Not long ago there was an epidemic here, and now - it's gone.
In other words, the corona has become another disease among diseases.
The sad truth is that we all thought it would be much happier after she was gone.
how will we celebrate
We will hug in the street like survivors.
We opened a bottle and our hearts and told each other how hard it was in the isolations, waves and closures, and how much we missed the company of people of our kind.
But where are we and where are the celebrations... It's quite shameful to find out how much we don't know how to celebrate and bless.
Disappointing to discover that we were not really missed.
But it was precisely out of the disappointment and frustration that a new thought arose.
Maybe what's happening right now - the tension and the animosity and the inability to listen - are all part of the late side effects of that epidemic.
Secondary damages, the extent of which is revealed long after the disease itself has stopped.
After all, regarding the high school students, for example, we all know how to deploy scholarly explanations about the social and mental damages that accumulated while these cute calves were locked up in homes and became even more unbearable than can be expected at their age.
But what about us?
How aware are we of secondary damage?
I want to tell you about one such damage, in my family, and precisely on a subject that has not received adequate attention, here and now.
It all started during the claustrophobic period of the corona, when everyone stayed at home and started making sourdough bread, reciting "The Lion King" by heart and climbing on each other.
We were also looking for content to engage the little ones in the family, before we all went exponentially crazy.
To remind you, in the first waves we didn't even go to playgrounds.
Scary broadcasts on TV showed how the virus dyes handles and doors red, and the fear that the child would slip on an infected slipper, and return home with a buttock that is the center of infection, locked us in the house.
In those days I started collecting materials for a show about the 70s.
Everyone pitched in to help.
The sounds of old bands that we hadn't heard since high school filled the space of the house, and most of the family liked it.
Videos and clips of programs in black and white, which starred on the computer screen, provoked ridicule at first (Marco? He has no facial features!), but they too gradually became a kind of cult.
Thus, without us realizing it, one of the children, in the first grade as a whole, slowly became a typical child from the 1970s and 1980s.
It may sound cute to you, but it often caused concern.
We started to notice the problem when he was staying with friends, and their parents saw fit to warn.
"His behavior is... ahem... strange," they whispered apprehensively.
what's weird
We wondered.
Great boy!
Great great, they didn't argue, but, come on, he says words like "shopkeeper" and "to begin with".
Here, on the way home from school, we asked what music to play in the car, and your child - you are not offended, are you?
- asked for songs like "The dog is buried here", and even "Oh this is not normal, I have an idiot friend".
You should have seen our boy's face.
Almost offended.
This report did not concern us.
Quite funny actually.
We didn't think for a moment to take him for a test.
Until that morning when the boy fixed his eyes on me and said: "You know, father, what I would like? For one of the kids in the class to come back from the supermarket cut and I'll make him a spihach."
Absorb?
did you say spihaz?
Are you all right, son?
Does mom know about this?
At this stage we have already begun to suspect that these are serious side effects of the corona virus.
Regression in the influence of content sites.
YouTube mania.
What is the next step, we asked ourselves.
Is he going to hang posters from "Lehton" in the room?
Get a haircut "Eli Ohana"?
Send letters to "Maariv for Youth"?
Ask for palladium shoes?
In short, this week, with the beginning of Rosh Chodesh Adar, the boy stared at me and said: "I know why I want to dress up on Purim..."
No, you're not telling me that, I begged.
Please say "Static", "Pokemon", "Emsalam David".
something contemporary.
Say you're dressing up as a gamer, or just a reality TV refugee whose name your parents haven't heard of.
Please, in the name of all the saints...
But he just smiled and said: "Sheriff."
sheriff?
Is there such an app?
"Sheriff. I already have a star and a hat. And a gun."
Well, this is now being distributed in the Ministry of Internal Security.
"Good, you just need to add some along the length of the pants..."
French?
Do you want french fries?
Fine, just say you want your father's childhood.
Last week we marked eight years since the passing of the late Uri Orbach, a man who was full of creativity and inspiration, and who carried a special charisma, subtle and difficult to decipher. This is just one of
his rare qualities, which make the worn-out phrase "prematurely" hurt so much. And today especially.
The reverence for him did not include any element of fear.
Why be afraid?
Still, you wanted him to appreciate your actions.
Will be amazed by something original you wrote.
Isaac from the wit.
You were afraid he would say: "Well, really, never mind."
And not because he carved destinies.
But simply because his word was true.
Orbach's grave is in the cemetery in Modi'in, near the grave of the three boys.
Mandatory location.
Old friends stood there, trying to remember the jokes that Uri loved, and wondered if even today, when all the rules of discourse were completely broken, people would be able to look down in front of Uri's piercing smile.
I personally am not sure.
There are several people around who were able to shout "come on come on", "who are you anyway", and even "you traitor!"
Bianush Korczak, Maimonides and Moshe also fought, if only it turned out that they were politically divided.
On the way out I was asked if I had a story about Uri.
I remembered that once, in one of the political columns, Uri needed a somewhat extreme image.
Like all of us, he also really liked to remember his years in the yeshiva high school and the colorful types you get to know in the conditions of the boarding school.
There was one that Uri called "the schnitzel licker".
A rather disgusting and quite appropriate nickname.
It turns out that even in the dining room of Yeshiva Nahalim they served schnitzels once a week.
In schnitzels, as in schnitzels, the tray that came to the table contained finds of various sizes.
There were some as wide as a sail and as fat as the cows of Bashan, and others that were tiny and cramped.
Since the instructions were to sit at the table and not eat until permission was given, that graceful guy used to intercept the big schnitzel he loved, mark it with a lick, and return it to the tray.
Now let's see who will take the chosen schnitzel...
Orbach penned like a demon on the juicy image of the schnitzel licker, from his youth.
I no longer remember which political figure he cast the parable on, and which phenomenon he mocked with it, but the story itself was hard to forget.
And lo and behold, one day I was invited to appear before some professional conference.
They were lawyers or accountants, social workers or speech therapists.
do not remember.
Suddenly a tall guy wearing a cap arrived.
He put a hand on my shoulder, and with a small smile said: "You were a friend of Uri Orbach, weren't you? Well, who do you think I am? Guessing?... Exactly, licking the schnitzels. With my honor and myself."
And I thought to myself that it takes a special, one-off talent, so that a person about whom you wrote such things would be proud to be the character, the image and the owner of the nail polish.
The problem with David Amsalem is not what he thinks about "Ashkenazim" or "privileged".
The problem with Amsalem is what he thinks of "Moroccans".
He knows how to express himself differently.
He knows how to be businesslike.
His working assumption that a certain kind of speech, low and desperate, will touch the hearts of the "Dialna" guys, is based on a world view that if it came from someone of a different origin, we would have determined, and rightly so, that the man is immersed in racism.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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