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Weekend Butler: The trouble in Israel (and here); a gifted artist in Paris (and here): The Ghost Writer (1) and The Ghost Writer (2)

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 13, 2021
Category: Weekend

Driving downtown, I saw that the police had closed off the street — you couldn’t get near the mosque. I cruised by a synagogue: these police had a dog. American airlines have suspended flights to Israel. In case you think that what happens in the Middle East isn’t hotwired to your life, think again.

How did this — let’s call it a civil war — start in Israel? I regret to say: Israel started it. In two ways:

1) From the Times: Up the hill from the Old City, in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, four Palestinian households have been waging a long battle against attempts by Jewish settlers to evict them. Now these families are threatened with eviction. They have been living in these homes since 1957. That’s right. Four families.

2) from the New Yorker: On Monday, Israeli police stormed the al-Aqsa compound, where thousands of worshippers had gathered to defend themselves from encroachment by settlers. Three hundred Palestinians and twenty-one Israeli officers were wounded. Hamas responded by firing hundreds of rockets from Gaza into Israel, some of which struck in Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, and other cities. Israel retaliated with a hundred and thirty air strikes in Gaza. And now there is street fighting.

I woke up at 4 AM the other night, worried about my friend T. He and in his family live in Tel Aviv. I sent a concerned email. He replied:

I pray that you will never be in a position to fully appreciate how much your taking the trouble to write to me means to me.
There is often the terrible sense in being here, of feeling abandoned by a world thatis cheering on those whose raison d’etre is the deaths of my children.
Yes, thank G-d, we are OK. The world is not.
I do not know how or what is being reported there, but, just so you fully understand:
They are not shooting rockets at military bases, etc. They are simply randomly shooting them at large civilian population centers. Last night, HUNDREDS within 10 minutes. I believe they have shot circa 500
in the last two days.
And, as you may or may not know, they launch them from next to schools, mosques, hospitals, etc.
This gives Israel the choice of either not firing back, or risking killing children, etc.

I also wrote to my friend B. We met decades ago, when she was in the entertainment business. She became Orthodox, does great works for others, is the holiest person I know. Last year, when she had cancer, she asked me to go to a Chabad and pray. Putting on the wraps is not something I do, but I did it for her. She recovered completely and, though this can’t be true because she had great doctors and many friends praying for her, she gives me some credit. Now she lives in Israel. I wrote to ask her if I could just pray or if I needed to go to a Chabad. She replied:

Up all night running to shelter. Sirens, explosions, windows shook. I’m in Tel Aviv and a lot happened last night.
We are expecting tonight to be interesting. It’s the last day of their festival of Ramadan. They fast from sunrise to sunset the entire month. Tonight they celebrate the end of the fast and it’s their wildest and most violent night of the month. I always say the Shema three times a day, but last night I must’ve said it two dozen times.
I’m not frightened. I’m angry. Their leaders are crying that they don’t have money to buy the vaccine for their people, but they refused Israel’s offer to vaccinate them. Their people are starving, but they have tens and tens of millions to buy missiles and launchers. Does anyone use their common sense? Of course not, no one wants us around but they are forever stuck with us.
So please go to the chabad. For me, for you, for all of us.
Always remember how important everything that you do judaically is to me. And more to you.
If for some reason you don’t hear from me again, please call my friend M. and arrange to do something(s) in my name.

Last night a Jewish man in his 30s was lynched by Arab rioters in a demonstration in Acre, while another Jewish man was lynched by right wing Jewish extremists who mistook him for an Arab in Batyam.

It’s lovely here in New York today.

MILES HYMAN GALLERY SHOW
May 13 – June 26
Philippe Labaune Gallery
534 West 24th Street

Miles Hyman has been in my life since he was eight. You may know him because he is the grandson of Shirley Jackson and created a graphic book of her classic story, “The Lottery.” (I reviewed it here.) You also know him because he designed the butler logo that sits at the top of every page of this site. Miles lives in Paris, where his illustrations, book covers and paintings are extravagantly praised. Do look at his work and if you’re in town, consider touring the show.

THE GHOST WRITER: THE START OF A BRILLIANT NOVEL

It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago — I was twenty-three, writing and publishing my first short stories, and like many a Bildungsroman hero before me, already contemplating my own massive Bildungsroman — when I arrived at his hideaway to meet the great man. The clapboard farmhouse was at the end of an unpaved road twelve hundred feet up in the Berkshires, yet the figure who emerged from the study to bestow a ceremonious greeting wore a gabardine suit, a knitted blue tie clipped to a white shirt by an unadorned silver clasp, and well-brushed ministerial black shoes that made me think of him stepping down from a shoeshine stand rather than from the high altar of art. Before I had composure enough to notice the commanding, autocratic angle at which he held his chin, or the regal, meticulous, rather dainty care he took to arrange his clothes before sitting — to notice anything, really, other than that I had miraculously made it from my unliterary origins to here, to him — my impression was that E. I. Lonoff looked more like the local superintendent of schools than the region’s most original storyteller since Melville and Hawthorne.

Ten points if you know the author without clicking on the link.

THE GHOST WRITER: A BRILLIANT MOVIE
My review is a love letter to the film, if not the filmmaker. I’m watching it again this weekend. More accurately, I’m going to school on it. Ten points if you know the director without clicking. Read about it here.