The city opens anti-air refuges

The Major Rafi Sa'ar ordered the opening of the anti-air refuges and start preparations for missiles incoming from Gaza. We are in the Sharon area, 25 km north of Tel Aviv. Already there are three civilian victims in the South, and this confrontation appears to be increasing. The Arabs should consider that we have a brand new Chief of Staff, hungry for action and begging to show he is not Mr. Milquetoast. Photo: Reuters. 

100 hours riding the 6 Train

We lived in City Island in the Bronx and each day we took the 6 Train from Pelham Bay Park to Manhattan and back, a one hour ride. I made my shopping in the K-Mart and J.Penney and so in the Pelham Bay Park Center, and ate at the most proletarian Thai food stall in the third floor of the Mall. I can honestly state that in three weeks saw not a WASP person (say tall, slim, blondish and clear eyes). Everybody I met in the Bronx was Afro-American, Afro-African and many many Caribbeans and Central Americans. I had spent months in New York in the winter of 1969 (my graduation foreign trip) and the Bronx was Jewish and Italian and Irish and remembered well the architecture and infrastructure. At first, I was rather amazed by the replacement of the population, but soon I got used to it and being a native Spanish speaker, I felt at home among the friendly Latinos. Moreover, people were polite, non-violent and cleanly dressed, sitting quietly in the train playing games on the phone or hearing music through earphones. The level of human noise, shouts and so, was zero. It was as if everybody had been on tranquilizers. In the seventies, there were many shops selling hard drinks, the owners had guns in sight against robberies, now I could not find one liquor store, and did not see even one drunk holding the brown paper bag with a bottle inside, as was so common in my former visit. The trains were old, the wagons jumped and made frightening mechanical noises, but fifty years ago that was normal and certainly better than Argentine trains; today - compared with the trains in China and Israel - the 6 trains are dilapidated wrecks. But clean and working. A hundred percent (!) of the personnel is African American, middle-aged obese men, and women, polite and efficient: as said,  the trains were clean and on time. They spoke strongly accented English, some exaggerated Black speech so that I understood none of the announcements but when asked face to face, they made an effort to communicate. Before traveling, I made a research on the internet about the physical dangers awaiting us and found maps with neatly delined dangerous areas, but in reality, the streets were clean and no menacing persons could be seen. I found the Bronx and New York in general totally pacified and safe. I can report not one violent scene and not even one naked knife or gunshot. Oh yes! The police shooting range is in City Island and lots of shots were heard during the day.

Summary:

In the last fifty years, a total replacement of the population took place. One wonders where the natives had gone, where are the Anglosaxons and the Jews. The current population, contrary to my internet impressions, is quieter and safer than it was then. No drunks nor angry Blacks on the train. It is less amazing and exciting a place than it was then, but now I am old and less excitable.

The infrastructure - transportation, traffic, water, sewage, communication, etc. - has been maintained and everything is working, but it is old and antique in comparison with younger, more advanced cities.

The air is pure and the water is potable. The food and cloth are cheaper and of better quality than Israel.

All in all, New York is an aging (maybe decaying) city and a good place to live.

Photo: The Pelham Bay Park Station. Source. This guy had a better camera and more talent than I.

Israel: Tax Paradise

I feel I am paying exorbitantly excessive taxes, but it appears that Israel is a veritable tax paradise. The graph above reflects the "tax wedge" extracted by the State from a typical employee. In Israel it is about 20% in comparison with 30% in the USA and 55% in Belgium. I always thought Norway, with its oil exports and reserves, imposes no personal taxes, but it seems that it squeezes twice as much as the State of Israel squeezes from poor us. 

Elijah will appear and come

The song of Toharlev  יעלה ויבוא about the promise that he (Elijah, the prophet from Gilead) will come and the fire in his trail. King Ahab allied Israel with the Phoenicians and married his son to the daughter of the King of Tzidon, and promoted the cult of the Canaanite God Baal per contra the nameless Judean God worshipped in the Temple of Jerusalem. Elijah was a popular rabble-rouser and his worst political enemy. Elijah is believed to be the harbinger of the Messiah and of the eschaton. Ancient politics and old songs... The singer, Gidi Gov, is almost blind. 

British Government promises a "Circular, zero waste economy"

"We have no time to waste. We are living in a climate crisis that will spiral dangerously out of control unless we take rapid and dramatic action now," Corbyn told Parliament. "Today, we have the opportunity to say, 'We hear you' ... By becoming the first parliament in the world to declare a climate emergency, we could, and I hope we do, set off a wave of action from parliaments and governments all around the world."

Analyzing this social development, I am amazed by the strength of the British and American peoples demand for an unreal, pure, zero net-energy and water economy. The politicians are taking up this popular protest and enacting strict regulations. Personally I am convinced that the sense of pollution and urgent need of "purification" has no material basis, and the regulations only make life more difficult and expensive, but the people want it. 

Why? One reason is the environmental education from kindergarten. Another is the eternal hostility toward industry, agriculture and the rich in general. The third reason is the lack of real dangers, or new ideologies (they are coming back to failed socialism, of all social systems) and possibly the fear of technology. There is no doubt that genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, space exploration (the suspicious Oumuamua object) are positing new unknowns and risks. But fear of the unknown never stopped the Polynesians exploring the immense Pacific in their fragile canoes, or the Manhattan Trinidad explosion (that may have pulverized the planet). Maybe all the existing emotion and passionate protests could be focused on a good war, and I hope we shall not be turned into the hated enemy.

The past is not encouraging for us Jews. When they are searching for a diabolic enemy, they always find us.

Pic. The 1903 Kishinev Pogrom. 49 Jews killed, 600 raped. 

Work Habit Lost

I used to work like a horse from 5 AM till midnight. Now, after a three week vacation on City Island, I am having difficulties to return to my former self and work habits. I sleep badly (Jetlag?) and I am aware of the neighborhood and the apartment building's all-night background noise, a phenomenon that I never noticed in the past. I lost my motivation,  can't find my mojo.

The Kaliver, Dead

The Nagykallo (Hungary) Hassidic dynasty changes generations as the 96 y.o. old rebbe Menachem Mendel Taub dies and a younger relative takes up the leadership of the court. The rebbe was the seventh in the male line of the original miraclemaker, the founder of the Hungarian Hassidic movement Itzhak Taub (1751–1821). This hassidut was deported in toto to Auschwitz and exterminated by the Nazis, and the young rebbe was taken out of the gas chamber and submitted to chemical experiments by camp-doctor Mengele. As consequence, he never grew a beard (a biblical no-no for Jewish priests) and conserved his youngish feminine face. He was married but sterile. After the war he settled in Israel and rebuilt, with the few survivors here, the Kaliver Hassidut, which follows the Hungarian tradition. The Rebbe spoke no Hungarian but sings (with Yiddisch accent) the "Szol a kakas mar" written by the original miracle rebbe.