January 2006

I have an itch. It starts quietly, almost unnoticeable, develops into a sort of gnaw, and when it needs scratched all day every day, it’s time to put out another newsletter. This time, once again, Ari, in response to popular request, has added his distinctive view on the family annals, at the end.

Confessions of a brother of three and a father of four
Idling away one Shabbat afternoon with more time on my hands than desire to do something useful, I chanced across an old newsletter in which I described Orly (now 11) as a baby. In my defense, I was reared in a male-dominated family of four brothers, romanced with a Tom-boy and begat three sons before Orly surfaced. My knowledge of the female species was even more limited than most men’s. Rereading this newsletter after almost ten years was an embarrassment. My descriptions of Orly’s childhood female antics were comic in their naiveté. Since then, I have produced two more daughters and am now a world-leading expert on all matters female (at least up till the age of 11). So, if you remember what I wrote in 1996 or thereabouts and thought it was silly, please be understanding.

Now to the updates on the lights of our lives - our children – in reverse order.

Sock it to me baby
Elisheva (14 months) is a paradox – a great believer at one and the same time in Order and Disorder. For our children, Disorder is a natural state, and maintaining it is a G-d-given religious duty. In fulfilling this mitzvah, Elisheva, daily, empties the kitchen cupboards of pots and pans, denudes our shelves of their books, disperses freshly folded washing etc. etc. This is normal behaviour. What is strange to us is her belief in Order, expressed, for example, via shoes. Elisheva believes fervently that shoes belong on feet. Logical enough, but Elisheva believes fervently shoes ALWAYS belong on feet. If ever you remove your shoes, within seconds, she’ll pick them up and rush them over to you. Should you dare wander still unshod from one room to the other, Elisheva is after you like a dumpling bullet, with your forgotten shoes. Such expressions of Order are alien to the Isaacs family lifestyle. We’ll have to train Elisheva to walk in the footsteps of the rest of the family.

Life begins at “L”
Abigail (4 years – which is one tenth of the way to 40) is into letters. Every week at Gan she learns a new letter. We’re up to Yod now. Her favorite game is guessing what letter words begin with. So “Bayit” begins with Bet, as does “Booba”. Just when we think she’s really getting the hang of it, she’s liable to say something like “Telephone” begins with “chet”, so we’re not really sure yet.

Orly and the performing arts
Orly (11) is the star and solo performer of her dance ‘chug’. She has taught Abigail one of her dances and the two perform for all who will pause to watch. Orly and Abigail are excellently synchronized in choreography, however chronology is not as kind. With the gap in age and size they would be billed as a David and Goliath dancing duo.

Orly loves TV. She and Naphtali are the main victims of their parents frequent and poorly enforced disciplinary campaigns that always begin with the threat “From now on…”. “From now on – only one TV program a day” , “From now on - the TV goes off at nine o’clock” and so on. TV hours have been greatly reduced in recent times, at the price of a dive in Mummy and Daddy’s popularity ratings with the children. Of course, once we get the kids eyes off the goggle box and up to bed, first thing I do is curl up, with a nice cup of tea, in front of the telly.

Getting an angle on fishing
Has our goal-oriented society tampered with our philosophical definitions? Does a poet have to publish to be a poet? Or is it sufficient that he writes poetry, pens some expressive bon mots, or even toys with a poetic strain in his head? Why these questions? Because we have to decide if Naphtali (13) is a fisherman. He owns a rod, line, hooks and bait. He has the angler’s passion, a stylish cast and a story of “the one that got away”. However, so far his net is empty. I say, Life is a journey, a quest, not a result. So for me, he has the soul of a fisherman, if not the catch.

A time and place for everything
Since going to boarding school, Elon (15) comes home for weekends and washing. As I’ve mentioned, he believes school is no place for studying. He prefers playing at school and studying at home, which reminds me of my neighbour in shul – a lover of Jewish choral liturgy – who complained, in all sincerity, when a baal tefilla dawdled too much with the davening, that “shul is no place for hazanut”. Elon has a ton of bagruyot later this year, poor darling. I still suffer a recurring nightmare of turning up to my A-Levels (in 1982) without having revised properly. Elon is a lot smarter than his Dad. Never seen him sweating over exams he took 24 years ago.

Don’t teenagers drive you up the wall?
Just in time for the newsletter itch deadline, Ari (17), has set off a new craze – rock-climbing. The slippery thing about rock-climbing is that you don’t actually climb rocks; you climb walls. (“Climbing the wall” is hardly a new pastime for the Isaacs family; Judy and I have been doing that for 18 years). So they call it rock-climbing, without the rocks, which I suppose is rather like cow-milking without the cows or jay-walking without the jays.

The “rock” is in “Park Yehoshua” in Tel Aviv and is a 15-meter high construction with handholds and footholds molded into some 20 inner and outer surfaces. The climbers climb up, down and around these walls, following predetermined routes of varying levels of difficulty. As with Ari’s previous crazes, Elon and Naphtali have joined the fun. Rock climbing no doubt builds strength, ability and character. However, as Ari’s parents remind him frequently, it doesn’t get you bagruyot.

Ari maintains a Blog. A blog (which I believe is a shortened form of Web Log) is a personal diary posted on the Internet for all to see. It’s OK. I also don’t understand why personal diaries are posted on the Internet for all to see. It’s something to do with the young generation and things we old fogies don’t understand.

If you visit Ari’s blog you will discover he has a wonderful way with words. When the muse takes him, he can churn out prosetry” (a term I just coined to describe Ari’s favourite genre that breaks all the rules of both prose and poetry). Ari is creative, imaginative, honest, and well worth a read. If only he weren’t such a blooming genius in maths and science, maybe I could get him to study a real subject in university, such as literature.

My itch has been well and truly scratched. Time to bid farewell. But first, Ari’s Corner.

Ari’s corner

One might speculate, upon seeing this ridiculous discrimination, that teenagers only drive their parents up the wall when cornered. Yet someone must speak for the oppressed part of the family, even if only out of a corner...The winners write the history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the perpetrators write the newsletter.

The climbing craze is not the only one changing age-old family customs. My dear father forgot to mention that music is now a dominant part of the Isaacs household culture. A unanimous agreement that music is important in life has formed amongst the kids; sadly the parents are a little behind. Teenage music is now almost constantly playing in the background, or as my parents would say, blaring in the foreground. Perhaps the reason Dad forgot to mention it is that he is fighting it down with an iron fist. The irony of the fact that the noise created by his “turn off that bloody noise” shouts is tenfold louder and much less harmonic than the music, has obviously been overseen by Dad. Of course we wouldn’t have given up unless upon Dad’s entrance to the house all rockers, rollers and innocent piano fans must move swiftly to the closest bomb proof shelter, lest they be caught in the crossfire as dad shoots fire and brimstone at anything with notes.

I would like to use this stage to declare my love for my parents, perhaps even my admiration. I believe they give us a free hand, allow us and even give us the means to do a lot of things I’d never allow myself really... The perpetrators/oppressed theme was only about the music, and quiet inaccurate at that. I want everyone to know that they are amazing. Admittedly I only consent to this fact from time to time, so I’m counting on the receivers of this letter to remind them when I’m in a typical teenage mood.


Lots of love
Michael, Judy
Ari, Elon, Naphtali, Orly, Abigail and Elisheva