=au05021h Autobiography the 2nd, the which being written but not read on 17 Feb '05, and this being the 2nd such doc written on that Christian Day, being in an older caldendar 7 Adar Aleph , and that being here in Campra a most cold and windy day, tho some frozen fools are apparently out on those hard-packed tracks, icy today no doubt, that they dare call pistes, the which might not significantly detrat from their character, and this really would be a great day for sailing if we're hit by a comet before suppertime but if not there's not much to do so I'll go back to writing the story of my life: ------------------------------------------------------------------- I was speaking of Belmont High School My first day there, I was walking across the playground, when a few youths greeted me and asked a few questions, to which I replied, using the word 'genreally' several times. So the next day they greeted me as 'General Lee'. I think it was my first day in school that Seidman came up to me and said something like "You don't need to stand around like a stiff", and must have invited me to eat lunch with him, and several other of the Jewish boys. I suppose he recognized me as Jewish, tho I don't know how. I would say that he did look Jewish, tho I don't know if I noticed it just then. Nearly olive skin, I would say. Well, as I've mentioned, I think it was he who encouraged me to go the Temple Sunday School -- yes, that's what such things were in the USA 1950s . And invited me to his bar Mitzva somewhat later. Belmont was almost entirely Catholic, Irish Catholic and Italian Catholic. I don't think there were 10 Jewish kids in our class. Almost all quite bright. We recognized a cohesion, but didn't make much of it. I remember than in 9th grade I had a position on the school literary magazine, and used that to write an innocuous article on Chanuka. There was no religious intolerance that I recall. But I think that sociaslly we kept to ourselves. I rather enthusiastically identified with the Jewish commuinity. for several years before I had heen inclined to go to Jewish classes, but there was scarcely a Jewish community in Cambridge, at least that I was aware of. My mother had worked for Rabbi Zigman of Harvard Hillel, maybe that was before I was born, but I think that my father had induced her to leave, I think feeling that a woman's place was in the home. So I was looking to Temple Bet Israel, in Brookline, but then we moved. Moving from Cambridge, which has an old-world charm, especially our neighborhood and particularly the street on which we lived, to Belmont, which was homogenized suburbia, was quite a trauma for me. In Cambridge we had a house with a large, old-world yard -- two grapevines, 4 pear trees, room to sled, lovely flower gardens, brick sidewalks with even an old hitching post embedded two houses up. In Belmont all the houses were identical, so-called Colonial, too new for more than a few trees. Standing in our back yard, I could look down through the back yards of everyone below us on the street. There was one small peach tree with indifferent fruit, but it blew down in a hurricane. The neighbors above us were vulgar Italian-Americans, tho polite enough to us, one of the kids went on to become an astronaut, I think he was one of the bratty ones. They would buy a new Cadillac each year. My mother planted what should have been a spite hedge of roses, but the bushes never grew together, nor ever grew tall for that matter. She also did all she could with the garden. The neighbors catty-corner to us, the Hollands, were Irish Catholic. We would often play baseball or football with them, at the Junior High playing field. I think Frank went on to become a priest. I once used the term 'damn', as we would in our house, and he responded fiercely, 'Don't say 'damn', that's a sin on your soul. Well, Catholics must have their hell I suppose; we don't pay that much heed in Judaism. And PVK says, hell is here on earth, the which the Bushies are surely bent to prove. I'm sitting in the hot springs by the Rio Grande, having gone through a rather freaked out day the day before, and an Indian comes by and sits down, and after a bit remarks in passing, He went through hell yesterday. Though neither of us continued that topic of conversation, nor any other that I recall. Once I'm sitting in the hot springs, and a bunch of hippies come by on the other side. There's a well-built girl in a blue overall pullover, which she takes off. She is looking toward me, or at me, but I have a bit of a cold and do not want to swim across the river. It's not too cold, but one does have to angle, because it flows rather fast. So then she addresses herself to a young man in their group, who seems a bit surprised at was seems to be a renewal of attention. Another time I'm on that side of the river, with a young woman, and we get it on, but then I notice a rather approving glance from the other side of the river from the reputed neighborhood rapist, so with some excuse I get her back onto my motorbike and ride back to New Buffalo. Another time I'm down there with Juanita Parker, who is a grandchild of Quan'it Parker, who is almost as famous as Geronimo, at least among Indians, and some strapping young Indian guy comes down, and gets into the hot springs with us, which is socially acceptable, and he is getting clean before going up to Lama for a Prayer Meeting, and also he says to her is 'Please pass the soap Ma'am. Indians have excellent manners. Once in Santa Barbara I've driven out with Susie to a hot springs, and there's a guy in it, and we get in, and after a while he gets out, and remarks, You'll have the surpise of your life when you get out, and then adds, because of the cold, and when we get out Susie sees that he has taken her clothes -- all of them I think, so I guess I give her a T-shirt, and she wraps the towel around her waist, and says she is ready to ride back on the motorbike. I had planned to take us to Anderson's restaurant for their famous pea soup, maybe 40 miles further away from Santa Barbara, and she says she is till willing to go there, but I decide we should better go back to our apartment. I was very proud of her that day. Well, that's a run of hot springs stories. Another time, I had just left UNM Albuquerque in an LSD-abetted pique, and enrolled at UC Berkeley, and was living in a miserable basement apartment -- I mean, for me, all basement apartments are miserable -- I would ride back from UCSB on my motorbike, and then sit for an hour in the bathtub trying to warm up. So this was before I moved up to a trailer in Ernst Haekel's Trout Farm, where I did feel comfortable, and before I met Susie. So anyhow, I'm in conversation with a young woman across the street, and we're talking casually about something or other, and I remark in passing, this is really a bit -- something -- since what I'm really think of is suicide -- I don't recall that I was thinking seriously of it, but neither was I lying -- and she says nothing much to that, and a bit later she invites to come with her a group to the hot springs, and we get there a bit after dark, and they light candles, and we're standing around, and she comes up to me and makes love. Well, that was surely an act of sexual generosity. And it did indeed take me out of my bad mood, though I reacted with less gratitutde than I should have. It was some days later that she told me, almost apologetically, that her boyfriend had come back, and so the relationship could not be resumed, tho I had not attempted to do so. Well, I have often been unworthy of the women in my life. But I suppose one could say that for most men. We're not too bright. Elaine seemed to come from a family of, let us say, natural-born feminists. I recall her in the bedroom, practicing karate kicks, bare from the waist down. I mean, that is the sort of image that might stick in a young man's mind. Though already I was embarassingly old for her, in my 40s if I recall, so when day I came by and she had put my hiking shoes out on the front step. Anyhow, she occasionally remarked to me that her sister too had an aversion to men, and her sister said that she only way should could get over it was to marry one of THEM -- with much emphasize on 'THEM', as if an alien species. Well, Nancy used to say, in that somewhat besieged way of hers, and with her sharpness of mind, humour, and natural consideration, that she thought men and women were different species. Nancy was very neat, and I am -- not. Klister is a very sticky wax that is used on x-country skis in melting snow conditions. Nancy used to say, I wouldn't let you within a mile of Klister. A short, atrractive women with a nice figure, and beautiful red hair, thick as I recall. Her face was marked with chronic acne. I never found that unattractive, I thought it a rather weatherblown look, very outdoors. A few years ago she hiked the Appalachian Traill, from south to north. That's about 2000 miles, I think. The Appalachian trail was routed to go over all the highest peaks. I think one thing that Nancy had in mind is that in general women have a much more discriminating sense of smell than men do. Well, I had set out to write about Belmont High School. We would ride around in Barry Seidman's car, or one of his family cars -- Pontiacs, if I recall. That was more or less what we did for entertainment on evenings, or maybe weekends, in High School. We would stop at a drive-in and get hamburgers and milkshakes etc. I would usually order a cheeseburger, because you got two-for-one -- that is, not merely a hamburger, but chheese too. Sometimes they would get onion rings and fried clams sometimes-- we would sometimes go to fried food shacks on the north shore -- but I never really like those. I suppose this sounds banal in the telling, but its nice memories. I think my brother was often with us, at that age he was stilla younger brother. And Bob Fisher, another Jewish kid, quite bright, with a mild disposition. We would play pop music on the radio, those were the days of rock 'n roll. Arnie Ginsburgh, a Jewish disc jockey, I think more energetic than most DJ's, was a favorite of Barry's. None of us drank anything alcoholic. I don't think we even considered it. Nor smoked, for that matter. Of course this was long before marijuana. Barry, as I recall, was a completely careful driver. I don't recall his ever taking risks. But unlike me, he didn't take a worrying attitude when he got behind the wheel. I suppose I got that from my father, who I think was quite a perfectionist in anything mechanical. Anyhow, as I've said, he finished up English literature at BU, and went on to the Air Force, receiving a silver star for flying as forward air controller in the Vietnam War. I recall writing him from Santa Baraba, Don't forget those are real people you're shooting at -- I was beareded with long hair and a headband at the time, smoking marijuana whenever it was offered to me -- and Yank, Dr. Doris Meyer Fortes, remarked when she stopped by UCSB on a visit and took me out to lunch, but why do you smoke it only when it as offered. I think she concluded on the spot that I needed psychotherapy, and, espcially in retrospect, I think she was right. Well, I think I would have been glad to have done it with her -- she remarked in passing, you would find that psychotherapy can be both pleasant and intellectually stimulating -- but I think that possibility meant so much to me -- she was an exceptional person, a very good person I think, and besides, as my mother's best friend -- or at least one of them, but I think best friend -- would have known the truths behind whatever impressions I had of my childhood. Well, they went back to England -- her husband, Meyer Fortas, an anthropologist of distinction at Cambridge Uniweristy, was rather curt to me, but I suppose that he hadn't quite expected to find a full-feathered hippy introducing himself at the reception for his guest lecture. Harold Rosenberg came by to UCSB to give a lecture once. I think I attended, didn't understand a word of it, and came up afterwards to say hello. I had dated Patia, and so ate and sat and what-not in their apartment, all that was a few years before. She was married by then, to an Italian. Maybe it was then that he said to me, or maybe it was just in my hearing in New York, "the Anxious Ojbect is anxious because it doesn't know what it is". Meaning, I think, that modern art has gone beyond aesthetics into polemics. Well, I should try to get and read again his works. It was through them that I once saw Hans Hoffman at an opening for one of his museum exhibits. I remember him as a large warm man. But then, I do like his paintings, very happy. I also met Saul Steinberg on a weekend at their cottage in East Hampton, but I retain no particular impression of him. Though I suppose one wouldn't. A draftsman, you know. Patia once said that Saul Steinberg once that whenever he saw a beautiful vista, he looked for a signature in the lower-right corner. We would walk past the Olde Burying Ground of the quaint little church in the East Village, and Patia would always remark, ritualistically, "And Peter Stuyvesant is buried there, the louse." That governor of New Amsterdam had been rather an anti- Semite, and I suppose Patia felt noblesse oblige, as a member of the Lower East Side Jewish community -- She had very strong features, almost Mongolian to my eye. I think that too is a Jewish strain, tho I don't know what. Very intelligent of course. We had a rather comfortable affair, upon which she once remarked, "Same theme, same variations", which I tried to vary as "shame theme and tame seriations". She was a composer, studying or whatever one did there at Oberlin School of Music. I first met her on an evening after Yom Kippur, when there was an open house at her dormitory, and she served vistors chocolate-covered ants. A bit too crunchy for my taste, and in retrospect I am inclined to question the kashrut. She came back from a college vacation at one point, and remarked in passing, as we chatted, that she had lost her virginity, adding, "so that detail's taken care of." I could not have said the same then, which rather weighed upon me, and inhibited my social life. in fact, I transferred from Oberlin to U.C. Berkeley "to meet girls" as Pfeiffer was wont to write. Not my brighest move, I was rather lonely in Berkeley, and all my friends, except for Rhoda Slanger, remained those I had made at Berkeley. With one, Cindy Letts, I finally had my first affair, that's anothe chapter and I think I wrote of it in my first autobiography. A good person, very inelligent of course, and also very articulate, with a strong social conscience. She had visited Cuba with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, shortly after Castro - - liberated it, really. She worked for a while for the National Guardian, which was the sort of neo-CP newspaper in New York. Never doctrinaire, always informative, one knew where they stood and could discount their bias when necessary. Reallly the best of the united-front aspect of the CP. I think she later became a Professor of History, maybe at Swarthmore. I suppose she was Jewish, though I don't recall ever asking, or caring. She eventually married a chap named Adcock, which to my mind, though I had taken the end of our affair easily enough, suggested that the fates who guide our destinies have rather second-rate script-writers with a limited sense of humour. They were taking birth-control pills in those days, which were rather a new thing then. It had been an almost ideal first affair for me -- though she had hoped for a bit more cultural interaction -- everyone but me seems to see my better side. But it had been a bit intense. After a few weeks I remarked, a bit hopefully perhaps, about the onset of her period, and she remarked that one didn't have periods with birth control pills -- one shudders now at the possible implications of that -- to which I replied, or wish I had replied, "No rest for the wicked." Well, it was all rather a lovely adventure for me, enhanced by the romanticism I attatched to New York city . She lived on one of west 70s, around 76th as I recall -- between Amsterdam and Columbus, with all the picturesque smells of garbage cans on street level. A 2nd or 3rd floor walk-up as I recall. With Betty Schwimmer, who had this incredibly -- etheric, almost -- sort of beauty. Sort of light olive skin. Jewish I'm sure, there is an arms dealer in Israel with that name, or was. Wind's still blowing, and pisspile's still frozen. I sometimes get the Herald Tribune, a sort of distillate of the New York Times now that they bought out the Washington Post, which as bit too Bushie. Dumbest move in journalism by the bad guys since Labour sold off the Jerusalem Post, which survives as the only English- language newspaper-of-record in Israel. And darned near the old English news medium of any kind, since the Jerusalem Report is mostly froth. Anyhow, the IHT can be absolutely devestating about the Bushie's. They cut off my sub from time to time, mostly bureucratic ineptitutde, even if I haven't paid them in a year or so. I don't suppose they occasionally notice it though. The day after the US Presidential election my subscription cut off. I could only assume that, since the motto of the New York Times is "all the news that's fit to print", they had concluded that, with the re-election of Chickenshit George, there was no more news fit to print. But I do miss having learned what the rational community made of it all. I mean, do we go to monastaries or to the barricades. Or just out to one of Auden's bars. Well, where was I . Back in Belmont High, I suppose. One afternoon at Belmont Junior High I volunteered to play goalie in a little soccer scrimmage. At Shady Hill I had usually played forward, because I was fast, though not really adroit enough to drible well; and not solid enough to play Fullback. I would play halfback sometimes. Anyhow, that day I tried goalie, and was very brave, charging the ball at every opportunity, until it occurred to me that one might get hurt that way. Thereafter I did not play goalie. I've always been rather inept at sports. I guess it's maybe because my left eye is much weaker than my right. "Lazy eye" is the optomotrist's term for it, and it really can't be corrected, certainly not by glasses. Dr. Benjamin Sacks, of Boston, a very good man I think, and a great optomotrist, had me wearing a patch over the right eye, about an hour a day, maybe more, to strengthen the left eye. People would remark on it, and so I would rattle off my rather intellectual explanation. "This eye is weaker than that eye, so I wear a patch over that eye to strengthen this eye." Well, in Cambridge Massachusetts of the 1940s there were rarely follow-up questions to that explanation. But anyhow, I don't suppose I have much depth perception, which makes it rather hard to hit or catch baseballs. So in Belmont High I took to track. What I really liked was the 220 yard dash -- you get up to speed and just float to the finish line before you get tired -- but I was not well-co-ordinated enough to get off the starting blocks fast enough, so I took to longer races -- the 440, briefly, but that's the hardest of all -- they used to say in High School, "that's a man's race", because you have to go just about all out, it's not long enough to pace yourself. So I would run the half-mile, which was sometimes the thousand-yard, and the mile, where if I recall I came it just short of 7 minutes, and cross-country. I enjoyed the uphills on cross-country, I have rather strong legs. As for the rest of it, it was tolerable. I got my high-school letter, though just barely, in cross-country. And was rather proud of that. If I recall, I never placed in any race. Once in indoor track I was in third place until the very end, until someone passed me. For days afterwards I would look at the results, which were printed in the Boston Globe, and look where my name might have been. That was a winter race; the winter races were held indoors, in the Boston Armoury. Oddly enough, years later I watched PVK lead the Cosmic Celebration there, that was Saphira Linden's organizing, she headed the Boston SO. Anyhow, we would go to he meets, and all the coaches would smoke during the meet, and on the bus-ride back to Belmont High we would be coughing out all that smoke for the entire trip. I'm not sure what more I have to say about Belmont High School. A bad joke. Thoroughly banal. I was co-valedictorian, since I was one to two who had gotten all A's. Fran Goldberg was the other. I gave a valedictory address eulogizing "The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men." It had started out, or so I intended, as darned near socially revolutionary stuff, but my parents, I suppose mostly my father, had me tone it down and down, so by the time it got to the last triple-spaced draft, it was easily ignored, as I'm sure everyone did. Our graduation speaker that year was Mr. Welch, who made his fortune making an adequate coconut candy bar, and then used it to found the John Birch Society, which at that time represented the ultra-right, tho in a low-key way. So nobody listened to anyone else, and graduation went on perfectly well as always. Years later when I just transferred to UC Berkeley, I bumped into two students from Belmont High who had apparently taken my admonition to drop out of the system and see the USA, more or less as hobos. I was most embarassed and quickly walked away without talking to them. One had been a rather distinguished football player on the Belmont High team. Ok, here's a story that I want to be sure I have down somewhere. I have intended to do so for years -- decades really, and I think I usually fail to do, but maybe I got it down once or twice. It really should go to the Santa Barbara police department. I was at UCSB in 1968-1969 as I recall, one can easily check the dates. During one year, 1969 I think, there was a student takeover of the UCSB campus, sparked by some of the black students who seized the computer center and threatened to destroy the computer. The white students, as far as I recall, simply had an orgy or two in the Student Union. I was living up in the trailer at Ernst Haekel's that year. The second trailer down, I think. A old guy who was the caretaker for the Faculty Club at UCSB was living in the trailer below me. One day two heavy-set guys came walking down down the path, and asked me where he lived. I suppose I told them, and they continued walking. Rather naively, I took them for bill- collectors, that being I suppose the greatest thuggery I could imagine. Shortly thereafter, there was a night-time explosion at the UCSB Faculty Club. Damage was not extensive, and the caretaker was killed. There were no other injuries, as I recall reading. I suppose some may have imagined that this was associated with the student takeover (which ended amicably enough: I think the black students had very moderate demands which were accommodated with no great difficulty.) So in retrospect, it must have been those guys who for some reason had come to kill the guy who had taken refuge from something criminal as the caretaker. Maybe he owed money to a Mafia. Ok, so much for that. I don't know what to write about next, and anyhow my left wrist is getting tired, so maybe I'll make a pass at Ma'ariv, try Honest George's sphagheti if they'll deign to serve me, and then maybe go to sleep. "Tomorrow is another day" as Scarlet o'Hara says. Wind's still blowing. Well, fuckaduck. Duck for a day, I would say, at New Buffalo, to Kenin's cousin. She was the lead wife, I suppose, the young chicks having come in, Susie Creamcheese, who knows whos she really was, such delicate features, and bartered to visitors sometimes. Well -- the lake at Hamburg is frozen over, rther unusual, everyone is out there ice-skating and enjoying it, George Bush Sr., Goofy George, is ina countdown to the Gulf War, rejecting every offer of compromise, I reckon I should be back in Israel -- I mean, that's part of the Zionist package, an Israeli citizen returns to Israel in time of danger or war. Claudia remarked at one point, maybe I should have let you go. Well, she did say she might be pregnant. Even got a book out of librrary on the subject. I popped her once without propholaxis. I must say, it's rather a nicer feeling than doing it with. Seems a bit more natural. Rather like taking whole wheat bread, I suppose. So I did it a second time without, which she rather resented. She remarked at one point, we can always try again next montth. She once endorsed a rather pagan ideal, where a women would have a number of children without knowing the father. In retrospect I reckon she was two-timing me, maybe just so as not to be tied down. Well, that's not so nice; one can go crazy from things subconsciously sensed but not consciously known, and between that and the political situation, I did. One night she locked her door on me, which is surely a lady's perogative. Toward morning I awoke, and paniced, started banging on the door. They called the cops. There was a ring of the doorbell. I saw it as a cartoon caption: "It's the executioners dear: shall I get it or will you." A couple of cops came in, a man and a woman. They were nice enough, and determined after a few phone calls that there was nothing they could do to me. So I waa packed off, to the train station, with a ticket to Switzerland via Basel. Unfortunately there was a 10 minute stop in Hanover -- one of the housemates realized that was a risk, and apologized for it. So there I got off the train, practically irrational -- I had whacked myself on the head a few times, which does produce a temporary disorientationof sorts -- and anyhow, knowing the train routes, wound up on a train for the port in the Netherlands which answers to Harwichport in England. PVK had a scheduled lecture in England, and I must have had some thought of sharing this rather perilous high with the Sufi Order. Who no doubt would have packed me off to the nearest looney bin: for all its talk of dervishes, the SO is astoundingly bourgeois about such zeal. Upshot was I was on the Ferry to Harwich when news of the end of t he Gulf War -- that is, Bush quit in place, rather than slaughter Sadaam's foot-soldiers -- came over the TV. They showed photos of Israelis, who were going about Purim shopping looking bored. I wound up at the Paddington Station hotel in London, with a bit of an assist from the English constabulary. Went out one day for a walk in the park, ducked into the restroom a few times to wash my hands, and was rousted by the cops. There was an Arab embassy nearby, maybe someone recognized me as Jewish. Maybe someone thought I was a child molester. Well, heaven was with me even in my disgraceful state, and I got out of the police station , after they saw that I had two passports and didn't want to do the paperwork, without even a kick in the vitals -- they challenged me to find the right door out, and somehow I did. Then the cop said, come here, and I walked toward him, and he said -- Oh, tuck in your shirt. So I did, and walked off. Reallly, heaven had bene with me. I did not go back to the hotel, fearing the police might return for me, but walked along the canals, I had about 20 English pouns in my pockets, and the moral of that is, always carry enough money, and if possible credit cards. So I walked along the canals, I think maybe, like poor old blind Gloucester, trying to grope my way to the English channel, with some thought of finding the SO or some such. Fortunately I was wearing a fine used Harris tweed jacket that I'd bought in a used clothes shop in Hamburg. Heavy wool, quite warm. I was rambling in one of the parks, eating out of trash cans. Pesach came, and I was careful to eat only unleavened products. Eventually I did get onto the canals. I remember a woman asked me for a light. I said, I don't smoke. She said, if I set you on fire, will you smoke. Well, one must show no fear in a case like that, I just sort of smiled and walked on. One night someone left a 20-pound note by me while I slept. I would use the public privies, and sometimes buy a cheese sandwich. The English add chutney to it, a nice touch. Once I recall buying something near Paddington, when I was pretty flipped out, and the young woman behind the counter, who was off- white, said Cheers. Somehow that touched me. There is some times a solidarity among the underpvileged that is very moving. At some point I found a Quaker town, and figured I was more or less safe. The Quakers are real Christians. This was Sukot. I finally arranged for Charisma to come get me. Well, she packed me off to Israel, which was ok with me. Had me booked into a hotel in Tel Aviv, from which, when it was time to go, I considered leaving by the window; it was on rather a high floor and breakfast had been adequate but not that memorable. So I wound up taking a bus to Modi'in, and wound up there, as I recall, sleeping on the libaray -- on, not in; someone for whom I have a very high regarded had dumped all the books, which I once sorted and shelved, into a storage room. We had a rent-a-cop shomer in those days -- we -- and one night he came upon me while I was sleeping, and seemed inclined to bait me or some such. I responded with indignation to his having disrupted my sleep, and he apologized. I think sincerely. He was a Moroccan chap, and a decent sort. Well, I don't suppose every community would have taken my walking in and sleeping on the throwaway books in quite so matter-of-fact a fashion. Yankele had moved into my flat, that was 103, which I had rather water-damaged in an attempt to wash out the bad spirits after a previous flipout. I subsequently had it all repainted, but I think the water damage lasted. So I moved back in, and no doubt did more useful work, on R. Shlomo material I assume. Well, that fills in, roughly, a bit of the story starting immediately after I completed the first autobiography. The first autobiography ends about 10 years before that, after I left New Buffalo. So there's a rather uneventful decade living in my mother's house in Belmont, from the mid-70s to 1984. A few nice affairs in that time -- Debbie, who I should have married tho I think my mother thought she was not strong enough for me , and Nancy, whom I still remember with affection and respect -- she really remained a loyal friend -- and Elaine, tho that was really not very serious on either side, and Ciel, from whom I don't think I recovered. I still wonder if she was pregnant when I left her. Well, she never told me, tho I was barely rational at that stage, which all but drove her crazy -- she said at one point, 'I feel I'm being punished for something I didn't do' -- and she didn't tell my mother, who would, I'm sure, have responded quite nobly to the situation -- and -- well, I suppose I don't deserve all the blame, but ----- The upshot was that I left the USA for Israel, and that is another chapter. It was pretty much the last card I had left to play. Anger is rather a good motivation. I did part on good terms with my mother, though the trauma had hurt her. And we did keep in close touch through correspondence. When I returned, my workroom was as I had left it , which rather moved me beyond tears. I left for Israel as part of the Sar-El, Volunteers for Israel, program. This had been designed by Davidi, not so much to help the Israeli army, tho we may have saved them a few dollars, but really, as I once heard him say, to give a second chance to Jewws abroad who perhaps felt they had lost everything -- widowers, or widows, or who knows what. We were welcomed with great respect, and encouraged to sublimate our personal sorrows and even tragedies in dedication to the ideals of Israel. We had all the benefits of army life, and few of the discomforts. We were not subject to army discipline except in day-to-day matters. We could be expelled, but not punished. We were taken on tours and given talks, some led by some of the military heros. (Davidi was a military hero. He was also, I think, quite a great man, a real Sufi in his own way. At Purim he dressed as a mage, as I think he might have been. It is my impression from one photo that he was quite close to the Kurds in past times, and I guess the Kurds are one of the holy peoples on earth. Wind's still blowing. This is a very well-built shack, the door closes snug without having to lock it, and the wind don't blow through. It's a double-glass window door, and seems to hold out the cold as well as the walls do. I guess wherever Vanzetti had a choice, he went for quality. He built a study for Nico, overlooking the Chalet, that is very lordly. Fine view. Well, my work with Sar-El at that base near Ashkelon was pretty good, it was a matter of reclaiming used screws and nuts and bolts, and I devised methods of sorting them that did speed things up. When it looked like some sort of commendation might be in line, one of the professional soldiers stepped in a started positioning himself to take the credit. I had made a prior commitment, from the USA, to spend the next month working as a volunteer with -- Emunah, I think it was, the group representing settlers. That feel through for the month -- something on their end -- I think it was then that I wound up in Ein Gedi, not precisely a harship post, hanging out at the Youth Hostel, from which I would sneak out each night to sleep on the beach -- nobody minded that, at worst I had to explain myself to the reservists doing guard duty when I walked back in the morning. At one point I suppose I caught a light flu. One day I saw Alouche on the beach with a group from the base, and asked if I could come back. Alouche was then the soldier assigned to lead our group of volunteers, he has since become head of Sar-El. A very fine person, and very nice guy. So he thought for a moment or so, and said yes, when the next group was coming in. At one point back at that base I got in a shouting match with a rather drunken fellow volunteer, and was asked to leave, tho I was allowed to make a graceful exit, taking a week or so to finish up the job I was doing. Then some months later I came back to Sar-El, at a base near Beersheva. The work there was fairly hard too, I took one of the more difficult jobs, and did reasonably well. At one point I just about disobeyed an instruction from the lieutenant in charge. Well, as a volunteer I could not be disciplined for that, but the assignment did come to an end. I don't recall the point at issue, probably something about the way to do the work, and quite possibly I was right. Some time later I had another posting, at a base near the center of the country, heaving sacks around. I worked with Jim Cummings, as fine a person as I've ever met. Jewish, Sioux Indian, and Norwegian. All Jewwish (matrilinearly), all Indian (patrilinearly) and all Norwegian (physically, that cost him quite a few fights growing up on the reservation.) His grandmother, his father's mother, an Indian, had given him one of those lovely American patchwork quilts, she made it by hand. As delicate a thing as you could imagine, much less take to a miltary base. But Jim was somewhat larger than most human beings. At several points I encouraged him to safeguard that quilt, and I'm sure it came with him when he married. A nice Jewish girl, who had maybe rather followed him to Israel. Well, I'll try to write more of Jim anon, I'm getting a bit tired. But they are all nice stories. The best is maybe the Pessach story. I had gone to the kotel, and as walking back, as fast as possible, to the Witts for the Seder. Pretty high from it all, of courrse, and the streets nearly empty, no traffic. I am walking up the MIdrahov, at full throttle, and there is Jim sort of walking down it. He had left Sar-El and gone to work on a Moshav. The guy he was working for for a right bastard, I think did not even give him Shabat off. Or when Jim realized that Pesach was coming and said he wanted Pesach off, the guy said then you hve to work on Shabat. Anyhow for Pesach Jim comes to Jerusalem, tho he doesn't really know why or what he will do when he gets there. I see him and all I can say is Come. Come. So he walks with we and we get to the Witts, which is really The Old Womean who lived ina shoe -- it is a shoe-box sort of house, and very old building with low ceilings and very many children seated abouz a table, and less than no room for anyone else, and here is Jim who is somewhat taller than the ceiling and more or less as wide as the room, and I say hi Emunah, here I am almost a little bit late and here is my friend Jim I brought with me come to also drink your wine and eat your shmura Matza from Mea She'arim we only need to maybe move 5 or 6 or your smaller children to make room for him. So ok, Emunah I suppose smiles and says something polite, and there is Jim also smiling and sitting down and keep his head low enough to not hit the ceiling, and Reb Joshua as usual sitting there and being a Reb and letting it all go on, and so we have the Seder, which is I'm sure the first Seder Jim has ever sat at, and also some time before midnight we are eating Emunah's chicken that she maybe fed the kids pasta and potatoes for a week or too to be able to buy for us. And I really do not recall where Jim slept that night, but anyhow Pesach is not a night for sleeping. So some time later I think I try to explain to Emunah that this guy who looks like a Norwegian tree but maybe not quite as smart is really a Jewish Sioux Indian, and so she has done a great mitzva that will be long remembered on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, but I am not sure if she ever understands, and anyhow she just keeps on smiling, whatever happens. Ok, here is another Jim Cummings story. He had left Sar-El, and then reapplied, and been told to go to a Navy base up north. So Jim is standing in Tel Aviv, with no money. And as he tells me later, he says he remembers that I once told him, if you need something you must ask for it. So he is standing there and an army officer walks by, a captain I thinking, walking very fast and neat I'm sure, one of those kippa sruga guys, who I'm sure does everything right, so if you drop a crumb on the floor he will be sure it is picked up before it hits the floor. And there is Jim who I suppose looks a bit out of place, even in the old south Tel Aviv bus station which made Calcutta look tidy. And then Jim asks this guy for bus fare, which is for much more money that any proper pan-handler should ask for. I mean it is a bit like, instead of saying Buddy can you spare a dime for a cup a coffee, you say Greetings comrade, please give me for an economy sirloin steak dinner with a small beer thank you. So of course this neat kippa sruga captain walks right by without answering or even reacting, because the army must go on, even if it is only the Israeli army, which is of course not a real army and much the better for it. So this guy has walked past and Jim is still standing there, and then he turns back and gives Jim the money and then walks away again, probably without saying a word. And also that is maybe why he is already a captain in the army or whatever he is a captain in, because he has made a mistake, and then at once reviewed what he did in his mind, and seen it was a mistake, and corrected the mistake at once, and then continued with what he was doing without thinking again of the mistake. So Jim goes up north, and becomes a volunteer, and some time later one of the soldiers falls in the water and Jim helps pull him out, or maybe pulls him out himself because Jim is surely strong enough to do by himself, and also I think would have very fast responses when he isn't trying to look like a dumb Norwegian Indian. Ok, that's for that story, so maybe because that guy gave 20 shekels or something on the street, somebody's life is saved. Well, at some point Jim goes back to Pine Ride South Dakota, on the edge of the Reservation, and marries Rachel, and they have several children, one with a learning disability if I recall, and do their best to keep up with the Jewish calendar, and now I do not know where they have moved to. And also Jim's father was living in a trailer on their land, this would be the Indian: and also they had livestock. Martin South Dakota it was wherre the lived, but I don't know where they moved to. Of courese Jim as a good worker, he used to work on oil rigs. Slow, easy-going, watchful. I enjoyed working with him, because also I try to work watchful, or that is I did until I got older and am not so strong anymore. They would have hired us both to work for the army when we were dumping sacks of rice into a bagging converyer hopper, tho I was younger then, not even 50. Of course I do not think they would have hired me without Jim. I think Jim had dropped out of school in about 8th grade, but I could have intelligent conversations with him, which I canot have with many people. But I am pretty smart and can understand some variety of conceptual languages if they are all in English. So I can even speak with foreigners some, like Agnieska, and like some people in Israel, as long as they speak in English. Once in Santa Barbara I met Jean Cox and I could really speak with her, but she was married and so we did not have an affair, which I am sure we both regret. I mean in two minutes I could say more to her than I can say to most people in a year. She is one of the few people I have met in my life who I could really speak to. I forget who the others were. Once I could really do philosophy, but I think I did it all only in my mind, nd "I was very young then" as Shrager says ina poem, I mean this was when I was back in Oberlin college and barely even knew that it was possible to write so I didn't, and anyhow computer keyboards had not been invented and typewriters are SO noisy. Oppenheimer once said, there are 6-year-olds -- or maybe he said, 8-year-olds -- walking around with the answers to problems that baffle me. Well, physics is a young man's game. And I think maybe math too. And eveeryone knows, if you haven't learned to play piano as a kid, forget it, you're too old. I don't know if I have more Jim Cummings stories. We were both extrass in that Golan-Globus Agatha Christie movie, the scenes that they shot down at Qumran, with Lauren Bacall who is a Persky, and with Peter Ustinov, who had no lack of class -- one of the extras asked to take a photo of him, and Ustinov immediately strikes a Shuffle-o to Buffalo pose, vaudeville style, cane out -- They had also hired Arab urchins from Jericho to be extras too, with us Jewish intellectuals from Jerusalem, this was a year or so before the intifada, 1986 I think. And because this was the Tel Aviv artsy crowd, they were all eating pig for lunch, because otherwise someone might mistake them for yeshiva bokers or something, so one of our crowd wanted to be sure to go over to the Arab kids and warn them this was something they should not eat. Somehow we had snuck into the first-class dining tent, so I took some water from the watcher pitcher and washed my hands on the ground, only then they noticed that we were not their kind of people and so we had to go back out and eat at the plebian mess. I mean, one must wash hands before eating bread, and one must eat bred before eating anything else on the table, especially the roast pig's ass that is the entree in refined society. If raw white radishes were treif, they would instead have had a large raw white radish as the piece de resistance. Orthodox women cover their hair after marriage. When I knock on a friend's door, if her headscarf is not fully adjusted, I gaze with the more avidity than ever I showed on the nudist beaches of New England nor the hot springs of New Mexico. If elbows were considered immodest -- I forget whether or not they are -- I would be an elbow man, in disregard of all the porny comic books of Switzerland. I once said to Claudia, your modus vivendi is: If I can't have it, I want it. She acknowleged that. It was after she had kicked me out, maybe because I ate all the cheese in the referigerator every week, and I as in Versailles and almost running out of money, and Versailles is an excellent setting in which to think devious thoughts, so it occurred to me that if I invited myself back to Claudia's I could then go back to my Dresdener bank, where I would walk across a marble football field to get to my personal teller, and then I couild get more money from my account, so that's how I got back to Claudia's communal pad in one of the better suburbs of Hamburg, only then Bush's Private Gulf War was in the works, and the Hamburg newspapers would publish these soulful pictures of poor Hussein upon his prayer mat, hoping to be saved from the imperialist Americans and also maybe to drop a bomb or two on Tel Aviv, as he shortly thereafter did, and here I am smiling at the smiling Germans and wondering if I am not maybe somewhat out of place, tho the cheese in the refrigerator is good, and so in short things ended disasterous and i said I would not write long sentences any more even if Damon Runyan got away with it. So the moral is, don't make decisions at Versailles. Also at Qumran one of the Arab youths -- Lo the Noble Camel Boy, Give Back Gaza First Now -- raped one of the Jewish girls in the ruins, and Jim wanted to maybe kill him, but I talked him out of it. Time to put the electric heater back on, at 20 cents per kilowatt hour. Have to run it about 23 hours a day. Maybe I can sneak out through Milano. I try to tell myself, I am in a mountain cabin in the snowy Alps, but it's really Miller's Misfits -- Arthur Miller's movie, maybe one of his greatest, surely most culturrally significant, works, and he died a few days ago, as humans do, and his work lives, as humans do. Unquestionably an honest man. Few can say that. From the ethos of the CP USA, regardless of questions of membership. And Stalin was only a plaster statue, like those little replicas of the Empire State building, when my grandmother took us there, I was maybe eight years old then. "The evil that men do" "is oft interred with their bones", so let it be for those who had idealized the USSR, unable to see behind that socialist neo-realist mural. For it was a pretty enough dream, apart from desinating something that never existed and never could exist. And now Agnieska must go through life in fallible health from the forced industrialization of the occupied Polish mountainland, and all the Poles did wrong was be conquered by Germany, despite all those fine horses in the cavalry. And Agnieska is alive, and does not deserve bad health. As so gallantly she tries to slough it off, like a cavalry rider in the sun, despite all last night's wine. You see, I am making a bit of a tapestry; take is as such. Somebody should sort out my colons and semi-colons, I think I have them all mixed up. European keyboard. Need a tweezrs I suppose. In the study hall in 10th grade, at Berkeley High, where I sat with the louts because it was only study hall which meant we had no classes but they didn't dare turn us loose, the louts would ask me, did I bring my tweezers, and I tried to mumble a socially acceptable answer, but had no idea what they were speaking of, and still don't. They would also ask, with regard to the young woman sitting at the desk before me and smiling demurely at the verbal byplay, if I had mirrors on my shoes: that qquestion was more nearly comprehensible. In those days it was easier to know how one was supposed to sin, or to have sinned, or to say or imply that one had sinned. At Berkeley High, this is 1955 I think, with my father on a sabbatical, divided between UC Berkeley and Cal Tech in Pasadena, where Pauling was -- anyhow, at Berkeley High one could go out at lunch, and they sold foot-long hotdogs -- in those days I scarcely knew what a kosher hotdog was, nor why one should bother to want one -- and very thick milkshakes, so you had to stir them. I played in the concert band, and once got to use both a C soprano and and E alto clarinet in addition to my B-flat clarinet. Dr. Fialon taught French, I still remember her as sexy, tho we are all on our way to if not in the dustbin. There was also a little homo boy in that class, much too bright for his own good no doubt, who said things that even here I want to not write down. I do not recall having learned a darned thing at Berkely High, but it was certainly a far freer atmosphere than Belmont Senior High School. Then we went to Pasadena where I continued 10th Grade in the graduating class of John Marshall Junior High. I was of course placed in the brightest class. There were two brigh girls there -- Ann Rudge, whom I knew slightly, and Barbara Serrell, with whom I had a much closer relationship. I almost developed into sexual flirtation, but I did not know what to do, so that did not get past words. Witty, no doubt. I told my father one day that I had discovered what I wanted to do for my profession, and that was to appreciate beauty everywhere. And I do believe I had seen something, tho I'm still not sure what, the insight fleets away. He responded, though with sympathy, something like, but everyone does that all the time. Berkeley had been foggy and aethereal, we rented a house up in the hills. Pasadena was featureless hot and smoggy, flat. Thre I alked to school, and got jock rash, from the smog I suppose, most embarassing for an adolescent, I had to apply calamine lotion in the boys room at mid-day, and stay out of sports. I got into one fight there, with a bully whom I had tried to challenge. He knocked me down once, and I did not fight back, which was maybe wise. I think that is my most recent fight, although at the meditation camp I think they look upon me as an Israeli and therefore most dangerous. It's the long beard and uncombed hair does it I reckon. That and the untucked shirt. Helps me get out of cutting carrots. Well, only 8.5 hours until I can buy another plate of white rice with little bitty chicken pieces at Honest George's for 14 or 15 dollars. With cream sauce no doubt, but I can't fight everything all the time, its 500 snowy icy meters and 2 and a half hours down to Olivone. And anyhow, the chicken is only an honorary cow. That is, fowl is technically not fleishig. I mean, you're walking back to Camp one dark night and encounter an aggressive chicken, and try to grab it by the horns -- an understandable mistake, as long as you don't insist upon staying there until daybreak and then taking it to the bullring for a Moment of Truth. Rinata came to Israel, and of course went right up to Jerusalem, and wound up as a volunteer living in the attic of the Bet Agron Youth Hostel. She said she wanted to convert to Judaism. She said, all she knew of her ancestry was that they said her grandfather once did something with a chicken. I said, you already are Jewish. Because there's only one thing that a man can do with a chicken that's worth talking about, and that's kaporet. (The custom, now observed only be some in Mea Shearim, of swining a white rooster by the neck about one's head on the afternoon before Yom Kippur to atone for one's own sins, if not those of the rooster. Which one subsequently eats, or if its too disgusting to eat one's own transmorgified or whatever they do in Transylvania sins, then give it to the poor to eat. I mean, if they don't want to hae to eat my sins, they should not have been poor, right? Right. It is said, in the Talmud I assume, that if you have too shirts, and you meet a poor man who needs a shirt, give him the better of the two. Or maybe that's only if you have 5 or maybe 10 shirts, I don't know. St. Martin met a beggar shivering in the cold. St. Martin wore a warm wool cloak. He took out his sword and sliced it in two and gave half to the beggar, and then they both froze to death. The Talmud tells, The Rabbi was accustomed to give charity to a man. The Rabbi's son came back and said, you don't need to give charity to this guy, they mix old wine for him. The Rabbi said, Oh, is he accustomed to such luxuries, and doubled his weekly contribution. Now that's tzdaka. To restore to a man his lost dignity. Well, where to I go from here. To the privy? Moon's set and the wind's still blowing. And I'm out of coffee filter papers. Maybe its clouded over. So dark its a major achievement not to piss on my toes. Back at Modi'in they no doubt imagine I'm sitting around a roaring fire in the ski-lodge, waiting for the snow-bunnies to bring in the roast suckling pig in low-cut decoltee. Well, why disillusion them. Let the innocents dream. I suppose I could write of Modi'in. Oy, dogpatch. Yankele Shames found it, at the end of a dirt road from Ramla and Lod. No road had then been built from Jerusalem. Modi'in had been an army outpost before the 1967 War made it liveable. The temporary structures, reinforced concrete 2-room bungalows with very thick roofs, were built with no window facing the Jordan border. That is, they were built to withstand artillery shells. They still stand, and I live in one. A front kitchnette was added, with toilet and shower. In Israel, toilet and shower are always in seperate roomlets, except in the most modern American-style houses, where you do the dirty in the same place that you use to get clean and pure, because they both have somthing to do with water so its more efficient that way, and EFFICIENCY SAVES TIME. Oy, goyim. Those re-inforced concret bungalows are much too hot in summer, and cold and clammy in the rainy season. In the daytime, the concrete and the iron bars that reinforce it soak up whatever a normal house, like an Abobe, would get rid of in the evening. In Israel, in the old days anyhow, everyone would stay up late into the eveining, in summer anyhow, beause that was the first nice time of the day, after the onset of the day's heat, which would have happened by 10 in the morning. Amd also, on Shabat one should have finished davening and be eating the morning meal by then. At Modi'in they still live as if it was an East European shtetl. They don't finish morning davening until noon, and then only because they have to by halacha. So by the time for the meal, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk if you're quick enough, and if the Rabbi permits it. Also, no-one thinks for themselves, they ask the Rabbi. Whoever they have choosed to be The Rabbi. There is a Bet Knesset, which can comfortably hold a minyan, and on Shabat it may be packed with 50 or 60 people, all within those nicely painted concret walls and the Baal Tfilla, the dude who leads the prayers, may strut and fret his half-hour upon the stage interminably. I mean, give a clown a mic and you'll never hear the last of him. So I stand outside, ostensibly guarding against an invasion of the Scythians or Resurgent Babylonians or stray dogs. The Radbash is at his prayers in the upper synagogue, where at least they do everything chic-chac, as fast as possible. Tne the Shomers have gone to bed, tho no doubt they slept the night away as well. Jake was shomer, Yakov Rottenberg, and, as far as could see, impeccable. Whenever I saw him he was alert, unstoned, and calm. He was forced out, probably because someone's relative wantd his salary, or maybe it was a matter of kickbaks. People at Modi'in are so disinclined to speak ill of even gonovim that it can be almost an interminable slog through the swamps to find out even the time of day. When last I left they had two rent-a-cops at the gate at night, nice enough guys who did as little as possible. As Jake said, the Ethiopians are the best. But the Ethiopians are a very special people. Judaism is much enriched by their having joined us. But the Chabadniks, whose mecca is Brooklyn, barely acknowlege the Ethiopians as Jewish. Rav Ovadya Josef declared them Jewish, decades ago, and for alone his name should live long. For regardless of history and antropology, in spiritual terms he has done a great good to the Jewish people. I think you will also count the Ethiopians among the bravest of troops and most reliable of shomerim (guards). And most spiritual of people. Honest too. Very honest. And proud. One almost never sees an Ethiopian begging on the street, even though in Judaism begging on the street. The guy to whom you dropped a coin this afternoon may be the one leading you in prayer this evening, and deservedly so, and everyone knows it. Or he may have been the guy who saved your family in the last war, and everyone knows that too. Or both. In Israel it is no disgrace to be poor, or to have no money. In Switzerland it is the only disgrace. Or so it seems. In the USA it is worse than disgrace, it is to make onself prey. Or so I imagine. I want to say: In Modi'in they try very hard to lead lives of dignity and honor, despite almost total poverty. I also want to say: Modi'in has lived for decades on financial scams. Well, some folks is this way, and some folks is that way. Eliahu is the most outrageous, but I've never known him to cheat a neighbor, nor to work harm on one. His projects are outrageous and quickly collapse. But he has extraordinary energy, and great charisma, and soon comes up with a new project. People are always funding him, and he always blows the funding. Time after time he has taken me in when I had nothing, and gotten very little benefit back from it. I have never known him to be stingy, and continually known him to soldier on when he had nothing, with half his hopes in a heavy suitcase. He is also the most brilliant person I have knowingly met, especially on technical matters. If some thinktank had harnessed him, he might now be rich and famous. If he didn't manage his own money. Yitzak ben Yehuda is a good artist, especially technically. Meticulous. He also has a nice measure of artistic vision, but not great artistic vision, and he knows it. His multi-layer paintings may be amongst the best of our time. Their medium is really electronic. I think Judy has more artistic vision, for all that the paints only landscapes. I think she's surprisingly close to Cezanne, tho without his cubist aspect. But her technique is noting unusual. Yitzak is also a thoroughly decent and reliable person. When I came back to the Moshav last time, flat broke, he gave me his last 50 shekels. Well, one remembers that. He is also sober and hard-working. I used to see him sitting in front of the mikveh early in the morining, a bit shame-faced at needing to wash away his marital obligation. And then his wife had an unexpected late baby. A most lovely little girl, Dvorah, as sweet and intelligent a child as one will see, well worth whateer disruption she may have caused in her parents adult education agenda. Yohevet is a solidly built woman of African origin, from St. Croix in the Caribbean, and then Manhattan, where she met R. Shlomo and converted. She wears her Judaism now in a matter-of-fact manner. Said to be very intelligent, and probably is. Extremely well grounded. Very self-contained, keeps a rather extraordinary measure of charisma under her hat, to use as needed. She guided me apparently effortelessly though what might have been a rather difficult and even hazardous process of re-documentation. Also quite a good cook, in rather an exotic natural way. Has too lovely daughters, both grown now. Kochava soft and womanly, Ma'ayan, Micheal ben Yehuda'd daughter, small and more intense. Both with excellent manner and manners, of course. Both unselfish, and I think capable of great love. Back from the privy. I think the night has clouded over. Honest George does not keep on even a single outside light tho they know I'm here and should know I must sometimes go out at night. Might be different if I would spent 20 or 30 dollars a night in their ruddy Restorante, for 2 dollars worth of glorified dogfood. Reckon that's the pre-requisite for meeting them half-way. Fugit. Contemplated last week's Minestrone in my room. I suppose, rather than reheat it, I should toss it to the wolf one of these days. Jug Chianti was good though. Better than that sower Merlot they serfe as house-ine. Smoother anyhow. Sleepy wine, hits you 15 minutes later. Well, I'll trash the rest of the neighbors after I take another nap. Napped and woke from a nightmare. Not for my planned sin of loshon hora ("dishing the dirt" as they say in the USA, where haut cuisine has somewhat declined), but for half a bowlful of warm Chianti and possible a glass of half-week-old Rivella Green. Oh well, back to Modi'in: STEVE sits in the first house, and so, having read too much of the Mystic East, fancies himself Guardian of the Gate. "In the wee small hours of the morning", having no woman to placate, he may be seen wandering the road, dressed in white cap and T-shirt that no one will shoot him unintentionally, backing up the shomers, who are most likely asleep in their auto. If the Moshav is attacked by anything smaller than a rabbit, Steve will be there to give it a fair fight. A freethinker, he is the only Moshav resident who does not profess orththodoy. He seems to imagine the Moshav as some sort of Abode for Exiles, and unacknowleged satellite for Sufis. He dwells discontentedly in a two-room house, while his neighbors, with large familis, must content themselves with about a third of a room apiece. On Shabat he dines well at others' expense, and on weekdays seems to live on cofee, fresh fruit juice, bottled mineral water, and the odd scrambled egg. If he keeps any mitzvot at all, it is not clear where, possibly in a bottom drawer with his underwear, and keeps them only because that is the path of least resistance. The pious may be shocked to observe than on Shabat his toilette room light goes on and off, as if wasting electricity on Shabat were not a mitzva. On the other hand, he then lights the rest of the house only with 2 candles, and does try to burn olive oil on Chanuaka. But it is rumoured that in foreign lands he eats cheese.