Jericho, 1956
It is a blistering hot day in Jericho, one of the hottest thus far in this summer of 1956. The temperature at midday registered at just a hair’s breadth below the 100 degree mark on the Fahrenheit thermometer nailed to the director’s tent. The mercury will certainly rise above that this afternoon. It is perfectly dreadful weather for any kind of archaeology. Skin-burning, eye-searing, hot blazing sunlight; withering heat; dust rising in choking clouds from the dry, sun-scorched earth; heat rising in shimmering waves from all points of the …

Elliott Gould comes to the interview in a brown T shirt, brown shorts, socks and sneakers. He smiles his famous half-smile as he eases himself into a chair. His eyes appear only partially open behind a pair of round, wire-rim eyeglasses, and his voice is soft and low. He appears to be totally relaxed, the very image of “calm.”
 I, on the other hand, am sitting across from him in quiet turmoil. I have to interview this guy, and I am not quite sure I’m up for this. I have interviewed …

Most of us who have immigrated to Israel and committed our lives to this country can remember when and how we were first attracted to Zionism or, shall we say, “bitten” by the Zionist “bug.” Some of us, perhaps, fell in love with Israel during a summer visit to the country during our high school or college years. Others began their romance with the Holy Land as children, growing up in Zionist families, educated in Jewish day schools, and following life trajectories that led them here in a straight line.
I, …

I have always been fascinated by anachronisms. And, while I have richly enjoyed seeing or experiencing survivals from an earlier time—like brooding over a cup of coffee in an authentic chrome and glass diner, its décor unchanged since the late 1940’s, or meeting a fellow who writes lengthy books not with a computer or even a typewriter, but rather with a Mount Blanc fountain pen—I am especially interested in things that appear way before their time. I’m referring to events, fashions, styles, or inventions that occur sometime in the past, …

One of my favorite stories from Chinese philosophy is from the great Taoist writer Chuang-tzu (369-286 B.C.E.), whose gentle wit and humor graced the literature of the later Chou dynasty, two centuries after Confucius. As translated by Lin Yutang, Chuang-tzu’s story goes something like this:
“Once upon a time, I, Chuang-tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chuang-tzu. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself …

We have all done it, haven’t we? At one time or another, we have all had the pleasure, however fleeting and momentary it might have been.

Ask anyone why he or she stays in Israel, and you are apt to hear a plethora of rather surprising answers.

There used to be, and perhaps still is, an American Jewish stand-up comic named Jackie Mason.

Tel Aviv’s enormous Central Bus Station is a world unto itself. It is vast—even cavernous in some places, densely populated, and almost totally self-contained.

He, not a day less than 90 years old, sits quietly in his wheel-chair, his pale bald head covered with what must be the last Panama hat in all of Israel.