Election day was a day off for the boys so we went out to the Tayelet and looked at the Old City wrapped in mist. We walked all the way around the Hill of Evil Counsel where the British Governor's residence was during the mandate period and where the UN observers post has been ever since, crossing over from West Jerusalem to East and back again, something we may not be able to do the next time we come. A lot of Amos Oz's book "the Hill of Evil Counsel" takes place in the governor's residence. The mother of the young boy, wife to the veterinarian, gets swept off her feet by a handsome British general. That's what I though about most when I was out there, among the big pine trees(that and the story of Saul and David which we ended up telling collectively as we walked, with many silly interpolations by all concerned especially when we told the story of Goliath and with added details about his halitosis, his taunting of the Israelites by mooning them etc.). In "The Hill of Evil Counsel" the young boy's beautiful, ethereal mother wanders off with the general into the gardens that we walked past. I read that book in the easy Hebrew version right before we came and it gave me the hankering to read modern Israeli literature which has driven my Hebrew reading kick this year... I am reading Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness, (in English) a memoir which I am actually finding pretty dry, though it gives a lot of interesting stories about his life as a boy in Jerusalem. I didn't know that his own mother committed suicide.
By the time we headed back into West Jerusalem it was getting windy and looked like rain. We went to Waffle Bar on Derech Bethlehem street. The boys ordered waffles which were as big as them and came with ice cream and whip cream and we all thoroughly enjoyed stuffing ourselves. There was barely any indication that it was election day as we walked around the city. It was so different from the municipal elections where our street corner was a battleground between different candidates's teams.
Benjy has a cold. He stayed home Friday and couldn't go to shul on Shabbat so I had to take his place in the Parsha players (about once a month they stage a little sketch about the weekly reading from the bible, kids and adults participate... it is cute, but a lot cuter to watch than to participate in). Anyway I was Israelite #3. I had one line. "Hishtagata!?" Have you (masculine, singular) gone crazy?!
This is a good Hebrew phrase to know, since it is appropriate to so many circumstances here. Use it in conversation today.