Like any other country, Israel looks at world news through its own lens.
UK Election: Thank God that anti-Semite party wasn’t elected! Although if the Jews no longer felt welcome in Britain, they are definitely welcome here.
US Impeachment Hearings: What’s an impeachment?
At White House Chanukah Party, Trump signs Executive Order to Punish Campuses for Allowing Anti-Semitism: Whadda guy! Although the guest list was kind-of ^eye-roll^
Shooting in New Jersey: We are watching.
The Reimann family (owners of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, among other well-known brands) committed to righting its Nazi sympathizer past and will track down people who were forced to work for them during the Holocaust to give them compensation. They are also committing EUR 25 million annually for Holocaust education: ^Nods of approval^
Finland’s Prime Minister is a 34-year-old Woman: ^crickets^
Meanwhile, here in Israel, we have our own issues.
On the way to a third election within a year: Seriously?!?!?!?
Netanyahu will not step down: Likud is having another leadership election. Netanyahu is trying to get support for direct elections for prime minister. Netanyahu keeps using the terms “witch hunt,” “attempted coup,” and “fake news.” (I wonder where he got the idea?)
And finally, watching American TV through my own Israeli lens.
An Israeli philosopher was mentioned on Chuck Lorre’s vanity card after Young Sheldon.
Objectively speaking, the world has had a pretty sh*tty week.
Massacre in two New Zealand mosques by a right wing extremist who proudly posted it live on social media
Rockets in Tel Aviv
Response in Gaza
Terror cell found in Syrian Golan Heights
Boeing 737 Max 8 making air travel scarier than ever
Scandal in the US of parents cheating the system to get their over-privileged children into higher-tier universities
Scandal in Korea of a Korean pop star who offered sex services for business investment that snowballed into a bigger scandal involving hidden-camera sex videos shared in chatrooms
Spa sex scandal in the US, which shines a light on human trafficking all over the US while delegitimizing the massage therapist profession
Learning about the despicable crimes of R. Kelly and Jussie Smollett, and wondering why Paul Manafort got off so lightly
Anti-Semitism showing itself on the Left and the Right (around the world)
Ugly election campaigns
Preventable diseases making a comeback because of misinformation and ungrounded fear
It’s weeks like this that make me think it might be a good idea to get off social media and stop reading the news.
Finished a big project on gender equality in the workplace
Saw a matinee of Captain Marvel and walked home in my blue suede shoes
Short review: So. Much. Fun!
Best feminist line: “I don’t have to prove anything to you!”
Best multi-level joke: Cat named Goose
Cheered for the runners in the Jerusalem Marathon – it rained the day before and the day after, but the on the day of the race, the weather was perfect
Took time for self-care, cooking (mushroom barley soup and quinoa fennel cranberry salad), and baking (molasses cookies)
This is not an ode to being selfish. Rather it’s a reminder to be grateful for the blessings in your own life and trying to make your corner of the world a little bit brighter. Human beings always have a choice. We can choose to have good people in our lives and do good things. We’ll slip from time to time and hopefully learn to do better.
But if we start to believe that the world is dark, horrible, filled with evil, and nothing we do even matters in the great scheme of things, well, then we will have a lot more weeks like this one.
So instead of looking at the world and saying “whatever,” let’s look at the world and say “nevertheless!”
While I’m sure other stuff has been happening around the world, the last couple of weeks in Israel and the United States have been crazy.
How we deal with it at my house
In the US, we had a blue wave in the House, more firings in the White House, CNN had a stand-off with the president, the president popped over to France, and major elections had recounts.
In Israel, the apathy of the citizens of Jerusalem was staggering – the new mayor won by about 6,500 votes in a city with a population of 865,000 with only 30% of eligible voters voting. Israel is defending its citizens against attacks by Gazan rockets (460 rockets over several days from Gaza into Israel), but now there is a cease-fire. However, the defense minister stepped down, which rocked the delicate coalition, and that may bring about national elections.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
Yeah? I’ll have some of that fiction now, please.
The nice thing about fiction is that it’s clean and all the boring unimportant bits are taken out. You don’t have to waste your time on details that don’t push the story along. Real life has just too much stuff going on and you don’t know what’s really important or which way to look.
I’m a fan of thrillers, mysteries, police procedurals, and I’m not averse to vigilantes with strict internal moral codes. At the moment, my fictional world is making a lot more sense than real life. But I do need fiction that makes me think. I need a theory or a particular worldview to chew on.
A few weeks ago, a British show called Strangers caught my attention. A few of the main characters are British, but it was filmed in Hong Kong with Chinese actors speaking Chinese (scenes with subtitles!). My original thought about reviewing this series was to point out that Britain is now getting in on the Asian drama wave. But I’m going to take it in a different direction.
What I loved about this show was that it was filled with twists and turns I didn’t see coming. I know the usual tropes, so I really appreciate a show that keeps you guessing. For instance, here is a synopsis of the first fifteen minutes: A woman is driving while crying on the phone. She’s hit by a truck. A self-satisfied professor starts his lecture and is pulled out of the lecture hall to be told his wife has died in a car accident. He’s afraid of flying, but goes to Hong Kong to identify his wife’s body and bring her back to England. He sees a man holding a picture of his wife. Who is this man? None other than her Chinese husband who she’s been married to for the past 20 years.
Say what? I’m hooked. And it goes on like that for eight episodes: an unexpected twist every fifteen minutes or so.
I won’t spoil it for you. The unraveling of the mystery is very well done; I enjoyed the meandering pace.
What made me think, though, was a nearly throwaway line in the first minutes of the show. The smug professor wrote a book called Do Nations Exist? The brown-nosing student says “Nations are imagined; they only exist in our minds.” The professor answers, “Surely a group of people claiming to be a cohesive whole is, at best, a lie agreed upon.”
You can watch the whole show without ever thinking about this line ever again. However, given the events of real life, you might see that the story shows you the answer. Our professor leaves his ivory tower and arrives in a dirty, dark, smoggy Hong Kong. He finds that everything he thinks is true is not, everything he expects in the world is upside-down, and all of his British cultural touchstones have no meaning in Hong Kong. He expects the police to help, they don’t. He expects the British consular officers to help, they don’t. He thinks the Chinese husband is working against him, he isn’t. Then there’s the journalist, the university friend, the activist, the refugee, the Triad gangster, the conglomerate owner, the British consul, the hotel manager – no one is who they appear to be. And what about the elections in Hong Kong? There are protests and the usual rumors and power plays. But how does it fit in? (As I mentioned, nothing is introduced that isn’t important. It’s clean and we know where to look, even if it might be misdirection on the part of the writer.)
It’s possible that the important bit of the line is “a lie agreed upon.” When you hold up the mirror of fiction to real life, you might find that everything you think is true isn’t. All your expectations are baseless. Your interactions in the world go awry because you are a stranger in a strange land.
But then why throw in nations at all? Do they exist? Well, I suppose it depends on who you ask. If you are inside, then they don’t – or don’t have to. If you are outside, then they most assuredly do.
As for me, for the moment, I prefer to stay in my fictional world that makes some kind of sense. Real life is just too crazy right now.
The Write Place (for me) 