February 1999

So it’s time for another news update. Perspicacious readers and Isaacs Newsletter junkies will have noticed, no doubt, that the release of newsletters is surprisingly coincidental with quiet periods at Michael’s work.
So what’s new now? Well, let’s start with a puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle. Or to be more precise, several jigsaw puzzles.
Elon (8) was always an active child. Those of you who knew him at age two will testify to his ability to topple every cup, plate, pot, plant, book and chair in the house, every day of the year, by 8 o’clock in the morning. Elon was living proof that Newton’s theory of constant motion applied to the Earth and not just in outer space. He simply never ever sat still - not to draw, not to paint, and certainly not to eat (I laugh at the very thought)...
...With one exception - jigsaw puzzles. Eloni was always fascinated by jigsaw puzzles. At age two he would sit for hours at a time, totally focused and engrossed in his puzzles, systematically testing each piece and assembling the puzzles, persevering until the puzzle was complete. Elon’s puzzle phase came and went, and his puzzle demon slept. Until that fateful day, a couple of months ago, when Judy came home with a new 500 piece puzzle.
One of the attractions of solving two year olds’ puzzles is that they are of limited size, have a limited number of possible combinations, and can therefore be assembled within a limited amount of time (even by monkeys).
500 piece puzzles aren’t like that. They have a helluva lot of pieces and - at the very minimum - infinite possibilities for combining them (if not more). But Elon is not one to be deterred by such minutiae. The pieces of the puzzle - a picturesque scene of a riverside cathedral in rural Southern England - were tipped over every inch of the floor of his bedroom, and the Great Work began. Once Elon starts a puzzle, it just has to be finished. It just has to be. And fast. So, with Elon as their leader, brothers, friends, brothers’ friends, brothers’ friends’ friends and others got stuck in to the Holy Task.
Now I wax poetic. Those who have not experienced the joys of scaling Everest, running a 4 minute mile or walking on the moon, cannot appreciate the joys of finding a “piece of sky” (which, by the way, is totally indistinguishable from 100 other “pieces of sky”). Those who have not read Encyclopedia Britannica cover to cover while standing on their head or crossed the Sahara desert on foot with an ingrown toenail, cannot appreciate our ecstasy when the puzzle was finally completed.
And it was evening, and it was morning, the first puzzle.
Nothing to beat learning from experience, right? Naftali’s 6th birthday. What does his brainy Dad get him? Another carefully selected 500 piece jigsaw.
Daddy (me) should be locked in a mental asylum.
I selected a jigsaw that could be set as an entrance test to MENSA. If Einstein had found this jigsaw, he wouldn’t have bothered with Relativity (he wouldn’t have had the time). I selected a jigsaw that would have been easier to solve back side up with the picture face-down on the floor - which is the position Judy and I adopted for two terrible weeks until we helped the kids finish the darned thing - face-down on the floor sifting through a thousand identical little Mordillo football characters kicking a thousand identical little footballs around a green pitch criss-crossed with painted white lines.
And it was evening, and it was morning, the second puzzle.
Okay. No one makes the same mistake twice. Right? Right. Next it was Judy who brought back a jigsaw. But by now we had progressed to four figures - 1,000 pieces. (I ‘m not even counting the 260-piece puzzle she brought as an appetizer. That one was fun. It was completed in less than an hour).
1,000 pieces, remember? So, it was a very long evening, which dawned into the following morning - and it was like that several days running - the third and fourth puzzles.
I know. You guys think you’ve got the idea. There will be six puzzles - and on the seventh he rested. Well. I got news for you. G-d is smarter than us. He stopped at six.
The next puzzle was 1000 pieces. 152 national flags. I won’t tell you which parent selected this one, but let’s say her first name starts with ‘J’. This one was really tough. The instructions on the box noted: “This puzzle is recommended for young hermits and for criminals sentenced to 30 years solitary confinement”. Fortunately, Elon had the good sense to throw the towel in on this one before he got very far, and instead completed, almost single-handedly, an “easy peasy” 600-piece Winnie the Pooh puzzle which the tooth fairy mercifully dropped under his pillow.
With Winnie the Pooh and friends fully re-constructed and stored safely underneath Eloni’s bed (there’s hardly a bed in the house without a puzzle under it), as things stand now, we’re puzzle free. Eloni’s puzzle demon is yawning. We’re hoping it will nod off for another few years and give our sanity time to catch up.
Now here’s some other family news.
Judy started back this week at the Open University. She is teaching two different courses in computer applications (Windows, Word, Excel, Internet, E-mail, BASIC etc.) as well as some courses in C. This semester she is also working for a few hours in the computer department. Judy continues to work through the night two or three times a week. Turns out this home-loving lady who puts her children above all, is a serious workaholic.
Ari (11), Elon (8), and Naftali (6) are all doing fine at school - if we can believe what’s written on their report cards. Ari’s report card could have been framed. Eloni recently received a special certificate from his headmaster for the immense efforts he is investing in his schoolwork. His reading and writing have improved noticeably in the last few months. All Naftali’s report cards should be as good as his first.
The boys spend most of their time these days playing “klafim” which is Hebrew for cards. They collect various series of cards - football players, Michael Jordan cards and others, then gamble them away playing the most mind-blowingly stupid game in which you pile the cards up and then bang them with cupped hands in the hope that they flip over. I find it hard to understand how beings who have spent billions of years evolving, and who progressed from Neanderthal to Homo Sapiens well before I was born, should be engrossed in such a game. (The topic of “klafim” could well make a star appearance in a newsletter one day.)
Orli (4) is still our little girl - doing what girls are supposed to do - painting her nails, changing her clothes, and wishing her wardrobe was bigger. Sometimes I wonder how after millions of years of evolution, women evolved into what they are - but I never make such wonderings out loud.
If you’re interested in me, I’m fine - at least I was until the Women’s Lib and Feminist organizations put a price on my head.
Lots of Love and best wishes for a happy and “freilich” Purim from Michael, Judy, Ari, Eloni, Naftali and Orli Isaacs.