Let’s begin this segment with something fairly innocuous, a retelling of a typical conversation between a mother and an adult daughter, going something along these lines:

Mother (a/k/a Barbara) What are your plans for the week?

Daughter (a/k/a Natania) I have a whole bunch of experiments to do, and then there’s all the follow-up I need to get done….

Father (a/k/a Fred, butting in) At least you don’t have to worry about the hagim. Everyone else will also be off Thurs, and Fri., not just you. So whatever you don’t get done…

Daughter I need to remind Oded (her boss) to let our Indian student know it’s Rosh Hashana and not to show up…

As I keep announcing to anyone in earshot, that’s one of the beauties of living in The Land. More often than not, you can actually focus on what’s important, what these holidays are about, without the noise, without the baggage of trying to fit them into the rest of your life, or what everyone around you is involved in – as is usually the case anywhere in the Exile. However, that only works here in The Land if you’re not up to your eyeballs in matters of such consequence that they can’t be put off, that force you to obsess over them and take over a good part of your life. Otherwise, you might as well be in Des Moines or some such. (Well, not really!) One such matter of consequence is known as the “Dreaded ‘M’ Word,” which is why it should be avoided if at all humanly possible.

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I just thought of a really good explanation; the fact that I could have used it fifteen years ago when it was relevant doesn’t make it any less entertaining. We were at the time in our second year renting an apartment, and the thought of a year three in said apartment brought no joy to our hearts. Then we got a call from a real estate agent we knew. He had two apartments to show us that were for sale, one with three bedrooms and the other the five-bedroom apartment we’re in now and will sadly be leaving sooner than I’d like to think. He questioned why we were interested in the bigger place, as the only occupants would be three of us (plus Mimi, our one cat at the time). Barbara explained that I had a lot of stuff and therefore needed more room than your typical family. A more inventive answer would have been that we had only two bears to work with instead of the normal three!

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Unlike some other exchange of views (see below), this one was the kind of discussion that could take place even at the breakfast table, not needing the sense of acuity it would have had at a late-night pontification session when you’re trying to be profound but it’s past your bedtime, nor the sense of giddiness it might have had at a kiddush over an overload of assorted beverages. It would never have turned into an argument, since neither disputant felt the sense of certainty that turns a difference of opinion into an all-out war of words. It started out as an after thought about something that had happened the day before.

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How about we begin with a little game of ‘Let’s Pretend.’ You’re walking in Gettysburg National Park (which is in Pennsylvania, for the non-Americans reading this), and you stumble on the name tag of George Wilson, a Confederate soldier who must have been killed on the battlefield during the Civil War. It’s been raining a lot, which is probably why this item has come to the surface after all these years. You put it in your backpack and walk away. About an hour later, the thought occurs to you, can I keep it; is it worth anything? You do the requisite Google search and learn that there are folks out there hunting for these relics in Civil War sites, usually using metal detectors. (You just got lucky!) Yes, what you found might be worth something to a collector, and, most importantly, the name tag is yours to keep and do with it as you like. No one from the Parks Department, the State of Pennsylvania, the U.S. government, the Daughters of the Confederacy, or direct descendants of the fallen soldier will come knocking on your door in the middle of the night, demanding you hand over your treasure.

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A diversion from the usual matters at hand…

Supposing you were in a gathering of strangers, and each person in the group was asked to take a few minutes and say something about themselves, what salient points would you mention when it was your turn? Some people tend to get flustered when they have to speak in public, but that sort of thing is easy-peasy for me. I’d mention my family and some of the things I’ve done in my life, but somewhere along the line, I would describe myself as an ‘American Jew living in Israel.’

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One thing I have done from time to time in these articles is make the assertion that my mind works in strange and mysterious ways, making connections that would not be obvious to the average dude or dudette walking along Broadway or Rehov Yaffo. For example, I’m taking out the garbage and my progress towards the dumpster is impeded by a car with a ‘lamed’ on its roof, meaning that the person behind the wheel is a student driver. Even if the car weren’t so identified, you could tell right away who is behind the wheel, not just from the tentative, slow motion of the vehicle in question, but the look of panic on the neophyte’s face as the car goes around the bend. And I think about Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who visited the United States in the 1830’s to observe life across the Atlantic and to figure out what was going on with these Americans – as in how did they live and why were they so different from Europeans – and then to write about what he learned in his classic Democracy in America. We need someone like him these days to help us decipher the behavior patterns of average Israelis, which is so different from life in The States, not an easy task – if you ask me. My modest efforts are a halting step in that direction, but I’m not in the Frenchman’s league.

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Even if I didn’t let the cat out of the bag (metaphorically, of course), you would all figure out that what I’m about to describe didn’t actually happen in real time in the real world as we know it, where the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. It must have been a dream or a half-waking state – as when it’s 4AM and Pooms, the senior cat, has realized that her food bowl is empty or she needs her neck scratched – and we’re pulled from our bed and called into duty.

What I imagined is that I was standing on a step ladder going through the shelves of one of my bookcases, trying to winnow down my collection of novels to a manageable few. There I was, holding a copy of The Cornish Trilogy, three novels in one volume, by the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, when I found myself in the following conversation. It was as if I were talking to the disembodied voice of the writer – which on sober reflection couldn’t have happened. (He died in 1995.)

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There’s much more that will have to happen between now and the end of November, when we are supposed to move into THE apartment, which we haven’t yet purchased but we’re working on. Inevitably, the dreaded ‘D’ word, one subset of its parent, the dreaded ‘M’ word, will rear its ugly head. Actually, it has already. That’s ‘D’ as in ‘downsize,’ something that shouldn’t happen to one’s worst enemy – although there are a few of the political persuasion here and there that I would gladly send packing ‘down’ the yellow brick road. And so this segment can rightly be entitled:

The Gentle Art of Downsizing

Here’s a tale of woe worth considering, one that happened to a dear friend of ours. She had, stored in boxes, what she considered to be her life – at least, her professional life, everything she felt she had accomplished in her career with no small amount of effort. I never got to see what she had in those boxes. It was too much to keep around the house, so the whole kit and kaboodle was all kept safe and sound in a storeroom near where they lived for the longest time. And then…. somebody else needed that space for whatever they needed it for. And so, her life’s accomplishments became homeless and eventually found its way to a nearby dumpster where all of it came to a sorry end. I don’t know about you, but I feel our friend’s pain. There has to be a more dignified way to part with one’s past.

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