When I was 3, I had a 10-year-old brother, and deep in my heart I hoped that when I grew up, I’d be just like him. Not that I stood a chance. My big brother had already skipped two grades and had an enviable understanding of everything, from atomic physics and computer programming to the ...

I really admire considerate telemarketers who listen and try to sense your mood without immediately forcing a dialogue on you when they call. That’s why, when Devora from YES, the satellite TV company calls and asks if it’s a good time for me to talk, the first thing I do is thank her for her ...

Ehud Olmert, cat.
CREDIT: Sarah Lazarovic

In preparation for the meeting with Lev’s preschool teacher, I shaved and took my good suit out of the closet.
“It’s a ten-in-the-morning meeting,” my wife laughed. “The teacher will probably be wearing sweat pants. And with that white shirt and jacket, you’ll look like a groom.”
“Like a lawyer,” I corrected her. ...

There’s nothing like a few days in Eastern Europe to bring out the Jew in you. In Israel, you can walk around all day under the blazing sun in a sleeveless t-shirt and feel just like a goy: a little trance, a little opera, a good book by Bulgakov, a glass of Irish whiskey. But ...

A few weeks before our son Lev was born, four years ago, two weighty philosophical issues came to the fore.
The first, will-he-look-like-his-mom-or-his-dad, was resolved quickly and unequivocally at his birth: he was beautiful. Or, as my dear wife so aptly puts it, “The only thing he inherited from you is the hair on his back.”
And ...

My visit last week to the Gothenburg Book Fair in Sweden got off to a stressful start. Several weeks before I arrived in that peaceful city, which boasts Northern Europe’s largest amusement park, a local tabloid published a story accusing Israel of stealing organs from Palestinians killed by the IDF. The story managed to ...

It all began with a dream. A lot of troubles in my life begin with a dream. And in this dream I was at a train station in a strange city, behind a hot dog stand. A horde of impatient passengers were huddling around it. They were all jumpy, impatient. I couldn’t understand them. They were dying for a hot dog, they were afraid of missing the train. They were barking orders at me in a strange language that sounded like a scary blend of German and Japanese. I answered them in the same strange, nerve-wracking language. They tried to make me go faster, and I did my best to keep up. My shirt was so splattered with mustard and relish and sauerkraut that the few places where you can still see the white look like spots. I tried to concentrate on the buns but I couldn’t help noticing the angry mob. They looked at me with the ravenous eyes of predators. The orders in the incomprehensible language seemed more and more menacing. My hands started shaking. Beads of salty sweat dripped from my forehead onto the thick hot dogs. And then I woke up.

I don’t want to brag, but I’ve managed to earn myself a unique, somewhat mythic status among the parents who take their children to Ezekiel Park, my son’s favorite spot in Tel Aviv. I can’t attribute that special achievement to any overwhelming charisma I might possess, but rather to two common, lackluster qualities: I’m a man, and I hardly ever work. And so, in Ezekiel Park, I have been dubbed “ha-abba” or “the father,” an almost religious and slightly gentile nickname intoned with great respect by all the park’s regulars. It seems that most of the fathers in my neighborhood go to work every morning, so that the inherent laziness that has plagued me for so many years is finally being construed as exceptional sensitivity and affection, showing a genuine understanding of children’s tender young souls.

One cold and rainy morning last February, Israel’s Labor Party woke up to a political reality it had never known before. For the first time since it was established in 1968, when several left-wing parties united under the leadership of Mapai, Labor found itself outside the exclusive club of the two parties with the largest ...

A year and three months after our son Lev was born, my wife and I could no longer repress what we’d been feeling all along. He’s a beautiful child, that’s true, and far from being an idiot, but the minute we manage to step back from our subjective proud parent status and take an objective ...