Jimmy Carter, Jr.

I’ve been seething for the past two weeks. I thought I’d be over my anger by now, but I’m not and so I must descend from the usual trivial topics I write about in this space into the murky netherworld of politics. I am so incensed by the phony, manufactured crisis with the American Administration and the humiliation of the Prime Minister of Israel that I must speak out.

When Obama first stopped the peace talks almost a year ago by demanding a settlement freeze, I thought it was just a rookie blunder by a man who’d been elected despite having no executive experience and no qualifications for the job. He’s now done it again, just when indirect talks were supposed to begin, by demanding that Israel stop building in Jerusalem. Jerusalem – our capital! This time I don’t think it’s a mistake. I think it’s intentional.

The Palestinians refuse to talk, for which they receive not a whisper of criticism. Instead, Israel is heaped with calumny for the stalled peace process thereby setting the stage. For what, you ask? For an imposed solution. I think Obama, a man with more hubris than any collection of Greek tragedies, wants to impose a solution on Israel including the division of Jerusalem and a return to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Of course, any such solution would just be an intermediate stage before our final destruction.

Let me be clear: I don’t like Obama. Never have. I don’t like his arrogance and I don’t like the way he mocks ordinary people, witness Joe the Plumber and Scott Brown and his truck. And now, like the cowardly schoolyard bully who picks on the kid who won’t fight back, he slaps Prime Minister Netanyahu around as if Israel is a banana republic and not a sovereign state. This from the man who bows before Saudi royalty, begs Ahmedinajad to sit and talk with him and has nary a cross word to say as the Russians announce their intention to keep on helping Iran build a bomb.

I don’t know what I’m worried about. Mr. Netanyahu is a smart guy who can be trusted to defend our interests. I’d be so happy, I’d swell with pride if he’d tell Obama to stick it, but of course he’d never be that blunt. In any case, with an estimated national debt of $20 trillion in the next 10 years, America won’t be a superpower for much longer. In the meantime, we will continue building housing in Jerusalem and anywhere else we see fit.

At this holiday time, let me wish everyone a happy Passover. Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.

My Blue Heaven

“Taste this,” my American friend said as I sat down to chat in the kibbutz dining hall. I dutifully took a forkful of the yellow gelatin and fruit stuff on her plate. “Why did you do this to me?” I squealed as I frantically looked for a way to spit it out. This was my first – and last – experience of Israeli gelatin. It was vomiticious: heavy, sticky and way too sweet. It was nothing like the clean, light silkiness of real Jello.

Ah, Jello. I’ve always loved it. Sadly, it isn’t kosher. I’ve never seen it in Israel, not even in the chain of stores that specializes in treif. In my decades in this country I have actually dreamed about it – parfait glasses filled with beautiful, jewel-like colors. But I thought it would remain just that, a dream of home.

Then one day my sister, who’s an artist with birthday cakes, mentioned she was doing one decorated with a blue Jello swimming pool, causing me to wax lyrical on the gelatin of my dreams. Taking pity on me, she shipped me a crateful of the precious packages. Now I’m in Jello Heaven. It’s just as good as I remember. More miraculous still is the blue Jello. There was nothing like that back in my day. The color is simply delightful.

While I’ve dressed it up for the picture here by topping it with vanilla yogurt and chocolate pastilles, I really like it best plain. It’s a simple pleasure perhaps, but a fruity and flavorful one. And one the rabbi doesn’t need to know about. Next time: the glories of tapioca.

Message in a Bottle

If you find this message, please let my family know I am alive and well. As I write this it is day #5 without an internet connection thanks to an electrical storm and resulting fried circuits. A parade of technicians has come on a mission of repair, each failing and passing the project on to the next in line. With each passing, futile day my despair increases.

Gather around, children, and I will tell you about communication in the olden days. You had a cylindrical object, a tube with a point at one end and filled with dark liquid. You held this in your hand with the point on a sheet of paper and moved your hand around to make marks on it. You then folded the paper, put it in an envelope with an address consisting of the recipient’s name, house number and street, and city on it and put it in a box. A person came and collected it along with all the other envelopes and took them to a depot where they were sorted and placed in some sort of conveyance – truck, boat and/or plane – that transported them to the depot in the destination city. Another person then took the envelope to the house of the person marked on it. It was a cumbersome process that took days.

It’s hard to believe that people actually communicated that way. It required no electricity, no connectivity and pretty much no smiley faces. Just lots of manual labor. And since the process was so laborious, you tended to write about the big stuff, no two-line updates about the dog playing Frisbee on the lawn. Difficult to imagine in a Twittering world.

I’m struggling hard to cope with my new-found isolation, disconnected from family, friends and weather reports. As I gulp the last few swallows of wine to empty the bottle that will carry this message, I think back to the days when penmanship had meaning. It’s nothing I want to return to. I like letting my fingers do the talking. But for the moment, my existence feels pre-industrial. I guess that means it’s time to hike to the sea and get this puppy on its way.