Enter content here
Enter content here
Enter content here
Shalom everyone,
On Friday, a few weeks ago, it was Ettie's birthday. I'm not sure exactly how many she's had, fewer than I, that's for sure.
Every time she has a birthday I make the mistake, which I think most people make of trying to give the perfect gift, the gift which will make her most happy. This is a mistake because really only a small part of her happiness comes from the kind of gift while most of the happiness comes from the simple fact that someone has given her a gift. Someone she loves has thought about her.
Last week we had the annual Jerusalem film festival. Having only a few hours after my walking tours to devote to my love of movies, I just went along to the cinema when I had the time and saw whatever movie was showing at the time, instead of carefully selecting the movies I wanted to see.
The result of seeing movies by this "pot luck" method was actually very satisfying and I'm more than satisfied with the movies I saw.
The first movie, Princess of Nebraska was about a young Chinese girl's dilemma of having an abortion. The problem of a young, unmarried pregnant girl, is that American society conveys a double message; on the one hand it disapproves of a young girl raising a child on her own without a husband and gives no assistance in this respect and on the other hand, it totally disapproves of abortion. She is thus left totally alone to deal with her dilemma; she can't have the child and she can't not have it.
Society wants children but doesn't want the mother with the child. Somehow a society which disapproves of abortion must figure out a way of making the single mother welcome and loved and must make the fatherless child acceptable in society.
Another movie, I'm from the plane that crashed in the mountains, deals with another social anomaly; the prohibition against cannibalism, on the one hand and the desire to survive on the other. Everyone would oppose killing another human being in order to survive. But what about humans that were already dead. Had the survivors of the plane crash in the Andes Mountains not eaten their companions who died in the plane crash they wouldn't have survived. One might argue that there's no harm done in eating already dead companions. Unfortunately this is only one step towards killing and then eating in order to survive. Thus the answer to this dilemma is a simple "NO" one can't eat human flesh even if the human is already dead and there's no other way to survive. Cannibalism is okay for individual survival but definitely not okay for survival of the species. Sometimes the individual must die so that the species can survive.
On Saturday morning I went with Ettie to see Jerusalema, a South African film about gangster ambitions in Johannesburg. The name comes from the verse "If I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand forget its cunning" ( Psalm 137:5), a verse which the hero of the movie learned as a child from his religious, Bible studying mother and which he turned into the motto of his life. Through mixing good deeds of helping to clean up drug trafficking in Johannesburg with some clever but very violent criminal activity he achieves ownership of derelict apartment buildings in Hillbrow, a suburb of Johannesburg. In this way he finally attains his "Jerusalem" a luxury villa on the beach in Durban.
In the evening we went to celebrate Ettie's birthday at the "mezizim beach" at the end of Yarkon Str. in Tel Aviv. After splashing around with Tamar in the water we went to a fish restaurant on the jetty of the old harbor of Tel Aviv, near the beach.
It was a beautiful evening and crowds of people were strolling on the jetty.
On Sunday I had one of my usual Old City walks. We went up to the Temple Mt., the great courtyard around the Dome of the Rock and continued to the Gate of the Tribes at the northern side of courtyard. This brought us to the Lion's Gate, where we went out and walked through the Moslem cemetery on the eastern side of the city.
This is a relatively new cemetery dating from the days of the Jordanian occupation of the Old City after 1948. Some people tell a legend that the Moslems placed the cemetery here to impede the imminent entrance of the messiah through the Golden Gate into the Temple Courtyard. Whatever the purpose of the Moslems the fact is that a cemetery here impedes any archaeological excavations in the area. This means that archaeologists will never be able to uncover the entire eastern wall of the 2nd temple period and it will remain buried in mystery forever.
From this point we have beautiful views of the Mt. of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, Absolom's pillar and the Kidron Valley.
We finally came to the Dung Gate and re-entered the Old City to visit the Jewish Quarter and have some lunch.
Wishing you a great no news day
Yours truly
Leon Gork