Superficial Joy

This is the tow truck driver. But we'll get to why he's headlining this post a bit later. Please play a little Willie while you read on. While I was in Jerusalem last Saturday night my car started sputtering--that kind that happens before you run out of gas, but this time I was NOT running out of gas (it may have happened to me a few times before 😏). I was able to make it to the parking garage near the Old City and went about the business of an outing in Jerusalem.  Thinking that maybe I was out of oil, I stopped on the outskirts of town to check the fluids, which were fine. I prayed the entire drive back to Tel Aviv (about an hour on Shabbat with minimal traffic). It was 10:30 p.m. and really cold. Although I felt safe--Israeli's are very helpful when you are in trouble, I could just foresee the hassle of breaking down on the highway, having to navigate the towing company from Tel Aviv...blah, blah, blah. I made it back to my street by the grace of God and even got a park

Last spring I took the first level of Hebrew at Citizen Cafe Tel Aviv . There I met a lovely woman named Debbie. This is Debbie! Debbie is from the U.S. but visits Israel frequently for work. We tried to hook up when she came through in the fall but we missed each other.  As often happens in my life, especially when I am paying attention, people drop out of the sky and everything aligns perfectly. I got a text from Debbie she would be in town this week on a day that I would be teaching on Zoom! This meant I could meet up with her and her friend one afternoon to be a tourist for a few hours. We met at the Ayalon Institute  in Rehovot, Israel. I had never heard of it before but wanted to see Debbie and always like being a tourist. The Ayalon Institute is on Kibbutz Hill (if you aren't sure what a kibbutz is, read more here ). During the War of Independence , a bullet factory was built underground and operated in secret for 3 years, until the State of Israel was established. It was a

Once again my luggage did not arrive with me at my destination. This time it was on the way to Tel Aviv and it was finally delivered 2 days later--pretty good compared to some of my other luggage encounters (I have an intimate and rocky relationship with luggage; I've written about some of those experiences here ).  This song is appropriate here... For the record, I did not have any bags lost in 2021 (WOOT WOOT!) which, like all other happenings in 2021, can be attributed to Covid. I did, however, have lost luggage on the way to Nepal and the way back from Zanzibar in 2020. This trip is one of the few on which I had a carryon. Despite the fact that I am a terrible  packer; despite the fact that my luggage has been lost about a dozen times; despite the fact that numerous people have told me how helpful it is to always have a change of clothes in a carryon when they travel; despite all of this I will more or less never take a carryon if I can check it for no extra charge. My solution