December 24 & 31, 1972

December 24

The big event of this week was my husband’s niece Carmelite’s wedding.  It was a mad affair.  She’s marrying an American from Los Angeles, whose parents are Holocaust survivors.  The family is very nice.  They were probably as surprised about the wedding as I was.

It was held in a hall, no magically first seeing the bride walk down the aisle.  The bride sits in a bridal chair with her husband-to-be standing next to her while the guests come in and greet her—and hand over an envelope.  There’s video to take and photos, while music is playing and some DJ is telling jokes in between the music.

An hour and a half later, they actually get married. This was followed by dinner and dancing and more, more, more photos.

I got to meet thousands more of Abe’s relatives.  He says he hasn’t seen some of them since his mother’s death.  How far-flung was this exodus from Iraq and what they’ve made of their lives in this new land.  Very inspiring.  It reminds me of one of our later stays. We and our now three children had visited someone  and were waiting for a bus to take us back to Givatayim.  From a window a woman yelled that the buses had stopped running.  So Abe flagged down a taxi.  Who should be driving but one of his cousins!  That’s what I love so much about Israel.

(You’ll note there is no mention of Christmas in these letters.  That’s because, until the Russians came en masse, no one really noted Christmas on the calendar. After their arrival, one could see Santa Clauses everywhere.)

December 31

New Year’s Eve, or, as it’s called here, Sylvester.

Work continues to be—weird.  Neither Israela nor I like the new woman—the one I’m sharing one typewriter with, even though I have a project that has taken two weeks to accomplish.  What madness.  And I’m feeling a bit depressed. All the male professors in the department are about my age and achieving something while I “work” at basically nothing.  When I get home, I must consider getting my Ph.D.

Sadly, my good friend from South Africa has moved with her family to a villa near Netanya.  Their property is full of fruit trees. So when we visited, we came back with bags of oranges and lemons.

We visited a friend from Haifa and heard a horrible story.  He went to the Wall in Jerusalem with his wife and daughter, and an Arab threw a grenade down at them from the Temple Mount. It exploded and all were injured by shrapnel.  Thank God no one died.  This time.

We are now enduring the coldest winter in fourteen years.  Crops have been ruined and there is a shortage of eggs.

Tuesday all the engineers are going on strike.  And yet the country still continues to function.