Money Is Just Dirty Paper

I watch the news from America and it is grim. Mostly all they talk about is the deepening economic implosion: plunging stock prices, rising unemployment, foreclosures. It seems there was never a better time to be a kibbutznik.

I don’t have to worry about my portfolio being suddenly worthless. I never met Bernie Madoff. The kibbutz owns my house so I have no mortgage. Of course, I also have no money, so no matter how bad it gets I’m unlikely to be worse off. I find that actually somehow comforting.

What puzzles me is why anyone thought the American economy was so great before this, better than it was, say, forty or fifty years ago. I grew up in a middle class family. My father worked, my mother stayed home and kept house. On one income we had a house, a new car every three years, all the food we could eat and enough gadgets to keep everybody entertained. This is the way it was with everyone I knew. All this changed sometime in the 70’s. Suddenly it took two incomes to keep a family afloat. Few of my generation are living better than our parents did and I think it’s likely that the future one won’t live as well as we are. This is profoundly sad.

Not so on the kibbutz. Fifty years ago people lived in asbestos-roofed shacks. Things are infinitely better now. Socialism may well have failed everywhere it was tried, but capitalists have no cause to gloat at the moment. True, I still have no money, but in this socialist society I don’t deserve any.

Crunchy Soup

One of the finest elements of Israeli cuisine is something called soup almonds. Why they're called this, I don't know since they neither look nor taste like almonds. What they are, are tiny, crisp, puffy squares of stuff that – this part of the name does not mislead – are intended for soup. What do they taste like? Fried wonton is the closest thing I can think of.

Once upon a time – and I am old enough to remember this – meals in the kibbutz dining hall were free. Three times a day you could go and feast on all you could grab for nothing. Then soup almonds were a rarity, trotted out only for the Shabbat evening chicken soup. But of course, socialism has been as big a failure here as it has been everywhere else (Obama supporters be warned) so now most everything has been privatized. It's a testament to capitalism that soup almonds are now readily available in the dining hall. You can buy a little bag of them for a shekel.

I put them in everything. I add them to my rice to make it crunchy. You can add them to broccoli to make it crunchy and lessen the cooked-broccoli taste. In fact, they're so versatile that you'd think their creators would advertise accordingly, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to them. I think they should put me on retainer.

NEWS FLASH: I just heard that a big piece of space junk, a container full of ammonia, having been discarded by the Mir space station a year ago will strike the earth tomorrow. No one knows where it will hit. It's like a great, big lottery. If I were a little more paranoid I'd plan to spend the day hiding in the house with a helmet or two on my head. But I never win anything, so I don't expect my odds here will be any better.