Marcia and I returned home to Jerusalem after a visit to the States less than 72 hours before awakening to the sound of air raid sirens. Early on a quiet Saturday morning, Gaza’s governing terrorist organization Hamas launched another attack upon Israel, this time employing levels of ruthlessness and savagery beyond imagination, crossing every line that separates humanity from soulless fiends.

I have hesitated to write about our recent personal experiences here in Jerusalem—they don’t seem worthy of mention alongside the horrors endured in the south—but after numerous friends had reached out to us through social media, phone calls and email, I decided to share a few thoughts.

After the horrors of October 7, it now seems to have become clear to most Israelis that our government’s willingness to subject its citizens to nearly two decades of harassment and violence from Hamas must end. Meaningless cease fires must end. The cycle of returning imprisoned Jihadists to Hamas after each war must end. If Israel is to survive as a sovereign nation, Hamas’ rule must end.

Marcia and I continue to feel safe in Jerusalem although we are not blind to the fact that risk is always involved whenever an enemy exists 40 miles away with the intent to launch rockets toward us. We are thankful to have arrived back in Israel before the war began. Everyone we know here feels the same. None of us wants to be elsewhere during a crisis in Israel.

Virtually all of us have friends and/or family members, active reservists who have been called up to serve in the IDF. Some were currently living outside of Israel but they rushed here just the same to report for duty. They are, of course, in our thoughts and prayers constantly.

In Jerusalem, jets fly overhead almost continually. From time to time we hear explosions in Gaza as well as from within Hamas-targeted Israeli towns along the Mediterranean coast. Although we routinely hear explosions from missiles launched our way during air raids—there have not been many in Jerusalem since the first morning of the war—the explosions typically are caused by missiles that Israel’s Iron Dome system ignores because they were not projected to strike populated areas. The Iron Dome has worked well, but some missiles inevitably land and cause damage.

Most of the emergency vehicles here in Jerusalem have changed their sirens’ pitch and volume patterns so they don’t sound like the public air raid sirens. It’s a good move. I noticed that after the first series of air raids we experienced my ears would perk up whenever I heard sounds similar to the civil defense sirens. Sounds like trucks on the streets winding out in low gear, for example.

Street rallies in support of the war pop up nearly every day. These are joined by Middle Eastern, American, French, Russian, Ethiopian, religious, secular… All kinds of Jews. They dance to recorded music, wave flags, honk their car horns as they pass and sing hopeful songs. My Hebrew is not good enough to accurately translate the songs’ lyrics but their themes are clear; do not fear, Israel will persevere, someday there will be an end to terror. A few photos taken in our neighborhood…

Surreal is surely an overused word today but it describes day-to-day life in Jerusalem well. Most stores and restaurants are open. The buses are running. Cabs are available. Yet when a neighbor asks, “How’s it going?” it’s common to shrug before answering. How to respond?

Before we left to visit the US we had ordered a new sofa to replace the sagging original we brought here over 12 years ago. The new sofa was held for us in storage, to be delivered when we returned. But when we learned that it had been stored in a warehouse in Sderot, it seemed likely that we might never see it, given what had happened there. (Warning: I understand these links are potentially disturbing. I have only glanced at them.)

I began calling our old sofa our “war couch,” thinking we might never see the new one but, surprisingly, a few days ago workers from Sderot called then showed up at our home to deliver it. They were calm, pleasant and business like during the short time they were with us—amazing demeanor—as if they lived and worked in a peaceful village near the sea.

Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live.

Marcia and I only recently began to reengage with ordinary life here in Israel, roughly two years after this country began its experiment with Covid-19, its new and highly-regarded therapies and its legion of mutated cousins, the bugs, you’ll remember, that were given Greek names. Our reassimilation into Jerusalem’s recovering commercial scene was, by necessity, lay-AHT, lay-AHT, as they like to say here, “slowly, slowly.” Government lockdowns and restrictions had knocked nearly everyone in the Land out of the habit of coming and going as they pleased. So it took a bit of effort to recapture that old, freedom feeling and begin to circulate again.

Lockdown number one in Jerusalem began for us when the police appeared one evening to roadblock the entrance to our neighborhood. They allowed only emergency vehicles and those with government-issued permits to pass. Late in the first day of that new experience, two officers manning a barricade called out to us, as we returned toward our home from a stroll, “Friends, you must wear your masks,” although there was no one within twenty yards of us.

But all is well that ends, no matter how slowly.  Lockdowns, “green passports,” limits on public assembly and mask and vaccine mandates are now fading memories. So, about six weeks ago, Marcia and I tested the water with Covid-free toes and visited a reopened, Jerusalem-area winery with friends, no masks or permits required. Encouraged by how nearly normal that experience seemed, we went out to eat at restaurants two times in the following three weeks.

It has been well-reported that, after the long, Covid-induced absence of tourists in Israel, many restaurants, hotels and other tourism-dependent businesses failed. Even now, thousands of impacted Israelis continue to struggle after taking huge hits to their incomes. But it’s one thing to peruse cold statistics regarding business failures and personal hardships and another to witness, firsthand, the closings of once-thriving businesses run by people who had, through the years, become our friends.

The most recent example to strike a sad chord came with my last visit to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda Market, an internationally known, world-class outdoor market better known to locals as “the shuk.” Always lively, picturesque, diverse and great prices. Though the shuk had been a weekly destination only miles from our home, pre-Covid, I had made less than a handful of shopping visits there in the last two years. To reverse that trend, I set out to buy some exotic, fresh-ground coffee at Nissan’s, a big, bustling shop at the shuk, ideally situated for high-volume business on Yaffo Street.

Nissan’s was the first unique, non-touristy shop we discovered after moving to Jerusalem more than a decade ago. We bought bulk grains, spices, seeds, dried fruit, raw nuts and imported pasta as well as coffee there. They served pastries, espresso and cold drinks to a handful of tables they maintained on the street. Nissan himself often waited on us during the first few years of our patronage, then two young, lovely, hardworking and personable sisters who had worked alongside him that entire time took over. But when I showed up for what turned out to be the very last time a few weeks ago, the shop’s shelves were bare, most of their equipment had vanished, the tables and chairs were stacked and a huge, handwritten poster hung crookedly on a stone column at the shop’s entrance.

“Yes, we are closing,” the younger of the two sisters told me, pointing to the sign. Then, shrugging, she added, “This is the last week.”

Where would they go? What would they do? I didn’t know what to say. Ten years earlier, the young woman who stood across the counter from me and so bravely delivered her grim news had only worked in the shop part time, most likely after a day spent at her high school. She rummaged around and found a single bag of coffee beans to grind and sell. After making my last purchase at Nissan’s I thanked her and asked her to please tell her sister that we would miss them both.

It seemed like not nearly enough. As if to agree, the schoolgirl-turned-adult who, with her older sister, had ground coffee, scooped grains, weighed spices and cheerfully inquired into Marcia’s well-being over the last several years simply sighed as I turned to walk away then delicately waved goodbye.

Tourism along the Sinai Peninsula’s Gulf of Aqaba coastline has staged a post-COVID revival of sorts thanks in large part to hordes of Israeli Jews headed in the (historically) wrong direction. This Passover, for example, roughly 3,500 years after leaving en masse, thousands of Jews were expected to retrace their people’s ancient steps back into the Sinai Peninsula. An article appearing in the April 13 Times of Israel anticipated that more Israelis would visit Sinai this Pesach than “since the Red Sea split.” The surge was to be aided by a new, direct flight from Tel Aviv to Sharm el-sheik International Airport provided by Arkia, Israel’s discount airline, its second-largest, founded in 1949.

Sharm El Sheikh, which lies at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula beside the Red Sea, is known as one of the world’s top scuba diving destinations featuring magnificent coral reefs and two sunken shipwrecks from World War II. It sits 40 miles south of prime Israeli vacation hotspot, Dahab, 70 miles south of equally popular Nuweibaa, and 100 miles south of Taba, all of which lie in along Egypt’s Gulf of Aqaba coastline.

The Passover surge was neither unprecedented nor unexpected. Per the same Times of Israel article, in October of 2019, a prime month for Israeli vacations (and a period preceding the debut of COVID), more than 150,000 Israelis visited Sinai. This Passover was also the first in over a decade during which Israel’s National Security Council had scaled back travel warnings in that direction. Because of COVID, Israel had closed its entrance to Sinai at Taba, just south of Eilat, for 54 weeks but, in March 2021, the Israeli government began allowing up to 300 Israelis per day to pass into Egypt. Now the border has been open without restrictions since September 2021.

Understandably, the Aqaba coastline was not always wildly popular—to anyone. In the past, periodic political instabilities, occasional hotel terror bombings and the 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner that had departed from Sharm el-sheik had profoundly affected tourism of all kinds to Sinai. But beginning in 2016, threats of terror slowly diminished and Israeli visits to Sinai began to climb steadily, nearly doubling between 2017 and 2019. Egyptian property owners at the popular beach spots began to build more guest huts and amenities in anticipation of further growth. Even after COVID lockdowns struck, many owners continued to expand their facilities in anticipation of guests that they felt certain would return.

The same Times article recounts the experience of Farag Ode, age 38, who had finished his first year as manager of New Moon Island Beach Camp and Restaurant, a family-owned resort just north of Nuweiba, in March of 2020. “‘New Moon Island was like many of the other beach camps in Ras Shaitan, [Ode said] with a scattering of bamboo huts on the beach.’ But Ode had bigger visions, and he was in the midst of overseeing major renovations, including adding a glass-paneled restaurant, a new reception building, and a new section of air-conditioned rooms, when the pandemic shut everything down.

“‘We totally closed the place for three or four months, with only the security people and the people watering the plants here,’ he said. ‘All the workers went back to their houses, and we paid them half salary and gave them rice for their families.’

“Ode said between their savings and selling off some of their vehicles, they were able to make it through the lockdown period and continue the building projects begun prior to the pandemic. Egyptians from Cairo started dribbling in over the summer of 2020, after Sinai was declared a ‘green zone’ for domestic travelers who could provide a negative COVID test. Israelis began to return, slowly, in March 2021. New Moon Island slowly increased capacity from 25% to 50%, and finally to 100% after the entire staff got vaccinated…

“‘You have to always keep moving with the circle of trends, you can’t stop the circle,’ said Ode. ‘Some camps have stopped and don’t move with the trends, and they don’t have work. Those that moved with the trends, they have work.”

Whether Ode knows much about Passover or the words of the prophet Isaiah was unclear from the article, but Egypt is mentioned in the Tanach 546 times. Where exactly this latest comingling between Mitsrayim and Israel fits in biblical prophecy is also not clear. Perhaps the 19^th chapter of Isaiah applies to recent developments, perhaps not.

He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will deliver them. Thus the Lord will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day. They will even worship with sacrifice and offering, and will make a vow to the Lord and perform it. The Lord will strike Egypt, striking but healing; so they will return to the Lord, and He will respond to them and will heal them… In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

(Isa 19:19-25)

This post appeared in substantially the same form at messianictimes.com.

Raised as an Orthodox Jew as a youngster in the greater Chicago area in the United States, Carolyn Hyde later experienced—as a self-described new-age hippie—a vision of the Jewish Messiah that radically transformed her life.

After making Aliyah to Israel in 2003, she and her husband Richard live in the Galilee and conduct a ministry of outreach to Jewish people around the world, encouraging them to “come home” to Israel by making Aliyah.

Whoever oversees such things in our part of Jerusalem recently began demolition of two iconic traffic circles in our neighborhood—iconic in the sense that nearly everyone who lives in the area has risked his or her life on them. The circles connect to each other in a near-figure-eight connection through a short, equally hazardous connector, and there has been no end to the adventures residents have witnessed and experienced while looping around in the chaos in hopes of avoiding a collision.

Their imminent end naturally prompted a flood of nostalgia. Even as I write, our charming little bumper car circles have nearly vanished, victims of small-minded local officials averse to cheap thrills. I miss them already. When demolition began, I immediately thought back to my first two forays onto the biggest and busiest of the two circles, each of which nearly resulted in an accident. Really. Upon reflection, I’ve decided that those two near misses and the horn honking, fist-shaking and ill-will that followed them were on me. I had ignored one of several unwritten Israeli driving rules, perhaps the most important of them, adapted from a well-known axiom of Euclidean geometry, simply stated…

The shortest distance between two points is the way to go.

Archimedes

To confirm this principle after my first two close encounters, I spent time on a bench near the circles to watch Israelis drive their way around them. This post is obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek but I found the following to be indisputably true, no kidding; stay in your lane while negotiating a multilane traffic circle in Jerusalem and you put yourself at risk. It seems that, in honor of Archimedes, Israelis routinely cut across lanes at every opportunity. The lesson to be learned is this, out of self-defense, you must drive this way too (while frequently checking your side-view mirrors for tourists or Sabra outliers).

You will be much less likely to get in a wreck.

So our circles are doomed (one has already disappeared), destined to give way to ordinary intersections and boring stoplights, sure to transform our neighborhood’s de facto parkour venue to a more common Israeli car-horn-honking platform. (Fact: Israeli drivers honk their horns at traffic lights. To be clear, they honk at the traffic lights themselves, not at other motorists or pedestrians while stopped at traffic lights. It’s an important, almost mystical distinction.)

Jerusalem enjoyed a few springlike days several days ago, mild air in the fifties, sunshine, light breezes…perfect weather to pack a lunch and sit on a bench in the sun and watch a band of unaware roadworkers change the course of local history. And so I did, except for packing a lunch, and I found the time I spent observing the relentless “progress” to amount to a sort of therapeutic goodbye to, yes, outright chaos, but it was our unique, neighborhood chaos and so, as I said, I will miss it.

This post first appeared at messianictimes.com in substantially the same form.

Moving beyond the opening of a novel and completing its first chapter, although it must be done, can be emotional and stressful, like dropping your child off on the first day of school. Is he or she truly ready? After one long, last, careful examination—zippers zipped, hair combed, face free of smudges, stains and boogers—we wave goodbye and drive away. The kid must eventually cope on his own.

There exists a parallel “zipper-hair-face” type checklist for a story’s opening. Does it, for example, economically set your novel’s tone, mood, setting and point of view? Has it introduced the reader to at least one compelling character? How quickly does the reader learn what your story is about? Did it happen at a healthy pace, with clarity?

50’s Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway advised writers to make all their writing their best writing. It’s good advice, but be careful not to confuse your best efforts with perfection. The world is full of unfinished novels. Write your best then move on, avoiding at all costs getting caught in an editing death spiral.

Remember, in the end, writers write. Get down your best opening. Complete the first chapter. Write new stuff the next day and the next. Novels aren’t limericks. They take time. Write doggedly, daily (or nearly so) until you have created a complete and, most likely, highly flawed first draft.

Then feel free to revise away. Your revisions will be more meaningful now that you have finished the first draft and know your novel much better than when you began.

The importance of understanding Why we write

The immensely popular (in his day) short story writer, William Saroyan, a notorious “rule-breaker” (the preceding is in quotes because there are no rules, but it is usually wise to follow them), was said to have never revised his work (which makes him a shameless liar or a profound genius), knew exactly why he wrote.

If I wrote something, it was written, it was itself, and it might continue to be itself forever, or for what passes as forever. Thus, I could halt the action of things, after all, and at the same time be prepared to learn new things, to achieve new forms of halting, or art.

William Saroyan, Why I write

Everyone writes for their own reasons, but not every writer understands or can articulate those reasons. But knowing one’s motivation will naturally unify all his work and undergird his style.

It made sense to William Saroyan to write in order to manufacture permanence, “new forms of halting.” Why do you write? Knowing the reason is as important as it can be elusive. If you want to write to sell books you are reading the wrong blog. If you write to be understood, you are bound to be disappointed. Readers have their own problems and are unlikely to be concerned about yours.

Unlike Saroyan, I write because I have, since childhood, felt almost mystically compelled to do so and I learned later in life that satisfying that compulsion is the most gratifying thing I know to do. Like Saroyan, it pleases me to learn as I write and to know that whatever I have written “might continue to be itself…for what passes as forever,” but I don’t share his concern for, appreciation of, or belief in the value of “halting things.”

On to Chapter One, The Castle of the Jew’s Daughter, and how it evolved.

Say a lot, say little. Say little, say a lot.

Because of my questionable first choice of a working title (See First things first, Part II), the first opening I wrote was doomed. The first paragraph appears below. It is vague and uninteresting because, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the governing working title at the time I wrote it –> JEREMIAH <– was simply much too broad.

The mighty Prophet Yermiyahu—Jeremiah, we shall call him—stood sighing at an open chamber window gazing upon Tahpanhes and Lake Manzala’s rippling water and its idly bending reeds, as did doubtless Thothmes’ daughter upon the day she innocently chose to bathe along the Nile’s banks but founded, instead, by rescuing the infant Moses, a faithless and therefore doomed nation.

Opening to chapter 1, The castle of the Jew’s daughter, First try

So, as you can see, I opened with ancient Egyptian topography, rippling water, bending reeds and a murky allusion to the Book of Exodus. Not good. Embarrassing actually, but I recovered. My meandering continued for quite a while before the entire approach died a painful death.

I eventually decided upon the story I would tell and then began to tell it. The second try, below, is in my opinion a distinct improvement because it quickly introduces the story problem. “Take the cart and mule…” Jeremiah says in the second sentence, “then head west.”

Soon afterward, the reader learns of the prophecy that will drive the novel (Jeremiah 43:8-9) and the burden the prophet places upon his scribe, Baruch ben Neriah, to help him fulfill it. (Note below that the opening is in the first person, another choice that turned out poorly, but all is well that ends.)

One morning in the month of Tevet, the prophet Jeremiah spoke to me plainly for the first time since Jerusalem fell. “Take the cart and mule,” he told me, massaging his lower jaw to start, “then head west.” We were standing side-by-side in The Land of the Great River—Mitsrayim, we called it—near the gate to our captive compound. Jeremiah pointed out that gate, toward the dunes that lined the narrow road that paralleled the sea. “After you have travelled about 40 miles,” he said, “you shall find a rock pit, not too far past where you go to fetch our salt each month.”

“A rock pit?” I asked, both mystified and waiting patiently.

The once-powerful old seer, now fading rapidly, spread his tired arms and raised his nose a notch to suggest how immense the pit I would find would be. “Gather several large, smooth stones from there,” he said, “and bring them back to me.”

“It is good to hear you speak again, Prophet,” I told him truly.

The old man smiled for the first time in quite a while but with irony, not happiness. “I’ll need big, smooth, cut rocks,” he said, “and quickly. Start now if you hope to be back before dark.”

Opening to chapter 1, The castle of the Jew’s daughter, Second try

It seemed better, but not good enough. To their credit, the five preceding paragraphs also specify…

• The time of the year (the month of Tevet)
• Jerusalem has previously fallen (so, after 586 BC)
• Baruch and Jeremiah are captives
• Jeremiah’s health is fading (“once-powerful old seer”)
• They are in Egypt, not too far from the Nile River
• Jeremiah is in a hurry for Baruch to find stones for him

I eventually revised the opening 18 times over a period of two years. (I know because, while I am writing a novel, I compulsively save them as successive versions, although I rarely refer to them.) Some of the 18 revisions were extensive, some inconsequential. The earliest versions continued in first-person but about six months into the process I changed the narrative voice, almost throughout, to third-person imperfect. (Here and there, the narrative switches to the third-person perfect tense, but I am hopeful that no one will notice.)

The finished opening chapter: The Castle of the Jew’s Daughter.

This post is reproduced from my website uniquely about the planning, research and creation of my most recent novel, Jeremiah’s Last Call. Visit writeJeremiah.com and my Amazon.com Author Page.

November was a busy month at writeJermiah! My new novel, Jeremiah’s Last Call, was published, now on sale in Kindle, paperback and hardbound editions at Amazon.com; also available for “nook” readers at Barnes and Noble, and EPUB versions at Kobo, Apple Books, OverDrive and other outlets. Read on to view the new content.

New content

There’s nothing more important, or difficult than crafting a novel’s first sentence. Except perhaps for the sentence that follows. Check out The best and worst of openings… featuring remarkably deep thoughts and cameo appearances by Charles Dickens, William Saroyan and a bit of writing by an author you have surely read but have never heard of. (I’m not telling. Click the link.)

Some advice can be sound, but useless, especially when it comes to writing. Read, If stocks won’t go up, don’t buy them, at writeJeremiah.com.

Always choose a working title before you write. To learn why, read First things first, Part II, at writeJeremiah.com.

After two years of work, Jeremiah’s Last Call has been published. But it wasn’t easy. Some people (name withheld) prefer to do things the hard way. Such was the case late in 2019 when I got the idea to write a novel about Jeremiah with the ambitious, all-inclusive title, Jeremiah. I did so only to be in compliance with the well-known, important and unwritten rule that insists that every creative effort, whether it be a novel, opera, fight song or whatever, must have a working title. The logic behind the rule is simple. It makes no sense to write something and name it afterward. That would be like building a treehouse in the garage then heading out to the woods to find a perch for it.

A good working title will set limits on a project and provide the writer with critical hints about what he or she is doing; but I chose Jeremiah, which did none of that, and began writing anyway. Jeremiah, the man, had outlasted five Judean kings. He had, in fact, outlasted Judah, and is said to have authored both the Book of Jeremiah and Lamentations. The books are also filled with personal details, so we know more about Jeremiah’s life and nature than perhaps any other Old Testament prophet save Moses.

Unafraid, I began writing with this vague plan in mind…

• Set the novel during the prophet’s last days, while he was a captive of his own people in Egypt.
• Weave into my account, utilizing clever and entertaining time shifts, the great man’s entire 40-year-plus experience and all of his numerous prophecies.

That was not a solid plan. About a year into the project I finally came to understand that the novel had to be more limited in scope. Fortunately, it had also become clear that the 43^rd Chapter of Jeremiah, plentiful Egyptian and Babylonian history of that time and an amazing archaeological find in 1886 by a fellow named William Flinders Petrie, combined to provide me with more than enough natural interest and perhaps even mystery to sustain a novel.

The clincher was Jeremiah’s last assignment, a prophecy received toward the end of his life, while in Tahpanhes, Egypt, perhaps six years after Jerusalem fell to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar.

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, “Take some large stones in your hands and hide them in the mortar in the brick terrace which is at the entrance of Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes, in the sight of some of the Jews; and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am going to send and get Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I am going to set his throne right over these stones that I have hidden; and he will spread his canopy over them. He will also come and strike the land of Egypt; those who are meant for death will be given over to death, and those for captivity to captivity, and those for the sword to the sword.”

(Jer 43:8-11)

The command found above, “Take some large stones in your hands and hide them in the mortar in the brick terrace which is at the entrance of Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes…” became the central problem of what became the finished novel, Jeremiah’s Last Call, as I explain in detail in the following video…

You may, or may not, also be interested in visiting three new websites. My new Youtube Channel about writing, InsideStories, a nearly duplicate video channel at Vimeo, and a website for writers that will, for the next year or so, deconstruct Jeremiah’s Last Call, writeJeremiah!

Early Sunday afternoon, the light streaming through the window beside my desk changed from a common, pale blue to an eerie golden glow. Coincidentally, or so I thought, my wife had received a snapshot on social media of a huge, stunning and oddly isolated cloud taken by a friend who lives about 5 miles west of our place. She had never seen such a thing.

Neither had we.

And it turns out that the golden glow that had invaded my office and the strange new cloud our friend had snapped were closely one and the same; the first fruits of the soon to be famous Jerusalem Fire ’21, about to introduce itself to Israel’s capital city even more dramatically.

By the time I stepped to a window to investigate, things had already changed. The golden glow had begun to trend black and fully half the sky had grown darker. For some reason, our neighborhood streets were wet, shiny black, as if it had rained. After a little research, I found out that it had rained. And though we were 7 miles from its origin, the fire had caused it…

“Fires can also produce their own clouds—we call those pyrocumulus clouds,” and they’re not just smoke plumes but actual clouds made up of water droplets. “And if they’re really deep, they’re called pyrocumulonimbus, because they’re almost like a thunderstorm,” … Some fires even create their own thunderstorms and lightning. (Cal State University, Understanding Fire. LINK)

The fire lasted three days, caused health warnings, evacuations, near evacuations and immersed much of Jerusalem in horribly smelly, smoke-and-ash-laden air. But a strong breeze—which had been a huge part of the problem—quickly cleared the air on day four (though the ecological loss caused by the blazer is still being evaluated).

All’s well that ends. Check out the video below for a bit more information.

This post also appeared in substantially the same form at MessianicTimes.com.

In Israel, it’s a good idea to get out of the house as least as often as we hold national elections. An opportunity to do so arose for my wife Marcia recently between outbreaks of COVID variants, and she went shopping with a friend. I won’t pretend to understand all of what “shopping,” in its deepest sense, may mean to women, but I know the activity always boosts Marcia’s spirits as well as strengthens the Israeli shekel. Early in the process of her latest mercantile adventure, Marcia ran into one of our former Ulpan teachers.

Ulpan (אולפן), for those who may be unfamiliar with the term, is the word Israelis use for language school. A visit to Google Translate will suggest that Ulpan means “studio.” Deeper within Google’s algorithm, the translation “instruction” emerges. But neither is correct. Studio is to Ulpan in Israel like waiting room is to crime scene. Equating Israeli Ulpanim to mere places of instruction, though a bit more accurate, also misses the mark. Normal students absorb instruction but, since a typical tour of Ulpan duty might last five months, five days each week, five-and-a-half hours each day, Ulpan students endure it.

Marcia liked Ulpan. She attended twice. Perhaps I’m bitter.

Our personal, hard-earned badge of distinction is to have attended the Marine Corps of all Israeli language schools (I will not name it though I would recommend it), known for its no-nonsense approach to teaching by which they focus on long-term language mastery by stressing verbs, verbs and verbs. To illustrate, after a month or so spent in another language school, a student might reasonably be expected to do a workmanlike job of ordering a meal at a restaurant. “I would like the Greek salad, a bowl of soup, some whole grain bread and a glass of tea,” they might say after scanning the menu. By contrast, after a month at our former school, a student would be more likely to order by saying, “Cook food. Bring it to this table. I will begin to laugh, to smile, to eat and to drink when it arrives.”

See the difference?

All Ulpan instructors at all the schools are known to be different, in a good cop bad cop sense. At the mall during her shopping trip, Marcia bumped into our old school’s classic good cop. We’ll call her Ronit. A full day at our Ulpan consisted of two sessions, one morning, one afternoon, split by a 30-minute lunch break. We never knew who our next teacher might be but it did not take long to develop a rooting interest. After the first week or so of classes, whenever Ronit would walk into the classroom after the lunch break, students would often cheer. Ronit was pleasant, undemanding, careful to never embarrass anyone and liked to kid around. By contrast, two of our female instructors had been IDF officers in the past. Although they never intentionally meant to be unkind or abusive, they often, in their zeal, made Americans cry, a little more than half of whom were women. They were always quite serious about getting a day’s work done, demanded that everyone pay complete attention and had no problem hanging out to dry students who seemed less than fully committed.

For example, a student, Moshe, walks into class a half hour late. “Moshe,” one of the instructors might say, “How do we say, It’s not good to be late to the Ulpan?”

Moshe, who has not yet reached his seat, stops in the aisle and translates.

“Now Moshe, say, If I am late to the Ulpan, I will not learn enough.”

Again, Moshe translates.

“Therefore, I will not be late to the Ulpan in the future.”

Moshe translates again, and on and on. But Ronit was always more low-key. Under the same circumstance she might say something like, “How was the movie, Moshe?” then laugh and move on. But most instructors were necessarily demanding and persistent. Classes were long, loud and intense. Every morning before class began, we were given a long list of sentences to translate from English to Hebrew. We were expected to recite the translations when called upon soon afterward. Afternoons ended with homework assignments to be handed in before class began the next day.

When Ronit and Marcia met at the mall, it was the first time they had seen one another in over two years. Hundreds of students come and go but they immediately recognized each other and shared hugs. (Ronit also remembered me well—she specifically asked Marcia about what’s-his-name.) As former student and teacher caught up they spoke both Hebrew and English. Ronit seemed pleased by Marcia’s improved skills. She also explained that Israel’s unique “Ulpan experience,” as we had known it, had changed, post COVID, perhaps forever. Most classes are now conducted online through Zoom meetings. It seems sad that future Ulpan students, if Zooming continues to be the norm as seems likely, may never get to experience the stress, intimidation and inconvenience of regularly hauling themselves to a small, damp, uncomfortable classroom to sit at tiny wooden desks beside eager and competitive strangers of all ages who hail from Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as North and South America.

An online meeting could certainly never provide an experience like our last day in class, years ago. After five months of instruction, the original thirty members of our group had dwindled down to twelve. On the afternoon of our last day, each of our six or seven instructors made a point to drop in to say goodbye to us before we left forever. One of our two drill sergeant types, an Israeli Sabra in every sense of the word, stepped in and spoke to us for several minutes, her hands folded at her waist and tears welling in her eyes, as she wished us “great success and future happiness” in Israel, and also expressed her hope that her efforts had helped move us a bit closer to competency when speaking Hebrew. I can’t recall many times having been more relieved than I was the day that Ulpan ended, but Marcia’s chance meeting with Ronit brought back tons of memories, softened by time, and I confess that I miss, at least a little, every one of our dedicated former teachers, even those demanding souls who way too often hung us out to dry.

This post originally appeared at The Messianic Times in substantially the same form.