Leon's No News Bulletin No. 102 Tues 14th April 09

The mildly warm spring weather makes Pesach an ideal time for outings. Ariel and Lilach chose to visit Jerusalem I promised to take Tamar to the beach. I missed not seeing Ariel, Lilach, Ophir and Alon but Saturdays have always been reserved for Tamar. She’s gotten used to Ettie and me visiting and playing at home with her or, like yesterday going out.

The waves ripple slowly but surely toward us. I stood with Tamar, in her ¾ length, pink tights waiting excitedly for the cold water of our first spring day at the Mezizim beach in Tel Aviv to tickle our toes with their coolness. Then we got impatient waiting for them and ran full force into the rippling waves with their little bits of white foam on top. The cool wetness reached my thighs and Tamar’s belly button. Then I picked her up, holding her firmly under her arm pits and dragged her swooshing through the water.

The disgusting name “Mezizim (voyeurs) beach” comes from a painting of two kids looking naughtily through the toilet window. On a busy day like yesterday you’ve got to park about 1KM away near the old Reading Power station, then walk over the bridge on the Yarkon River, through the park then you can choose to walk along the road or through the warehouses of the old Tel Aviv harbor, full of boutiques and restaurants to finally reach the beach.

On the whole beach there are only two swings; one for babies and one for big kids. Tamar patiently waited her turn at the big kid’s swing but some kid was always swinging and the baby swing became free. Careless in her excitement Tamar ran forward and would have ran smack into the force of the big swing had I not grabbed her by the neck and dragged her back. She ran crying from the pain in her neck and the pain of missing her long awaited turn, to her mother. Soon she returned and all was well. Happiness returned when she finally swung joyfully, backwards and forwards, up and down.

Every day I find myself less and less inclined to leave my home to find the things that I need to satisfy me. Here I can relax, read, smoke (only on the balcony) and listen to music, write, watch movies, take a book from the library, purchase practically anything I have money for.

Today technology has given us such abundance that no matter how crowded the earth becomes scarcity of all these things is rapidly disappearing. All of the above is at our finger tips and we don’t have to wander much to find them.

The evening before Passover my friend Gideon and I pondered over the expression “My father was a lost (wandering) Aramean” which appears in the Hagaddah which we read at the Passover meal and in the declaration of the ancient Israelite as he brought the first fruit of the land he had toiled to the Temple in Jerusalem.

Deuteronomy 26:4,5

And the priest shall take the basket out of thy hand, and set it down before the altar of the LORD thy God. And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God: 'A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.

The sedentary life, extolled in the Bible and declared to be achieved (Deuteronomy above) by the ancient Jews when they visited the Temple in Jerusalem was a very progressive concept for the people of those ancient days when even the most basic needs of food and shelter were difficult to attain without leaving one’s home or country.

I’m sure that in a world full of wanderers in search of basic needs the sedentary inhabitant was considered a sitting duck at the mercy of hordes of wanderers who could easily kill and plunder them.

This is the answer to a question a young tourist asked me: Why were cities built with walls around them, unlike today when we don’t build walls around cities.

Being a “wandering Aramean” as our ancestor Jacob was, is a necessary evil, by no means desirable.  

Presumably the wanderer’s ambition is to settle down but if land is scarce and the climate hard life is a constant journey of searching for food and if you’re lucky enough to find some you have to then protect it from other wanderers also in search of food. Then you have to face other wanderers who have plenty of food but because of lust and greed wander in search of excitement, pleasure and plunder.

It’s understandable, therefore that it’s a source of pride to the Jewish People that they changed, thanks to the grace of God, from being a group of “wandering  Arameans” into a sedentary nation, diligently tilling the soil of their own land and waiting patiently for it to bear fruit, helping one another, being protected by God from wandering marauders.

It’s natural that they will want to come joyously to the Temple, each one carrying a basket of the fruit he has produced on his land, to give thanks for the wonderful life.

The most important source of gratitude, however is the joy and satisfaction of having achieved the change from “wandering Aramaen” to sedentary inhabitant.

It’s natural that they should wish for this situation to prevail over the whole earth.

Ultimately the sedentary inhabitant can only enjoy his situation in peace if every other person on earth is sedentary also. This is why the dream of the Israelite prophets is that each man sits under his own vine and his own fig tree.

Wishing you a great no news day

Yours truly

Leon Gork

Come for a Jerusalem Walk with Leon Gork

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Phone: 052 3801867