Yesterday I had to give a short lecture in Beith Avichay, the cultural center of the conservative Jewry in Jerusalem. This was the first time I performed there. The Building is located in the center of Jerusalem and it is a superb facility. I was overwhelmed by the way the founders had thought about everything – the underground vast and convenient parking lot, the hall, the beautiful lobby with superb coffee shop and restaurant, the seminar rooms and the room for artists, in which not only coffee and fresh cold drinks, fresh rolls with fine food awaited as well. The names and cellphone numbers of two guys who are responsible for the parking spot is fixed on the borders, they have a guard at every level of the building. I am not accustomed with such a high standard in any Israeli cultural facility. This is really great.
Beit Avichay has a tradition of public gathering every beginning of each month. Every year they have a different series of meetings. Last year’s series was dedicated to Jewish Figures. This year’s series deals with Jewish communities around the globe. I was invited to tell the story of Tsvi Migdal, the pimps organization which operates within the Jewish community of Buenos Aires in 1860-1930.
Since I was one of two speakers, I emphasized that the Jewish community of Buenos Aires was the third Jewish community in the 1930’s. Its population was about 550.000 people. This was and still is a very rich community, in its vitality and spirit, culture and intellectual achievements, but not in material wealth.
I had to say it before I enclosed the dark secret of the community, which I wrote about in my best-selling novel, ‘A Tale of a Ring,” – that between 1860-1930 Jewish pimps set up a ‘charity’ organisation, which was actually a registered organisation of pipms, who sold, used and manipulated about 4000 enslaved Jewish women, forcing them into prostitution. Most of the women were girls, aged 10-14.
I finished my short speech with reading few paragraphs from my novel, which did a great impression on the local public. Anglo Saxons, and religious women.
Since this morning I had an important meeting in Tel Aviv, and my father came over to watch my kids while I am away, I thought that the best thing I should do is sleepover at my father’s place, near Tel Aviv, and then go to the city, to my old Gym and to my meeting. I even took with me all I need for that – my c-pup machine, clothes, medicines, and necessities.
But I could not do that. I did not leave my children deliberately for even one night since birth.
It happened only once when I was delayed in the emergency unit in Tel Aviv, to be sure that what I had was an anxiety attack and not a heart attack.
I wanted to sleep in my bed, wake up with my sons and dad, sit and write my morning pages in my yard, in front of my fresh wet vegetable garden. Not in my father’s place, which once was my childhood home, but today is a silent solitude home of only one person, my dad.
So I drove two hours to Jerusalem, stayed there for two hours and it took me another two hours all the way back to my home, at Tuval, up the north of Israel, in the Galilee. But I would not dismiss the two sessions of kisses with Michael and Daniel this morning, and the urge to cry out of joy and bless God for the beauty and serenity in which we live.
You still have five last days to back me up in my crowdfunding campaign, here.
Thanks,
Ilan.
thegaymomdad 