...it seems that I needed a bit of a break from blogging. I am really enjoying the peace and quiet of the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which starts tomorrow night, but I do promise to tell the tale of the laptop in my next post.

Meanwhile, here's a little Tel Aviv anecdote.

I spent a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon at Tachtit (Underground), a little cafe on Lincoln Street (I took a few photos and posted them in a set, here), reading the newspapers and chatting with various friends. At one point Selim, an old acquaintance and aspiring actor from the Galilee region, stopped by for coffee.

"Ramadan Kareem," I said, while directing a tongue-in-cheek glance at his cappuccino. "I see you're not fasting this year."

"Coffee and cigarettes don't count," he answered in a mock-ingenuous tone. "Oh, and g'mar hatima tova. Are you fasting?"

''Absolutely," I answered. "Between meals."


This is the post I wrote about Yom Kippur last year; the year before that, I wrote a long, personal post called Retrospective on the Day of Repentance - it's still one of my favourites.


Over at Lebanese Political Journal, Charles posted a fascinating little anecdote about a Jewish friend who was visiting him in Beirut during Yom Kippur last year, which again fell in the middle of Ramadan, as it does this year; for some odd reason, the friend decided to break his fast with Hassan Nasrallah and his supporters at an Hezbollah iftar. (at this point we can all mutter, "ooookaaay..."). Go read the post to find out what happens when a nice Jewish boy shows up at a Hezbollah "'do" in Dahiyeh - and do, really, do, check out the comments.