Above: Miles and Leora, December 23 2009

Shimon comes to the Rabbi and says “I want to build a perfect Sukah, exactly by the Talmud. Tell me what to do.” The Rabbi strokes his beard, opens the Talmud, and begins to write. He hands Shimon some instructions. Shimon hurries home, follows the instructions to the letter, and just as he attaches the last piece the entire structure collapses in a pile of rubble and dust. In tears and anger he returns and says “Rabbi, I follow the Talmud’s instructions exactly and just when I finish, the entire Sukah collapses in a pile of rubble and dust!” The Rabbi strokes his beard, opens the Talmud, and begins to read again. “Yes”, says the Rabbi, “Rashi makes the very same comment.”

Above and left: Later that same day, Sukah redux. October 7 2009

Above: Yaffo and Tel Aviv, July 2009

In July of 2009 we journeyed to Israel to stay with Leora's cousins in Jerusalem for a few weeks. I had last lived there in 1987 and last visited in about 1989. Israel has changed, grown up, and become more American in many ways. It felt prosperous and secure, but, as always anxious and frenetic too. In my travels with my family the Israeli-Palestinian political realities that I know all too well from the press were largely distant and unseen. Only the sight of the separation wall cutting across the hills of Jerusalem provided an unavoidable reminder of the human and political disaster of perpetual occupation and war.

Thanks to the generous loan of our host's car I now felt freer than I ever had two decades ago. Thanks to the wonderful gift of children I felt less free than I ever had two decades ago.

I now looked at religiously observant people in Jerusalem from the outside, and remembered what it was like to be one of them looking at someone who looked like me. At the same time, while in most ways I appear to be what Israel would call a secular person, I remain religious on my own terms, and my perspective is something that Israeli culture has no name or category for. I don't even bother to explain - there is no possibility of communication. My cultural reality, as a Jewish-Oregonian-American is far more foreign to Israelis than theirs is to me.

Freed of the burden of trying to make a living in Israel or fit in to the place in any way, I happily chatted with people in English or my rusty American accented Hebrew, as needed and without worry or the need to prove anything to myself or anyone else. I read HaAretz daily, watched the evening news, and relaxed into the situation. Haraedim rioted in the streets over a child custody dispute and then over a parking lot that was to be open on Shabbat. Our secular cousins spoke in anger over the threat to their way of life as the tide of religious people grows ever higher in Jerusalem and their secular friends disperse to the coast. Meanwhile, preparations were underway for the bar mitzvah of one of their grandchildren.

I had been pretty derailed by this place two decades ago, but a friend said before I went, "think of it as a victory tour" and I did. I had survived back in the 1980s and moved on, and was able to roam as a tourist and nothing more. Sometimes I was alone with my memories and sometimes I shared an exotic place with my children and Leora and with our benefactor, my mother-in-law Judith Troper.

On a special few mornings Leora and I were able to sneak away and walk the cool streets of Jerusalem, sharing something we had always had in common but never experienced together. Those walks were particularly sweet. (October 2009).

Above: Daughter and son play at sunset in Tel Aviv. July 2009.

    Above: Yaffo and Tel Aviv, July 2009

Above: Judith and kids at Mt. Hermon, July 2009

Above: Visiting Beit Hatfutzot with my children, July 2009

     Above: Rosh Pina, July 2009

Above: Nothing was finer than to sneak away in the morning with Leora and walk the streets of Jerusalem. If felt a little like we'd been here before, although we'd definitely never been here together. July 2009..

Above: On one of our morning walks I found my old building on Derek Aza, once a place of some unhappiness and now just other people's apartments and other people's lives. All gone, all gone, and happily so. July 2009.

Above: July 4th, 2009, Portland, Oregon

Above: March 28, 2009, Leora Troper at UC Santa Cruz

Above: March 2009, down by the sea, Cambria California

Above: March 28, 2009, UC Santa Cruz, Leora and our children

March 28, 2009, Santa Cruz vacation.

March 28, 2009, Santa Cruz vacation.