Yom Shishee
Friday
12-13 Elul 5781
August 20-21 2021
Photo of the Morning (Photographer Reuven Castro)
A solitary grand piano greets the sunrise.
As you may not know, you can run into grand pianos in the most unusual places in Israel such as in train stations, in shopping malls, and as you see above, in parks. They are placed in these places so that people will play. Some of the most extraordinary recitals your humble servant has heard were in the Tel Aviv Shalom train station.
The News on the Israeli Street
The daily Corona update . . .
The Health Ministry reported yesterday that a deadly mutation of the deadly Delta mutation has now turned up in 10 patients in Israel. The AY3 strain was apparently brought into the country by eight people who traveled abroad and returned.
7,922 more Israelis were confirmed yesterday as having Corona bringing to 61,834 active cases in the country.
The positive test rate was 5.50%.
970,606 Israelis have tested positive since the pandemic began last year.
599 Israelis are in serious condition with another 104 in critical condition on ventilators.
6,752 Israelis have died of Covid-19 an increase of 26 since yesterday.
In terms of vaccinations:
5,879,869 Israelis have received 1 dose of vaccine.
5,435,776 Israelis have received 2 doses of vaccine.
1,260,736 Israelis have received 3 doses of vaccine.
Stop and think about this information for a moment. In the first place, the numbers of Israelis who have received 1 or 2 doses have remained virtually unchanged for over a month. Second, there remain around 400,000 Israelis who never got the second dose. Third, over 2,000,000 Israelis have received no vaccinations whatsoever.
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
The Alon Road, between Tapuach and Ariel, Marda, Al-Aruv, Luban A-Sharqiya, Na’alin: these are 5 out of 25 locations where Israelis were attacked with Molotovs and “rocks.”
A knife-armed Palestinian terrorist was captured at the Jalama Crossing near Jenin this morning.
Attacks in Syria . . .
There are numerous reports of Israeli aircraft attacking targets in and around Damascus last night.
The Lebanese claim that in the process of those attacks, the aircraft violated “Beirut airspace.”
Do you remember when? . . .
Do you remember a scant 4 months ago when the likes of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid were nightly castigating PM Netanyahu for a litany of so-called failures including: allowing Qatari blackmail money to flow to Hamas, not responding to balloon and missile terrorism from Gaza, causing rifts in Israeli society, being negligent on our northern border with Lebanon, and on and on and on.
And how Israel would be so much better if only Netanyahu were out of power and they were in control.
Last night, FM Yair Lapid (who still lists himself on Facebook as “Assistant Prime Minister”) was on Israel’s Channel 13 trying to explain why he and PM Bennett are: allowing Qatari blackmail money to flow to Hamas, not responding to balloon and missile terrorism from Gaza, doing nothing about increasing rifts in Israeli society, and being negligent on our northern border with Lebanon.
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You can guess how Lapid dissembled. The same way politicians always do, he continued to blame everything on Netanyahu.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Our Night At The “Opera” (Actually “Dance Performances”)
Since arriving back in Israel at the end of May, your humble servant and his wife have not attended any public events. We have been to supermarkets, hardware stores, and even on trips to various places in Israel–but have been careful never to attend a public event in an enclosed place.
Last week, after receiving our 3rd dose of vaccine, we decided it was time to venture out so we bought tickets for a one-night, collection of dance performances at Ashdod’s sleekly beautiful Center for the Performing Arts. Located near the beach, the extraordinary building was designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan in the shape of a whale:
The front (or head) of the whale shaped building.
A less colorful view from the other side of the building:
The whale shape is more evident.
The performances which featured dance groups from all over Israel were scheduled to begin at 6:00 pm, but we were told to arrive early because of Corona checks.
Arriving at 5:45 pm, our admittance went smoothly with the line moving quickly. Everyone was wearing a mask, and everyone in Israel has their “green passport” on their telephone in the form of a bar code from the Health Ministry which can easily be scanned by the door monitor.
The scene at the front door. Note the people in the background looking for their green passports on their phones.
The green passport is obtained after one has been vaccinated twice. The only alternative is a “certificate of recovery” (also in the form of a bar code) which certifies that one has had Corona and a serological test showing recovery. A negative Corona test will not get you in the door.
The problem with the bar codes on people’s phones is that the digital image can easily be copied or sent to another person’s phone. So, not only must you show your green passport, but also you must show your Israeli teudat tzeut (ID) so that the monitor can match the passport with the ID.
In any case, it only took about 30 seconds to get approval from the monitor to enter. Once in the lobby, we headed for our seats which were at Row 9, Seats 1 and 2.
A glance around revealed that most of the people inside were still wearing their masks, and so the performances began.
I’m not going to describe the performances here except to say that they included groups of all ages and were uniformly colorful and exuberant. It was particularly nice to see all of the dancers performing traditional Israeli dances to traditional Israeli music.
During the course of the performances, I became aware of a policewoman standing beside me (I was sitting on the aisle), and it quickly became apparent she was scanning the crowd for mask-violators.
Our stern mask policewoman.
What was interesting was that each time she spotted one and went to them to tell them to put their masks on, those sitting in nearby seats applauded her.
And so it went until the final dance was performed to Hava Nagila with Shalom Aleichem sung afterwards by the performers and audience followed by thunderous applause:
The end of a wonderful evening.
All in all, it was a marvelous night at the “opera.”
SHABBAT SHALOM FROM ISRAEL!
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.