get too close or you might get scorched. I slip quietly into the next room, out of range. She's right. It's the same every year. And again I wonder how we're going to survive the journey intact. How we're going to get all the chometz out, the yeast, the ferment. We know we're going to try again. And we know we're going to fail again. But, somehow, we also know it's a journey through the wilderness we'll survive.

Is Amazon all BS?

There is no doubt that more people are reading than ever before. They are buying more books too, in a variety of formats. But are they reading crap? Is the reading public being dumb-downed by the tidal wave of literary garbage that book purveyors like Amazon.com have made cheap, available and convenient? Has it changed how we define books and what we expect from them? Can it be that literature is being sacrificed on an altar of BS (the Best Seller)? Is the situation analogous, as Ursula K. LeGuin says, to the promotion of fast-food: The readability of many best sellers is much like the edibility of junk food. Agribusiness and the food packagers sell us sweetened fat to live on, so we come to think that’s what food is. Amazon uses the BS Machine to sell us sweetened fat to live on, so we begin to think that’s what literature is. I believe that reading only packaged microwavable fiction ruins the taste, destabilizes the moral blood pressure, and makes the mind obese.

My take on whether Amazon is to blame for dumbing down books is in agreement with this writer's when he says, The mass culture has been convicted of killing off serious writing for about as long as there has been a mass culture. I don't agree with LeGuin that just because McDonalds sells more burgers and fries than any other restaurant, people think that that's what food is. In fact, people got tired of Big Macs, which is why McDonalds is selling salads these days. Mass marketing changes things for a while, and then they change again. People have always bought books in a variety of new formats and controversy has typically ensued with the introduction of each new format to the marketplace. For instance, when the mass market paperback was first produced and sales of pulp fiction skyrocketed, purists made the similar arguments about the decline of the literary novel. And yet great novels continued to be written and sold. Like the advent of pocketbooks, ebooks have made reading more affordable and convenient. When it comes to the book market, the general rule has always been that there is no general rule. Tastes change. People read books for a variety of reasons including enjoyment, education, escape, entertainment, and enrichment. The beauty of books is that they can satisfy all these needs. There are books that cater to the largest segment of the reading public (Harlequin romances etc.) and there are books that cater to smaller, more refined segments. What I will say about books in the digital era is that there is a lot more of them, and there is much more choice and variety, which is about all I'm willing to pronounce about the fate of literature. 

But from the point of view of this author, I think Amazon has been, on balance, positive. Yes, there is a lot more crap out there, which means it's more difficult to garner attention for any particular book. People have to be more creative in this highly competitive, crowded marketplace. But as a publishing, marketing and selling platform, Amazon has empowered authors in a game-changing way, and that's significant, since authors were so powerless before. 

Here, for what it's worth, is my experience a nutshell. My debut novel was published by a small respected independent publisher nine years ago. It garnered quite a few good reviews in local and national newspapers, and was shortlisted for a respected national first novel prize. It sold relatively well in the national market, relatively, that is, for a first novel by a completely unknown writer, and in a national market that is relatively small. There were no sales whatsoever internationally. My royalties, at the standard rate of 10% of the cover price were pretty paltry. 

Almost eight years after it first appeared I decided to re-issue my novel myself in ebook format (in the contract with my original publisher I had not signed over the digital rights - it was still early in the game.) Amazon enabled me to make the novel available, quickly and easily, and to reach an international market. In the eighteen months since making the book available it has sold steadily and one hundred percent of new sales have been international. Copies sold have not yet reached the number of the previous eight years of the print edition - which benefited at the outset from some mainstream media attention and the sheer luck of having been nominated for that aforementioned national prize - but it's getting close, and with absolutely no marketing investment to speak of. Since the author's royalty from the ebook is seven times higher than that the royalty I received from the print edition, even though the cover price is half, the revenue from ebook sales will shortly surpass the print edition in a fraction of the time. On top of that, I retain complete control, no waiting for sales reports from a publisher or agent, no waiting for payment (the royalty cheque arrives on time and regularly). Admittedly, the main challenge remains marketing, how to get the book some attention, but Amazon provides a number of tools that make marketing, on a small, economical and highly selective scale, possible and simple, even for a doofus like me. Amazon has enabled the author to be an entrepreneur with his own product, and that's no BS. I like to think, though its unprovable so far, that the reason my book has sold almost a decade after it was published, is that Amazon gave it a chance to find its readership and that the quality of the work has prevailed. Unlike many good books that are abandoned by their publishers and go out of print if they have not found their readers within the allotted time, ebooks have an indefinite lifespan, which is about as much time as any author can hope for.