The phone rings.

"Hi, it's Leslie."

"Hi Leslie," I say. "How are you? How was your opperation?"

"The mysectomy went very well," Leslie sais. "I was only in the hospital for one day, now I just have another few weeks of Chemo and after that one more month of radiation and then I go in for reconstructive surgery."

"Wow, I'm really glad everything is working out for you -- how is Isaac?" I say. "He hasn't been to school in almost a month, is he alright?"

"Yes, Isaac is doing much better," Leslie sais. "He's still at the hospital but they should discharge him back to me in a few weeks."

"At the hospital?"

"Oh yeah, you didn't hear?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

"Well, right after my opperation he lost it at school and started throwing chairs and destroying property right in the classroom," Leslie says. "Then he came home one day and threatened to jump out of the window and punched me and ran out onto the balcony and said he was going to kill himself."

I lean back on my couch and sigh a heavy sigh.

"so I called his psychiatrist and had him admitted to the mental health ward that same day."

"You must miss him," I say.

"Oh, like crazy!" Leslie answers. "But he has come home for the last two Shabats, he should be back home for good in another three weeks if all keeps going at this rate, and they changed his medication -- they also make him study everyday so he doesn't miss school -- and he is just a doll now, so much better I just can't believe the difference."

"That's great," I say.

"Yes, its really wonderfull -- AND I'm seeing somebody now too."

"Wow, you met someone?" I say.

"Yeah, he's great, he's an Israeli and a friend set us up and it worked out really well," Leslie says. "He is really interested in everything that is happening with Isaak too and he comes to the psychiatrist meetings with me."

"He sounds awsome -- congradulations."

"Yes, he really is great," Leslie says. "I never thought that I would meet someone at this point in my life, the cancer and misectomy and aliah and all...."

Hadar is so thin that from a side profile she looks like a page from a book. You look at her and look at her and wonder where her internal organs reside. Hadar is Ahskenazi, she eats bland food, has a lactose intollerance...

Lior is dark. He is a Sephardi Jew. He remembers kids picked on him in school. Tention between the ashkenazim and sephardim.

Lior and Hadar are getting married.

Hadar picked out a wedding dress last week. The dress is white and long sith a lace bodice and spagetti shoulder straps.

Hadar works in the linguistics field. She teaches deaf children to pronounce words properly and fixes hearing aids.

Lior makes music.

The family calls them "The clowns." They laugh when they walk into the room. They make fun of eachother. They make fun of the family. They make fun of their friends and the folks on t.v. and people they see in the streets. They laugh when they settle at the table for supper and laugh throughout supper and laugh as they wash up the plates. They laugh in the family room, on the couch, surounded by sisters and cousins. They laugh with their coffee. They laugh as the sun sets and night lowers the shades and they laugh when they walk out the door.

Lior laughs when he reads about Hamas winning next door. He laughs when he sees thousands of muslims waving Hamas flags across his morning paper. Hadar laughs when she reads about How close the Hesbulah is.

"Soon the Hesbulah is going to just be sitting right on top of us," Zohar, the youngest sister says as she reads the paper and glances at the picture of a green and yellow map of Israel and a man on one knee with a giant gun beside the map of Israel, pointing the gun towards Eilat.

Lior and Hadar laugh.

I wish I could laught like they laugh.

A young Jewish man was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Paris. He was tied to a tree and cut and cut and cut. The kidnappers tortured him for weeks. They asked the family for randsome. Later they simply killed him instead. The family says the murderers quoted the koran and insisted that the family had money because they were Jews. Poor young man -- could have been me.

Do I think the kidnappers were muslems? No. Ofcourse this is all just conjecture, but it seems too simple. I think the kidnappers wanted people to believe they were muslems so as to get the dogs off their tracks. I think they quoted koran verses for the same reasons that they used stolen cell phones to contact the family rather then their own cellphones. Poor young man --- could have been me!

Michael

I teach Michael English every week. One third of our lesson centers on reading and comprehension. The rest of the time we concentrate on conversational English.

Michael wants to learn English because his 21 year old daughter speaks English well and makes fun of his lack of the language. English is michael's third language, Hebrew is his second, and Russian is his first.

When Michael speaks English his hands sweat. He wipes and wipes his wet, red, giant hands on his pants. Sweat pours from his forehead. He stutters. His voice grow high and insecure. His left eyebrow twitches.

Michael is a doctor. He works from early morning into late evening visitin elderly patients in their homes.

"I work so many hours, I visit 36 patients a month, each patient gets three visits a week," Michael says.

We sit at my kitchen table and practice conversational English.

"You work very hard," I say.

"Yes, I work too many hours, and I am looking for a new job, because my boss only pays me for eight hours a day and I work much much many more hours than this." Michael wipes his hands on his pants, dabs his moist forehead with a cleanex, grabs his small teacup off the table, gulps a giant gulp of black tea -- no sugar -- sets the cup down as if he'd just finished a beer and smiles. "I like politics."

"I like to listen to the news," Michael says. "I listen to fox news and try to understand in English." He laughs. "I don't not to know what I lestening too, but I like."

"so what's happening in the news lately?" I say.

Michael laughs and looks down at his teacup. "Well... - we can see by the news that there are still problemz betveen Israel and Palestinians, sometimes ve have scuiside bombers and sometimes they do wrong and sometimes we..."

"It's hard to live in Israel, allways so unstable," I say.

"Politics is a hobby of my favourite," Michael replies.

"Do you like living here?" I ask.

"Here? Yes, I like to live here," Michael says. "The politics here is allways interesting."

"Have you thought of livving in other places in teh world, you say you have family in Canada and the United states?"

"Vell..." Michael smiles and runs his finger across the rim of his teacup, "In Israel people vork very hard, long hours, little money...I remember ven ve first vere to make decission on vere ve go vrom Russian, and ve thought ov America too but then," Michael raises his hands to his shoulders, shrugs his shoulders, and smiles a huge smile, "I thought vy exchange vone goy vor another? Allvays it is better to be with own people."

Shushana Damari died this morning. 83 years old. Shushana was a Yemenite Jew. She wanted to be an actress but made a carreer of her voice instead. She married a man ten years her senior. he was a dirrector when she began her carreer, around the age of 13. He waited untill she was of marrying age, then they married.

Shushana sang for the new commers in the refugee camps, when Israel first became a refuge for Jews. She sang about going home: Ha baitah, Ha baitah. They had finally arived home. Ha baitah, Ha baitah -- and now she has gone home as well.

Tu be Shvat

On monday Israel celbrated the anual tree planting festival. We drove to a Moshav (a rural community) outside of Jerusalem to plant our saplings. Tradition and religion dictates that each member of each family must plant atleast one tree on this day. I planted a Pine. Tzara planted a Ficus.

Thousands of women, children, men, teanagers, babies, and old people came.

"Is this the only planting space around?" I ask Hila.

"No," Hila says. "There are tons of moshavs all over the Copuntry oppening their gates for tree planters today."

Millions of people planted trees on monday.

Ariel Sharon is still dying.

At the Tel Aviv harbor yesterday afternoon, children played in giant sandboxes while their enormous families unpacked picknics along the boardwalk. South Tel-Aviv: the poor part of town. The children laughed and tosses blue blow-up balls into the air, rode bicicles with training wheels, licked ice cream, sucked on Coka Cola bottles. They played as if Iran didn't exist. They palyed as if Hamas declared peace. They played as if the graffitti on the wall beside them didn't say: "All Jews into the sea!" with a spray painted tombstone bearing a Jewish star on it, sinking into blue waves, underneath the inscription. For those of us that can't read.

We walk into an Ice cream parlour. This place was a famous hangout in the seventies. A giant space with dirtly floors, metal tables, plastic chairs, video game machines... People gather around an old fridge, eyes stuck to a small t.V. on top.

Ariel sharon is dying. They had to opperate on his stomach. He is in grave condition.

A small girl beside the fridge points a giant gun at a vidio game screen.

The cartoon Wars continue.

What unbelievable fucking non-sense. No really. I mean I can understand that people might be offended by a cartoon about Mohaman, but come on! Last night: riots in East Jerusalem. I live in North-east Jerusalem. So close. So close, yet the street near my building is quiet, only the kids in the play grownd play, only the grandparents sit on the benches and watch the children in silence.

So now Iran is hosting a cartoon contest about the Holocaust. Well, well, surprize: Jews aren't rioting inthe streets, burning Iranian flags, attacking Iranian consulates, or threatening Iranian lives over the holocaust cartoons. We're not even doing that over Iran's Holocaust denial claims. Nope, not even the ultra orthodox.

So what does that say? Do I think all Muslims are evil -- nonsense. Some of the coolest people that I've met in my life are Muslims.

So what do I think should be done? Shit. I don't know. I don't know what should be done, but I know something must be done. The violence, the senceless, useless stupidity of the people involved in these riots must not be tollerated. No.

Yesterday on the news: footage of rioters dragged apart by Israeli soldiers. Violent incidents. The rioters, well damn, they were just stupid kids. Boys. The soldiers: children with guns. I keep thinking, damn, why aren't their mothers down there with broom sticks! Ofcourse I think that violence against children is dispicable, but these kids are just out of their minds.

If they are so upset about how Mohamad was portrayed well, shit, perhaps Mohamad is portrayed that way in pictures because they portray him that way with their actions! You repressent your G-d in the world. If you want to go around blowing yourselves up, kidnapping, torturing, and killing civilians, burning flags, rioting, storming embassy buildings, sending death threats -- guess what? -- you are repressenting your religion, your people, and yes, your prophet. Congradulations.

Jerusalem is overrun with rats. Big rats. the papers say that cats are afraid of these rats. One rat can bite a baby's finger off.

This morning I saw a raven in the street. Cars stopped because the raven wasn't flying out of the way. He pecked and pecked a small rat in the head. When the rat ran to the sidewalk, the raven ran to the sidewalk. He caught the rat beside a tree, and pecked, and pecked, and pecked at the rat's gray body and head untill the rat grew confussed and beffudled, disshevvelled and depressed, then the raven clipped its beak arount the rat's ribs -- hop hop -- and flew away.

Last week a Palestinian man snuck across the border and boarded a Jerusalem bus. He didn't wear a bomb. Why bother? he braught a knife and stabed to death a Jewish woman beside him.

Riots all over the world about a bunch of cartoons in the European paper. Muslims don't want folks to laugh at Mohamad. So they burn down consulates, stage giant, agressive riots, burn flags. Here's one of the cartoons in question:

It wasn't a Jewish newspaper that made these cartoons or aired them. It wasn't an Israeli publication. In Fact, most Israeli's never even saw these catoons untill they splattered all over our NEWS framed by angry Muslim faces, terrorizing consulates, burning flags, and threatening revenge. Is it really Mohamad they want to protect? Or is it the truth they can't face? Perhaps there really are no more virgins left.

Even though it was the Europeans who allegedly defaced the beloved Mohamad, the Muslims' revenge and retorts are as follows:

Cartoons of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank "Put this one in your diary."; a contest of the best Holocaust cartoon -- I think I'm going to enter.

No matter what it is, or who is responsibe, it's the Jews' fault.

I woke this morning and stared at the blind that covers my window. Israel is so small. Israel is as small as the head of a pin. On a world Globe, you can't see it but for the name typed in black on a piece of Mediteranean Sea.

I thought about Canada, and the days that I spent drivng across Canadian expanse. Oh Canada, I thought about your prairies today, about the giant sun, the huge sky, the yellow wheat against blue lakes and rivers. I saw the Rocky mountains in the distance, and thought about the white hair on the old men's heads.

The trees in Israel aren't green like the evergreens that I'm used to. The trees are the colour of olives. Just enough water to survive, not thrive. Nothing thrives here. Israel is all about survival. We are the colour of olives, not Jade.

The folks that search found oil in Alberta. They're extracting unparrallelled volumes of oil from Alberta's forested sands. Big, black craters where my forests used to stand. Forests as big as Israel.

The oil is going to make Canda a superpower. Alberta will be richer than the rich. Saudie Arabia will suffer politically. The States won't need the Middle East anymore. Where will Israel stand? 50/50. We're still a good strategic place to hold for war's sake. We're still the middle of the world.

I went to the market three days ago. One small alley lead to the Dome of the Rock.

That rock is not exactly a rock. That rock is the peack of a mountain. A small mountain. Jerusalem was built, on stilts, all around that mountain peak. According to Jewish beliefs, that rock is the spot from where the world began. That rock is the first place of earth. The exact middle of of the world for the Jews.

According to the Muslims, Mohamad accended to heaven from that rock.

According to the Jews, Abraham bound Isaak to that rock to sacrifice hiw only son to G-d, than G-d said "Stop" and Abraham sacrificed an animal instead.

David built a giant synagogue to house that rock once, long ago -- you can read about it in the Hebrew bible, the Christians call that bible "The Old Testament" -- What is left of that synagogue now is the one small piece of "Western wall" That wall extends another mile or so below the ground past a spot that dirrectly faces the dome of the rock. There is a small synagogue there, just follow the underground tunel and you'll step right through the synagogue doors. It looks like a tiny cave, with one small bench facing the wall. Jews pray at the Western Wall not because the wall is sacred, but because it is as close as they can get to the rock, the middle of the world, where G-d began. That is the true purpose of prayers at the wall.

A police woman stood at the end of the Alley. Jews aren't alloud to pray at the dome of the rock. The dome of the rock is Muslem property now. They have specific visiting hours twice a week for tourists.