Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Israel 2010 Getting Ready

Well, I finally am getting ready to travel to Israel. I had been delaying this trip until the Israelis and the Palestinians finally came to recognize each other’s legitimate grievances and sat down together in good faith to negotiate a fair and just settlement.   Well……  although it might not take a genius to figure the likelihood of that happening, it took a wedding invitation from Josh and Diana to move me from this perfectly reasonable stance and I will soon be heading for Israel.
  
     The key question. Why blog at all? The trip to Viet Nam had me going to a country that was quite foreign to most of us and I thought I might have something  new and of interest to say. But Israel, Israel  has been visited by many of us and I doubted that I would have any great new insight or indeed anything intelligent to add to the public discussion. But then I looked at a number of different travel blogs  and that modest requirement didn’t seem to prevent anyone else from clogging the bandwidth. So, perhaps this will be a very brief blog…
My first dilemma. Which kippah  to take. I don’t do very well with the little knit ones that are so much in fashion these days because I don’t have any hair to clip it to. Sticking a pushpin into my skull doesn’t appeal to me, so that one will stay home. The bright purple one with “Bernie’s Bar Mitzvah” emblazoned across the front seemed a bit too assertive. I will, after all, be wearing one as camouflage more or less, so getting it right seems important. It’s a bit late, but I should have ordered the baseball kippah ($2.95 each) from A1 Skullcap company. Oh well…. maybe I will get one in time for the next Red Sox game. 

What I really was looking for was a line of fine art keppot (Chagall’s window,  Monet’s Giverny  paintings, Picasso’s Guernica (well, maybe not Guernica)). What I have finally decided on is my own Andy Warhol kippah (which looks just like a black velour kippah).
My second dilemma. What to pack? My intention was to travel “light”, but after filling the suitcase last night I realized I would  require two Nepalese porters to accompany me – and that is just for the various pills and medicines I’m taking. This aging business is tough. 

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