A Place I Hadn't Been Since October 7

And I bought grapefruit

I found out about the horrific attacks of October 7 at a Wegmans. For those of you who do not know, Wegmans is this amazing grocery store that has all sorts of fancy items and all sorts of inexpensive items and a cafe that has fresh made sushi for decent prices. My mother and I like to get together at two different locations that are in between the cities where we live.

I hadn’t gotten the news when I met my mother at Wegmans that Saturday morning. We were eating when she told me. It took awhile to sink in, and much of the next few weeks are a blur. Checking on my Jewish friends. Frantically reading all the news I could find. Being confused by and then getting angry at my non-Jewish friends who just didn’t care. Discovering Eve’s blog and meeting many of you. Fast forward to November, meeting my first Israeli friend in Israel. It comes into sharper focus then, as I started to see that I can play a role here. Perhaps a small one, but some way to help. Anything is better than just watching.

We went to Wegmans today, a different location from the one where I first heard about October 7. I got good groceries. I live in a place that is not far off from a food desert, with the one grocery store in quick walking distance an organic Co-op with truly absurd prices. It’s supposed to be all neighborhood-friendly, and I do love the staff, but it’s actually the height of hippie bourgeois, complete with an organic canned Spaghetti-o knock off called “Bernie O’s.” I will pour Chef Boyardee over my head before I will ever consume such an item. Oh, and I think that goes for $4.99 a can, as do almost all of their canned soups. Not friendly to the low income of a low income neighborhood. So I drive my old car to the suburbs and get to see my mom while buying real food for decent prices. Often I shop at my favorite union grocery store, Giant, but I am not morally perfect and sometimes I go to a non-union grocery store.

It was wonderful to see my mom and get out of town for a little while. Being locked in a tiny place all the time, albeit with a pawsome cat, is not good for me. I feel like I have aged in the past months. I’ve been sick a lot, and as with many people I know, it seems I have some kind of Hamas-flu. It started on October 7 and it won’t go away. Hopefully it will start to recede now that the sunshine is coming back and it’s getting warmer. My mom says the germs will get tired and go away. I hope she’s right. My epidemiology classes never mentioned the germs getting tired or bored, but I didn’t get a PhD. Perhaps I should consult my friend the BatEpi on this. Thoughts, BatEpi?

Here are some things I’ve been reading/listening to:

On Friday and Saturday nights when I was home alone I binge watched Gadi Taub and Michael Doran on Tablet Magazine’s Israel Update. I highly recommend. It reminds me of the old days of Crossfire when Michael Kinsley and John Sununu, Sr. would exchange barbs in a humorous, congenial fashion. Gadi used to be on the left, now he’s not. Michael Doran is American and is definitely no leftist but is usually a bit more moderate if that is the correct word in these circumstances than Gadi. It’s fabulous. You can actually watch them on video, or just listen. I’m a very auditory, non-visual person, likely because I can’t see very well at all, even with extremely strong glasses. I love voices, and on some level I listen to Israeli podcasts for the accents. Something of an inversion of “I read Playboy for the articles.” Whatever gets you through the night, right?

I loved this piece in The Times of Israel: When Did Cultural Appropriation Get Cool Again? I’ve started counting the number of people I walk by on a daily basis in my neighborhood wearing keffiyehs. It’s like the game we played as kids where we would count the Volkswagen Beetles on the road. I really would like to know what the people wearing them think they mean. Perhaps it varies from person to person. Perhaps it does not. I do not inquire because I do not want to risk my life any more than necessary. But I no longer edit my conversations or speak in hushed tones when I speak of supporting my friends in Israel and opposing antisemitism in my backyard. I have been screamed at in the street before for something I said in a private phone conversation. Perhaps it will happen again. Perhaps not.

For those who are wondering what Israelis are talking about when it comes to “the day after,” Daniel Gordis, known as Danny Gordis to my Israeli friend who knew his grandfather but now distinguished journalist and historian, shares this on Israel from the Inside today: How do you solve a problem like Gaza?

That’s it for today. It will be a busy week, and I still have getting ready to do. My cough and sore throat are dramatically better and I felt quite human today being out and about. I also managed not to eat any of the delicious looking pastries at Wegmans. It helps that I’m really needing to save money by only buying the most basic things needed, but I’m also working on this mental trick to get me to give up all sugar as easily as I recently gave up Ben and Jerry’s. With that cliffhanger, I’ll leave you with a picture of Wegmans sushi.

In the unlikely event that you are wondering, I had a Philadelphia roll and a spicy salmon roll. So yummy. I don’t care if it’s authentic or not. Wait, is that cultural appropriation? I think there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Japanese did not invent the Philadelphia roll. But who can say no to cream cheese?