Different Slants

Meeting Marsha Michael, Who Solved My Problems in Israel (Part 4)

by Robert M. Katzman © October 31, 2017

 

My landlady, (land-person?), Orly, suggested I meet her friend Marsha Michael whom she felt would be somebody I’d like to talk to. She was right, but for assorted reasons. But with meeting her for dinner, came the Katzman Food Curse. More on that later.

Marsha, a lovely woman who is my contemporary, which is much safer to say than listing a person’s age, like that matters, except to say that we both know who Harry Truman was and why he’d be a better President of the United States today—even though dead—than the insanity we have in there now.

Marsha, besides being a very smart, politically active citizen of Israel by way of New Jersey, meaning any opponents of hers better watch themselves, was very easy to talk to and educated me about a growing protest movement in Israel to end the endless war between Palestine and Israel and create an actual two-state reality.

She is involved in a group called: http://womenwagepeace.org.il/en/

(Read on …)

Joy’s Ashes in Israel:

An Independent Woman

(part 3)

By Robert M. Katzman © October 30, 2017 

Joyce’s Choices:

She chose to marry a Jewish man

She chose to become a Jewish woman

She chose to have Jewish children

She became an excellent Jewish cook

Cloaking herself in the identity she wanted

Even to dying on Sunday, May 14th

Israel’s 69th Independence Day

She chose to lead a Jewish life

Rosh Hashanah//Yom Kippur

Chanukkah//Purim//Passover

New to Joyce’s existence at twenty-five

Were never forced upon her

A life she controlled

(Read on …)

Bob in Israel: Crusader Castles and Caraway Seeds (part 2)

By Robert m. Katzman © October 27, 2017

 I thought the problem was Caraway seeds. I mean finding them in the Promised Land because since I’m cooking eggs in my obscure rented space far from English-speaking people in order to spend as little as possible on food, salt and pepper just didn’t cut it this morning. I decided to find a real, or at least larger grocery store where a range of spices might be available.

About Caraway seeds, in case this sounds odd to you or in case everything I write about seems odd to you, when I was a child on the South Side of Chicago there was a Jewish place on 71^st Street and Jeffery Avenue, near Woolworths and I think north of the train. I was five then, in 1955, and I couldn’t drive yet, so my memories of where things were at that time might be influenced from my being three feet tall.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman © October 26, 2017

My plan to skillfully and thoughtfully distribute my wife Joy’s ashes where it would mean the most to both of us was going well. Our tall handsome blonde, brown-eyed son David made all the arrangements and connections on the Internet and eased my way, accept for the last one. What was I expecting?

Landing in Tel Aviv, Israel at 4:30 PM and leaving on the morning of Wednesday, October 25, 2017 from Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy awaking at 6 am, and flying east at noon on El Al, it was the last leg of my trip where Joy’s ashes will be sent into the wind from the top of Masada. Never heard of it? It’s usually incorrectly referred to as the Jewish Alamo, but since it happened 2,000 years earlier, the Alamo should really be called the American Masada. Just my opinion. Two Jews died in the Alamo with the other 180 men, not that it makes them any more special. (Read on …)

Copyright July 6, 2016

There is a fluidity and capriciousness to time and events.

There is no way to predict what will occur next based on what has happened before. Even a series of good events, one following another, doesn’t mean that kind of luck will continue, or the reverse, either. There is no pattern, no rationalization or balance as to why things happen in a person’s life. Why do I write this?

Last September, during a street fair in Racine, Wisconsin, a smallish town of less than 80,000 located next to Lake Michigan, just north of Kenosha, 30 miles south of Milwaukee and about 27 miles north of the Illinois border, my wife Joy and I met a very nice local couple named Brad and Rose Bliss.

In this nine months later follow-up story to what happened in that story, just about every single significant thing changed. No, none of us is or was famous and no one would have read about any of us in some newspaper; but what happened then caused our paths to cross during that street fair, and subsequently made a friendship bloom between two new settlers in Racine and a long established couple.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

By Robert M. Katzman

© October 3, 2015

 

The munching horses have become more familiar

The insanely circuitous route I take home

Each night a bit less incomprehensible

The surly burly guy with steel grey hair

Smiles at me when I buy gas from him

The beautiful deep brown Root River

Less of an impossible barrier every morning

As I learn the handful of roads crossing it

Going south on 32 each morning

I pause at Main Street’s western turn

Greeting the blinding sunrise over Lake Michigan

As if it were a cuddly puppy

Waiting just for me, too

Sometimes a single sailboat passing

Before I turn west towards

The grey concrete interstate

(Read on …)