I feel that sharing authentic Israeli experience with diaspora Jews can ease the impact of Antisemitism. Following my understanding, I wonder if it's okay to includ 'Quarter to Three' in the coming Beit Shalom Jewish community newsletter in Adelaide, South Australia.
The pedestrian crossing as intimacy is the line I won't get rid of. Waiting together for the light to change as a kind of first date. And then the siren hits and the normal people shatter while the man on medication stays still because the world has always felt this precarious to him. The inversion is so quiet you almost miss it. Everyone else just discovered what he's been living with his whole life. That's the cruelest joke in the piece and you don't underscore it once. Thanks for sharing this.
“The red man in the light doesn’t move and I stand with him keeping him company”. Thanks Etgar for these pearls and more of this kind. Vive la creative mind!
Speaking of the local weirdos, do you know this nice local guy who bikes his 4 kids and a white parrot to the beach every day? The youngest is strapped to the trolley at the back of his bike in a car-seat, and the parrot just sits on the side:) He takes Nordau down to Metztitzim, and we have ran into him like a million times, we always say hi. I think he deserves a story about him too:)) Overall, we have lived in Tel Aviv starting May, and now I get it: your stories are not post-modernist, they depict the reality here:)
This reminds me of: what it is like to finally stop taking SSRIs (particularly the grim realisation that, without noticing it, you may have spent much of the past five years sedated); being in Tel Aviv during the 2014 war; the way Americans (even left-wing Americans) know how to treat homeless people like they're a different species, or an invisible super hero, or air.
Hi Etgar Kerret,
Re 'Share'
I feel that sharing authentic Israeli experience with diaspora Jews can ease the impact of Antisemitism. Following my understanding, I wonder if it's okay to includ 'Quarter to Three' in the coming Beit Shalom Jewish community newsletter in Adelaide, South Australia.
תודה.
שבת שלום
The world isn’t working, and neither are the pills—but your writing is.
The pedestrian crossing as intimacy is the line I won't get rid of. Waiting together for the light to change as a kind of first date. And then the siren hits and the normal people shatter while the man on medication stays still because the world has always felt this precarious to him. The inversion is so quiet you almost miss it. Everyone else just discovered what he's been living with his whole life. That's the cruelest joke in the piece and you don't underscore it once. Thanks for sharing this.
What a heartwarming and touching story! Thank you for making me feel normal for a moment.
Let me understand. I don’t run towards the nearest shelter when I hear the siren. Does that mean I am not normal? I wish I knew.
Thanks for the Hebrew version.
“The red man in the light doesn’t move and I stand with him keeping him company”. Thanks Etgar for these pearls and more of this kind. Vive la creative mind!
Makes me think of your Observer piece today:
Don’t walk ahead of me, I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me, just be my friend.
(Not) Camus
I hope that you and your family will stay safe during this very frightening, stressful time. May this insanity end soon.
This makes me sad, but is also so perfect....
Speaking of the local weirdos, do you know this nice local guy who bikes his 4 kids and a white parrot to the beach every day? The youngest is strapped to the trolley at the back of his bike in a car-seat, and the parrot just sits on the side:) He takes Nordau down to Metztitzim, and we have ran into him like a million times, we always say hi. I think he deserves a story about him too:)) Overall, we have lived in Tel Aviv starting May, and now I get it: your stories are not post-modernist, they depict the reality here:)
He is the next one on my list (:
Thanks for the written Hebrew version. Life just keeps getting better all the time :) :) !
This story is very interesting, the boundary of normal and crazyness is very very thin. We, the life make us just jumping.
If Netanyahu and Trump were on those pills, would it make any difference?
If the world was on those pills we would have never chosen Trump and Bibi as our leaders in the first place…
Apparently , now on the siren times the normalcy’s effect disappears. Better on a pill?
This reminds me of: what it is like to finally stop taking SSRIs (particularly the grim realisation that, without noticing it, you may have spent much of the past five years sedated); being in Tel Aviv during the 2014 war; the way Americans (even left-wing Americans) know how to treat homeless people like they're a different species, or an invisible super hero, or air.