Leon's no news bulletin No. 101 Wed 8th April 09

The main activity at our Krugersdorp reunion was reminiscing the good old days, mostly the funny moments, which were not so funny at the time but appear funny looking back at them from the distance of time which has defused the high tension which once electrified and made them dramatic and sometimes even tragic.

Today I can laugh at being put outside the Heder (afternoon Hebrew school) and running to the café bio to smoke in the dark but these were serious matters in those days and my pangs of conscience and fear of punishment caused me terrible suffering.

I took two of my school time friends, Sorrel and Colin, who were visiting family in Israel and who came to the reunion, for a night time tour of Tel Aviv, whose dimly lit sidewalk cafes along quiet, relaxed Rothschild boulevard seemed to call them back to the lazy, dreamy, quiet town of their birth, Krugersdorp away from the world centre cities of London and New York where they now live.

Our reunion of Krugersdorp people brought us together; people who had been close friends in their childhood days but have been separated by continents and time finally met each other again.

Jews have lived in all four, above mentioned cities, mainly since the beginning of the 20th century unlike the cities and villages of Lativia, Ukrain or Lithuania (to name only a few examples) where out parents came from, where Jews had been living for hundreds of years.

Jews had been among the pioneers of the cities of Eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages and the great cities of the modern Western World but most important of all is how marvellously Jews have for the first time in 2000 years pioneered their own city, Tel Aviv.

My friends and I aren’t pioneers; our task is to enjoy the fruit of our father’s and grandfather’s labour, because without us enjoying the benefits of these wonderful, modern cities their dream wouldn’t be fulfilled.

This year Tel Aviv celebrates 100 years of history since it’s founding on the 7th April 1909 (16th Nisan 5669).

Last week I tried to get a last minute ticket for La Boheme, last night I tried and failed again.

While waiting in the fast fading early evening light for someone who might have an unwanted ticket to sell, I smoked my new Petersen pipe and watched an elegant black haired woman, dressed like she was going to the Opera, in a speckled grey suit covered by a beige raincoat, photographing an exhibition of a field of symmetrical, dwarf size, white cloth pyramids kept upright by giant fans, hidden underneath an ugly black, square stage, almost completely hiding the beautiful red tile square in front of the Opera House, surrounded by young Olive trees, planted in giant red brick flower boxes, where I sat.

I gave up waiting and decided instead to walk until I’d find a bus to the Dizengof Centre, where I planned to watch whatever movie was showing.

Then I came across a park where there was a bench where I could sit and finish my pipe while watching the kids on the slide. One little girl started crying; she was holding her little blond head and looked very cute but in terrible agony. Sure enough daddy or grandpa came along and said something to her. She obviously believed what he told her and the next minute she was on the blue slide trying to slide backwards, not only as if nothing had happened but completely oblivious to the fact that she might bump her head again if she persisted in these kinds of adventurous tricks.

I was starving even as I boarded the 405 bus at the Jerusalem Central bus station at about 2PM for Tel Aviv but I put my hunger and dreams of the delicious meat soup I’d devour in a little soup restaurant in Levinsky street I remembered when I once went there with Ettie and I concentrated on reading Hans Kohn’s Prophets and Peoples, a book about the rise of nationalism in the 19th century.

I discovered Kohn when I came late for a seminar at the Hebrew University about his ideas of nationalism and how it related to the Jewish People. It was just as well I came late because I had a blocked ear and could hardly hear a thing the lecturers were saying.

Kohn sees the escape of the individual from the bonds of a hierarchical society controlled by entrenched aristocracy and clericalism as the beginning of nationalism.

The tension between individual rights and the domination of the nation state keeps society in a balance which is necessary for preventing despotism on the one hand and anarchy on the other.

Believe it or not I couldn’t find the soup restaurant nor could I find the great cheese shop nearby where I planned to buy to Gouda cheese and remained hungry until I left the park and found myself in Bograshov street, named after Chaim Boger, one of the founders of Tel Aviv and the founder of the famous Herziliyah Gymnasium, not by accident but deliberately because I remembered once walking down that street on my way to join a tour group staying at one of the beachfront hotels and seeing some places which sold food that I liked, also it would bring me to Ben Yehudah street where I could take the no. 4 bus to the central bus station and back to Jerusalem on the good old 405.

Believe it or not but Pinati, a famous Jerusalem restaurant that serves typical Jerusalem type foods like bean soup and meat balls, had opened up in Bograshov. The early evening hour was a great time for watching the passing crowd while I ate my meatballs and fries. Then I found the Hungarian Kirtush bakery and took a cinnamon kirtush home to Ettie.

Kirtush, cardboard tube shaped, is a pastry that you unravel and eat in strips.

Passover (Pesach) begins tonight when we start eating Matzah instead of bread for a week.

The freedom from slavery which we celebrate on Passover refers to the equal right of every individual to have a say in the government that governs him and not allow himself to be governed by dictators, despots and autocrats who govern for the aggrandisement of their regime in complete disregard of the needs of the individual.

I am proud that Israel is well on its way to achieving this goal. I don’t think we’re as free as the English or the Americans who Kohn considers the most free countries in the world.

Wishing you all a very happy Pesach.

Yours truly

Leon Gork