Month: June 2009

Another crack

by adminin Israel, Writing

israelmagnet1

 Another crack

Zeek at Jewcy.com, June 29, 2009

I was walking down Carlebach Street when the wailing air raid siren announced the biggest civil drill in Israel’s history. Though I’d timed a morning interview around it, (who wants to pause for two minutes of alarm?), I was otherwise unprepared. Unsure of what to do with myself, I stopped and stood at the edge of a sidewalk café, under the shade of the awning. I was still. I listened. The sound was barely audible, drowned out by the noise of construction and late morning traffic. I looked to the people around me for cues. Their conversations continued, coffees were sipped, cigarettes puffed.

A waitress, her blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail, pointed to an underground parking garage across the street and reminded us that we were to head to the nearest “protected space.”

Not that we needed the reminder. On the heels of Netanyahu’s induction, most homes received a pamphlet accompanied by a colorful magnet: a map of Israel, carved into color-coded regions, edged by cheerful images—splashing dolphins, dancing camels, and a smiling skier in snow-covered Golan Heights. That skier is in a red zone—according to the key, if he hears a siren he must slide to a shelter immediately. Tel Aviv is colored like a ripe orange. In the case of a missile attack, I will have two minutes to get somewhere safe.

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No honeymoon in Tehran

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

honeymoonintehran

 No honeymoon in Tehran: review of Azadeh Moaveni’s Honeymoon in Tehran

The Jerusalem Post, June 26, 2009

If the turmoil surrounding Iran’s recent presidential elections offers a glance at the inner psyche of Iranians, Honeymoon in Tehran offers a penetrating stare. Though the deceptively light title suggests that readers are getting a romance (and they do) the heart of the book is the turbulent love story between the Iranian-American author, Azadeh Moaveni, and Iran.

Moaveni was born and raised in northern California, amongst an enclave of successful Iranians-in-exile, her parents included. As an adult, Moaveni spent 1999 to 2001 in Iran wrestling with her identity during a time that the country wrestled with its own—the result was a journalism gig with Time magazine as well as her first book, Lipstick Jihad.

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Waiting for Taha

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

myhappiness1 

Waiting for Taha: review of Adina Hoffman’s My Happiness Bears no Relation to Happiness: a poet’s life in the Palestinian Century

The Jerusalem Post, June 5, 2009

The story begins with an unlikely friendship between a Jewish American woman who has come to call Jerusalem home and a Palestinian poet, old enough to be her father, who today lives in Nazareth just miles from a home that no longer exists.

The story begins with a young Palestinian boy eking out a living for his parents and siblings during the British Mandate period.

The story begins with the tumultuous events of 1948, with villagers who weren’t fully aware of the magnitude of the events around them and with young Jewish soldiers who were, by some accounts, equally naïve.

Adina Hoffman’s “My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness” is about all of these narratives, more, and none. And in the space where all these stories converge—where they fade in, fade out, and bleed into each other—dwells Taha Muhammad Ali, a lesser-known Palestinian poet and the subject of Hoffman’s biography.

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Tel Avivians have a headache

by adminin Politics, Writing

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 Tel Avivians have a headache

Zeek at Jewcy.com, June 2, 2009

On a recent Friday night, Tel Aviv ran out of the Israeli equivalent of Tylenol. A killer migraine throbbing away, I went to not one, not two, but six grocery stores in search of relief. “What’s going on in this city?” a clerk asked me. “Everyone’s got a headache.”

Maybe it’s because we have a lot to wrap our heads around. Tel Aviv, the capital of Israeli secularism, recently marked its 100th anniversary. But we celebrated under the pall of Jerusalem’s changing-of-the-guard—including Lieberman’s ominous “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

Anat Litvak, a 29-year-old educational psychologist, doesn’t mince words. “I hate it,” she says of the new government. “Netanyahu is a manipulator, a dictator.” When asked if this government represents her, Litvak quickly answers, “No.” Litvak feels she speaks for many Tel Avivians, “Here, I feel very much like part of the consensus,” she says. “But in situations like elections you see that most of the country isn’t like Tel Aviv. It’s a shock.”

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