Ashley speculates that he might be moving in the wrong circles: despite all the media hoopla and the many blog entries about Arafat's mysterious illness (and possible imminent demise), nobody he knows is talking about the subject.

Actually, he's moving in pretty normal circles.

The truth is that, besides my colleagues at the newspaper I work for, nobody I know is talking about the subject either. The only reason I got caught up in the speculation is because I spent all of Thursday proofing articles about Arafat, Arafat's illnesses, the possible consequences of Arafat's death, yadda yadda yadda. Ad mega nauseum.

So I got sucked in and the result was my previous post.

Part of the reason I started writing this blog was to give readers a non-political perspective on Israeli society. As I've written before, I think it's wrongheaded and (to put it mildly) inaccurate to link every aspect of Israeli society to the political situation here. It bothers me that so many people know Israel only through newspaper headlines and breathless, ratings-seeking reports on CNN. That kind of knowledge is totally devoid of nuance. In fact, it is ignorance. And ignorance is dangerous.

While we were driving to the bloggers' bash, Shai hinted that denial might not be just a river in Egypt - that maybe I was trying too hard to avoid politics.

Perhaps. But the longer I live in Israel, the more politics gets on my nerves. The whole subject seems like an awfully predictable March of Folly, with politicians screaming at each other, leaders behaving cravenly and the international media capturing viewers and readers with dramatic headlines and craftily-edited footage.

Sometimes I wonder if political activism is a form of escapism that is simply the mirror image of Tel Aviv hedonists on the club-and-pub circuit. Both pursuits end up being a way of escaping from oneself. An unexamined life may not be worth living, but examining one's life is pretty damned difficult and scary. It's much easier to proclaim that one has dedicated oneself to achieving a collective, higher good - or, of course, to get stoned and stay up all night dancing - than to examine the flaws in one's character and either change them or learn to accept them.

Have you ever noticed that, throughout history, the most accomplished people, the ones who made the biggest impact, were absolute assholes to those closest to them? Gandhi decided, for himself and his wife, that he would become celibate at the age of 36. The Buddha abandoned his pregnant wife in order to go out and seek enlightenment. Picasso was unbelievably cruel to his wives and mistresses, and indifferent to his children. (I know, strange selection of people - wonder what's on my mind?)

What would happen if we all decided that the best way to make the world a better place was to put our energy into being kind and compassionate to one another and to ourselves (self-acceptance), to be generous partners and loving parents and offspring - instead of channeling our egos into the acquisition of power, immortality and fame, at the expense of those closest to us? I bet the world would be a pretty good place. We wouldn't need a Buddha to teach us about enlightenment - because we'd all be bodhisattvas already.

This evening I skipped the annual memorial for Yitzhak Rabin at Rabin Square, because it seems to be a lot less about Rabin and a lot more about hanging out with like-minded people, listening to David Broza and eating Italian ice cream. Instead I stayed home and watched a beautiful and moving documentary by Danae Elon (daughter of Amos Elon) called Another Road Home.

The film is about Musa Obeidallah, the Palestinian man the filmmaker's parents hired to take care of her when she was growing up in Jerusalem, and from whom she seems to have received more unconditional love and acceptance than she ever received from her parents - especially her rather distant father. For 20 years, Musa spent 18 hours a day at the Elon's home - far more than he spent with his own 11 children. He fed Danae as a baby, and even slept in the same room with her. He worked hard to make money in order to send his sons to study in the USA, where they would be able to build better lives for themselves. But since she left Israel more than 10 years before, Danae has lost touch with Musa. She locates Musa's sons, who are living in Paterson, New Jersey; they remember her well and welcome her warmly, though they speak honestly about their anti-Israel feelings. Eventually Musa, who lives in the West Bank village of Batir, comes to visit her and his sons in the USA. The trip is an arduous one for a 76 year-old man. It involves getting permission to leave his village and waiting hours to get through checkpoints on the way to the airport in Amman, not knowing if he will be allowed through or turned back. But he undertakes the journey successfully and arrives in the USA.

And thus the viewer is introduced to one of the kindest, sweetest people one could ever hope to meet. Here is a man who seems to be made purely of love and acceptance. At one point Danae is sitting in the tiny kitchen of her Manhattan apartment, talking to Musa alone. The love between them simply radiates outward. Danae asks Musa how he felt when he ironed her army uniform during her furloughs from her mandatory service in the IDF. At first Musa is confused by the question, but finally he answers, simply, "I didn't iron your uniform for the army. I ironed it for you."

Even though every aspect of Musa's sentient life is controlled by politics, he is really free - freer than anyone else in that film. Free of hate, anger, politics... The only thing that is important to him is giving love. And he actually says that to Danae, while they are sitting in a Jordanian hotel room following his visit to the USA, waiting overnight for the border into the West Bank to be opened in the morning - allowing Musa to return to his village, Batir.

The story of Musa's life illustrates why I am sick of politics, and why I am ever more convinced that all we need is...you know, what the Beatles said.

Will he live or will he die? Does he have cancer, blood poisoning or a gastrointestinal disorder? Who will replace Arafat if he dies? If estranged and (shh!) not really blonde wife Suha actually left her fab $16,000 per night digs at the Bristol hotel in Paris in order to come to Ramallah (her first visit in a couple of years) and take him back to the City of Light then Arafat must be really sick.

And so the speculation continues... But the truth is that no-one, outside of Arafat's inner circle, knows what's really going on.

All day long we have been on Yasser watch. One acquaintance said that if Arafat does die then some right-wing Israelis will probably go out on the streets to celebrate and Al Jazeera will film the celebrations and then broadcast the footage to the Arab world - just as the Israeli news programs show Palestinians celebrating after a terrorist attack is committed against Israelis. Yeah, self-righteousness goes both ways.

Personally I think that Arafat has more lives than a cat. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he pulls through this and comes back to Ramallah with a few tins of duty-free foie gras tucked in his carry-on luggage.

No, I don't like Yasser very much... But I worry about the power vacuum he would leave. He has appointed no successor and it quite freaks me out to think of how a power struggle between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority would play out.

Over at Not Another Israel Blog, Harry's friend "B" is running a contest: pick the day of Arafat's demise and predict accurately the political ramifications, and you could win a fab prize.

Oh, how I love dark humour.

At work, I often have the task of editing articles that have been translated from Hebrew into English. Most of the translators do a respectable job, but some are just absolute crap; there's one in particular who makes my jaw tighten when I'm under deadline - because I know I'm going to have to re-translate big chunks of the text and-dammit-what-the-hell-are-they-paying-her-for-anyway-cause-I-don't-have-time-for-this.
But when she's not giving me deadline stress, this particular translator's howlers are a huge source of amusement. The crew in the graphics department - all native Hebrew speakers - have printed out her Top 10 Bloopers on paper banners and taped them to the walls above the Mac computers. (Don't worry, she'll never see them - she works from home and sends the translations via email). Our favourite blooper is "husbands' rights." Allow me to explain: the Hebrew phrase for "copyright" is "ba'alei zkhuyot". The first word means, depending on the context, "husbands," "masters" or "owners". The second word means "rights." And of course our somewhat challenged translator once decided that a certain publishing house had "husbands' rights" over its books.
So now whenever we're concerned about whether we can use a photograph taken from the archives for an article, we ask each other with mock concern, "Does anyone else have husbands' rights on this photo?"
I guess we're being a bit mean to the poor woman. We laugh at her because she's the type of American-born, very religious woman that Israelis find so amusing: even after 20 years in this country she still speaks Hebrew with an accent so thick that listening to her is like reading Hebrew prose written in Latin characters. When you ask her how she is she doesn't say "fine, thanks - and you?"; she says "Thank God, thank God," like a mantra. Once when I told her I had to spend most of the weekend working she said, "Oh but you won't work on shabbos, will you?!" In response I asked if she read the paper on Sunday mornings and if so when did she think the articles had been written and copyedited for her reading pleasure?
And whoosh! My catty question went right over her head.
More on the gap between secular Israeli and Jewish diaspora cultural attitudes can be seen in this article about the current American tour of Israeli hip hop group Hadag Nachash. The description of the group's reaction to its audience of Jewish frat members at George Washington University says it all:

They are plainly out of place, and they can sense it. Some of the band members have never been to America, and have certainly never been inside a college frat house. "They look a little nerdy to me," comments bassist Yaya Cohen Harounoff, referring to his hosts.

Oh well, the group will probably feel more at home when they perform at my old haunt in New York, the Knitting Factory. It's definitely much more their scene, and there'll probably be a few Israeli denizens of Williamsburg in the audience to make them feel at home.
I met a few of the guys from Hadag Nachash once - in India, actually, four years ago. I was hanging out in a Himalayan village called Baghsu, located about twenty minutes' walk above McLeod Ghanj, home of the Dalai Lama and a mixed population of Indians and Tibetans. Baghsu is a sleepy little town that is positively overrun with Israelis during the summer months before the monsoon comes sweeping in - and drives all the tourists out. I stayed in a farmhouse that was a good half hour walk up from the village, reached by a nearly vertical mountain path that had me gasping for the first week - until I got used to it. I paid $1 per day for my room, and an additional 25 cents for chai (spicy Indian milk tea) in the morning and dinner - dahl, rice, vegetables and chappati cooked by the lady of the house over the open fire built into the kitchen floor.
I loved it there. In the mornings I'd wake up to watch the sunrise from my balcony and wait for Shusha, the owners' 12 year-old daughter, to call up to me, "Lisa, you want chai now?" I'd sip my tea from a large glass while looking down at the dark-and-light-green checkerboard of fields spread out below, at the spread-out farmhouses that clung to the mountainside and at the cluster of buildings that was McLeod Ganj. There was no telephone or radio and only intermittent electricity (at night I read in bed by candlelight); I washed my clothes at the cold water tap outside, using a block of laundry soap and a scrub brush; when I wanted to bathe I paid 5 cents for a bucket of water heated on the fire. Let's not talk about the toilet - I think Ashley has that subject covered.
Down in the village there was a guesthouse, owned by a guy named Anil, that was very popular with Israelis. Anil was popular for two reasons: he sold very high quality hashish, and he served the ultimate cure for the munchies - banafu pie (AKA diabetes on a plate). This stunningly sweet and hyper-calorific delicacy consisted of a graham cracker crust filled with a mixture of dolce de leche, sliced bananas and dried coconut. It was sudden death by dessert, and totally irresistible. And the only reason I didn't gain a ton of weight from my near-daily indulgence was that mountain path I climbed at least four times per day. And also possibly the stubborn case of dysentery that clutched my gut for nearly 6 months.
And it was over banafu pie, consumed at a big communal table in the guesthouse courtyard, that a friend pointed to a group of scruffy-looking Israeli guys at the other end of the table and told me they were members of an Israeli hip hop group I'd never heard of. I think they were eating banafu pie too. We talked a bit, but I can't remember what was said - just tourist chat, I guess.
If my description of Anil's internationally famous dessert has whetted your appetite, but you have no plans to go to India in the near future and you live in Israel, fear not: banafu pie has come to Tel Aviv. It can be had at the Israeli version of an Indian tali restaurant called 24 Rupee, at 14-16 Shocken Street (above the motorcycle shop). Just follow the smell of Indian cooking and Sai Baba incense up one flight of stairs, plunk yourself down on a cushion in front of one of the low tables, and it shall be brought to you. And the tali is really good, too. The restaurant owners imported a couple of young Indian guys to do the cooking.

Heavy metal music is not really my bag, but interesting cultural phenomena are definitely my thing. That's why I'm fascinated by the Israeli metal group Orphaned Land. The group just released its new album, "Mabool" (Flood), following a 7-year hiatus, and it's getting rave reviews from metal fan sites as well as more prosaic sources like the Village Voice. The CD's title is taken from the story of Noah in Genesis; the tale of the flood is a metaphor for the band's take on the current situation in the Middle East. (Check out the comments on Amazon for further explanations.)

During an interview with Channel 10's London and Kirschenbaum, Kobi Farhi, the band's lead singer, offered the fascinating information that some of Orphaned Land's biggest fans are located in countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Dubai. The band members have received emails along the lines of "who cares about politics, I love your music and your message," and many have tatooed the group's name on their arms - as they were pleased to show during Orphaned Land's recent concert in Istanbul, which was attended by fans from all over the Arab world.

The group performed one of the songs from "Mabool" following the interview, and it was actually quite...beautiful. It combined elements of metal and traditional Middle Eastern music, with an oud player and stunning vocals by a Yemenite woman with a soaring soprano added to the mix of electric guitars and keyboard. This combination of traditional metal music with "Oriental" elements is one of Orphaned Land's defining characteristics.

Since Orphaned Land's CDs cannot be sold in most Arab countries, due to the group's provenance, fans download the music from the Internet - with the band's full knowledge and approval, since they believe it's more important to spread their message of bridge building than make big bucks. Listening to Farhi speak, I was really touched by his obvious modesty and pleased but calm acceptance of the group's success in the Arab world. Rather than criticizing the countries that forbid the sale of his group's music, he expressed quiet pleasure at Orphaned Land's popularity among Arab metal fans.

In one of the interviews I linked to above, Orphaned Land guitarist Matti Svatitzki has this to say about his music and its popularity among Arab metal fans:

The bridge was not built by Orphaned Land, the bridge was always there and we only had to cross it. The bridge is called "music", and many before us had used it, in order to carry messages from one bank to another.

All the political problems are only minor, from where I see it. People tend to occupy themselves with these minor issues too much, way more than is really needed. I think that the fact that a language between Israelis and Arabs do exist, is much more fascinating and interesting than all these other political facts, which, by the way, bore me to death.

Our music was very successful in Arab countries, though I've heard that in some places prohibitions were put on young people who were listening to us. The Arab scales and instruments, but not only, have helped us find a path into the hearts of many listeners in Arab countries. This fact amazes me, I am thrilled each time I think of it or hear from a new fan coming from these countries. I think that much courage is needed from their side, and also from ours, and that we all make living examples of how adult people should behave, live and think."

Today I went to the shuk and bought tehina made in Nablus from the Yemenite Amari brothers, cherry jam made in Romania from a Russian delicatessen and petits beurres from the cookie man. When I got home I poured the tehina on a plate, then added some cherry jam and scooped it up with the petits beurres. It was really, really good.

My new computer arrived yesterday evening and oh let me rave for a minute about how wonderful it is: it moves faster than the speed of light; it has so many features that I'll be learning how to use them until the next version of Windows is released; it allows me to download, surf, chat, work in MS Word and PowerPoint simultaneously, without crashing. Oh it's wonderful, wonderful!

I have been running a few ideas for posts around my head over the past week, but they're all terribly serious and I'm not in a serious mood today - so the first On the Face entry from my sexy new computer will be a fantasy list of draconian laws I would pass...if I were the dictator of Tel Aviv.

1. A fine of $1,000 for dog owners who:
a) let their dogs wander around unleashed;
b) don't clean up their dogs' poop;
c) take their dogs to the beach (one isolated stretch of beach would be set aside for romping canines);
Those who fail to pay the fine within 3 months will be required to spend 80 supervised hours cleaning up dog poop from the city's streets.

2. No more diesel buses. I would institute a 5-year plan to phase out municipal buses and replace them with a clean, well-run and efficient subway.

3. Mobile phones must be switched off when riding public transport.

4. Taxi drivers who don't turn on the meter automatically, or whose cars don't have seatbelts, will have their licenses revoked. Also, any driver who insists on listening to Sarit Hadad or (shudder) Ninette on the radio will have to pay a steep fine (amount as yet to be determined, but it'll be a lot - trust me). Eyal Golan is okay, but keep the volume down.

5. Matkot may only be played on one beach: the one where dogs are allowed.

6. All the hotels along the beachfront will be torn down and rebuilt at various locations throughout the city, so that the sea breeze can circulate around Tel Aviv instead of being blocked by a fortress of ugly buildings.

7. No public urination. Violators can either pay a $1,000 fine or spend 80 supervised hours cleaning up the revolting smell that permeates Tel Aviv, using a huge bottle of disinfectant and a bucket of water. This law also applies to parents of small children who encourage their obviously toilet-trained tots to pee on the sidewalk instead of entering the lovely clean restaurant that's just two steps away, and asking to use the toilet.

8. Drivers who persist in blowing their horns in non-emergency situations will have their cars impounded after receiving one warning. This goes for drivers who park on the sidewalk, too.

9. And speaking of sidewalks - we're gonna widen them so that people in wheelchairs and mothers with baby carriages can move around the city.

10. Bicycle paths on all the streets, underground parking lots everywhere, and an anti-littering law that will come with a huge fine for violators.

11. No cars in Neve Tzedek. The streets are too narrow and so are the sidewalks.

12. All mopeds must have a muffler that will reduce the noise substantially.

That's all I can think of for now, but please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

I feel so much better now... Fantasy is a wonderful thing.

I haven't been blogging for a few days - mainly because I've been very busy with work (and a little more play than usual), but also because my PC has given me no end of problems and seems to be ready for the scrapheap.

Then my ever-generous mother spontaneously telephoned me from Canada and said, with well-honed maternal instinct, "It sounds as though you need a new computer. Why don't I buy you one?"

So the new PC will arrive on Monday, and I'm terribly excited at the thought of a computer that doesn't crash when I have more than three windows open simultaneously.

More good news: the blogger help staff did fix up my template - but they erased the comments in the process. I'm working on getting them back...

What's the difference between a trendy, expensive hair salon in Tel Aviv and a trendy, expensive hair salon in Manhattan? Both have banks of televisions tuned to Fashion Television or the equivalent; both have beautiful, edgily-coiffed young assistants wandering around, offering you espresso or water to drink; both feature ultra-cool modern interior design. But if you arrive 10 minutes late for your appointment in Manhattan, the stylist throws a hissy fit and tells you he can't do your hair because you'll throw his schedule off. When you arrive 30 minutes late in Tel Aviv the stylist kiss-kisses you, nods for you to have a seat on the mock Le Corbusier black leather couch, tells his assistant to get you a coffee and then lets you wait for another 30 minutes while he simultaneously cuts another client's hair and fields personal calls on his mobile phone.

Today I was sitting with my freshly highlighted hair wrapped in a towel while Amir, my stylist, was chatting with a client who had just returned from India. Ah, said Amir, I could never go to India - too dangerous.

In response to which we all chorused, "And what about Sinai?"

Which reminded me of the time one of my colleagues at the Tel Aviv high-tech company that was my former employer returned from a business trip to Mexico City and regaled us with tales of upper-class housewives who drove armor-plated cars to the supermarket. It seems that the fear of car hijackings is so great in Mexico City that many of the plutocrats have armed bodyguards as well. Wow, we said, how can anyone live in such a dangerous place?

During the height of the suicide bombings in 2002-2003, a lot of people had this idea that some places were more dangerous than others. Many of my Tel Aviv friends refused to go to Jerusalem after the Sbarro pizza branch was bombed. I wouldn't sit at Cafe Joe on Dizengoff at the corner of Gordon Street - a place I referred to as a "pigua [terrorist attack] waiting to happen." Once a guy I met for coffee at a popular cafe refused to sit near the windows. Other people wouldn't go to Netanya, which was the scene of several brutal attacks.

And yet I can count, off the top of my head, 7 terrorist attacks that took place within a 10-minute walk of my apartment during that period. Once I was talking to my mother on the phone when a loud boom shook the windows of my apartment, and it was a bombing that killed two people just down my street. Another time I was watching television while a bunch of people eating dinner at a restaurant just a few minutes' walk away got picked off by a shooter. I could go on, but I won't.

Meanwhile, there has been one horrible terrorist attack in Sinai in 22 years. One.

I'm not trying to be disingenuous when I point out that there are always warnings of imminent terrorist attacks in Israel. Or when I ask where, really, is safe?

There are terrorist fanatics everywhere: in Bali, Madrid, New York and Casablanca; in Buenos Aires, Kenya and Southern Russia. And in Egypt. I have no plans to stop living my life, because that is really the definition of "giving in to terror."

And let us remember that the most dangerous place in Israel is - still - a moving car.

I was watching television last night when the first news of the explosions in Sinai came through. Like most Israelis, I'm an old hand at watching the news. What does this mean? It means that you wait for the first reports, full of the words "unconfirmed" and "initial reports say" to segue into more concrete information. It means that you flip from Channel 1 to Channel 2 to Channel 10, to BBC World to Sky News to CNN, searching for "new" news. It means that you snort when the foreign reporters get the names of the places wrong, and the foreign anchor people speculate mindlessly as to whether this attack against Israelis is in response to the Israeli army's actions in Gaza over the past week. Which is so stupid and irresponsible to say, because anyone with half a brain knows that these attacks take a long time to plan and coordinate - much more than a week.

It means that now I'm not so pissed off that I couldn't get to Sinai this weekend: I had to work late on Wednesday and there was no public transport on Thursday because it was a holiday, so I was stuck in Tel Aviv... But wait, are any of my friends in Sinai this weekend? (run through list of friends in my mind - nope, everyone's back already).

It means that you check to see if your sister is online and you start sending instant messages ("have you heard?"), while the TV chatters in the background. And then after an hour or so you realize that you've been watching the same 15 second loop of footage over and over again, that you're not going to learn anything new and you might as well go to sleep. Because sometimes when you watch the news about terrorist attacks the images of bleeding children and crushed buildings become pornographic.

So I got up early to go to yoga class this morning. The sun was shining, as it does every day, all day, from May until November, and everything looks and seems normal - except for that heavy feeling in the air. And tonight I'll go have dinner at the home of friends. I'll play with their children and we'll talk about all sorts of stuff - probably not about the terrorist attacks, 'though.

Today is the day of the annual Love Parade in Tel Aviv. I haven't walked over to Allenby yet to watch, and I'm not sure that I really feel like it, but I doubt that it will be cancelled. Because life really does go on - however much that sounds like a cliche.

Every time these attacks happen, I ask myself the same question: why? What in the world do the people who perpetrate these attacks want to accomplish?

And I remind myself once again that all violent deaths are tragic - whether they occur among vacationing Israelis in the Sinai, or 13 year-old schoolchildren in Gaza.

My template has gone haywire (and so far no response from blogger to my queries on the matter), my computer crashes every few minutes, my ISP keeps kicking me off the system network because I'm picking up practically every computer virus there is, and my PC seems to be totally whacked - ie, probably short of memory. I need help - time to call in the experts. Ilan, are you reading this? Guess what you're doing over the holiday weekend? Yeah, yeah, I'll make Illy coffee with hot milk for you...

This morning I went for a walk on the beach, then bought a freshly-made carrot and pomegranate juice at Ben Gurion and Dizengoff. This is the best thing about autumn in Israel: fresh pomegranate juice. The worst thing is that my summer tan is fading - which is, of course, tragic - and also the sinking knowledge that in a couple of months my apartment will be one big refrigerator. Time to dryclean the sweaters and air out the down quilt. Or perhaps this is a little premature, given that today's temp is 28 Celsius.

I love Harry's new design.

Which reminds me once again that I am a techno-ignoramous. I cannot figure out how to:

• Upload photos from my digital camera to my computer;
• Post the blogroll I created (via blogrolling) to my blog template;
• Connect MS Outlook to the email account provided by my ISP
• Bring back the sound, which disappeared when my friend Ilan loaded my creaky old PC with Windows 2000;
• See who's visiting my blog (traffic).

What's up with all the new and talented writers appearing all over the blogosphere? At this rate I'll be spending half my life reading them! It seems that a common theme among young, single female bloggers is the dearth of men and/or crazy ex-boyfriends. Last night I kept myself up giggling over my own list of ex-lore. Most of it seemed tragic at the time, of course, but now it's just awfully good story. You simply cannot make this stuff up. I think I'll write about the top 5 stories in my next post... Today I received an invitation to the wedding of my friends Helena and Manu (fifth photo down, with my sister Adina), which will take place in Udaipur (India) at the end of January. I must figure out a way to foot the bill for this trip; English girl marries Indian guy in traditional Rajasthani ceremony - what an experience that'll be! And besides, I miss India. Are there any periodical editors out there who'd like to commission a bunch of articles by yours truly on India? I can write about all sorts of cool and interesting people, places and things, and I'll even hire someone to show me how to use my digital camera to send photos. Email me for a list of possible subjects...

Wednesday's scratchy throat became Thursday's barking wet cough, which became Friday's yucky, full-blown cold. I hardly ever get sick, but when I do I'm very methodical about preparing for a couple of days in bed. So this morning I got up and went out to get the essentials: lemons, ginger root, cayenne pepper, a bunch of fresh mint and honey for my magic tea; a slab of bittersweet Cote d'Or chocolate, which is all I ever want to eat when I'm sick; a pile of DVDs from The Third Ear (haOzen haShlishit) on Sheinkin; and a box of the softest tissues I could find.

To all the friends who offered to come over and nurse me, many thanks but really - no thanks. I'm the crankiest patient in the world, and I just want to be alone with my tea, chocolate and movies until I feel better.

On another note, I was fascinated by the responses to my previous post. For those who read it as such, I didn't actually intend to write about the journey from religiosity to secularism, although I suppose the entry could be read that way. It's true that I did travel that journey, but until now I've been reluctant to talk or write about it. It was a long and winding trail, with lots of thought, many experiences all over the world and a few epiphanies along the way, and there are still lots of issues I haven't resolved. Perhaps I'll write more about that some other time. I was mostly trying to say that I think the desire and search for community is one of the strongest human instincts there is, and that religious practice - all religious practice - is just one manifestation of that instinct. In Israel most people are secular, but still the sense of community is strong. And what I saw this past Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv was just one example of that fact. The question is, what holds this community together? I'll think about that a bit and perhaps when my head is less wooly I'll write more about the subject... Right now I can hardly string a coherent thought together. (Cough. Sneeze.)