The Blog
Diary of a solo traveler wandering around Europe

Here in England, for an unexplained reason, I feel my Jewishness — I, who all my life believed in my complete secularism and didn't want to hear anything about the dispersion and persecution of Jews — here I feel my parents, my grandparents, and the place of the Jewish tradition in their lives and mine. And just now, Mimy the cat is rubbing against my legs as she purrs loudly.

Like my paternal great grandmother, my maternal grandfather, at the age of 12 or 13, with his parents and six or seven siblings embarked on a journey from Priluki in the Ukraine to Liverpool in the United Kingdom. I asked ChatGPT about this journey and here's what I got: Traveling from Priluki to Liverpool at the beginning of the 20th century would have been a long and complex journey, likely taken by people emigrating due to war, pogroms, poverty or persecution.

The rain continues in full force when suddenly the app, in a pleasant Australian accent, informs me that the M25 motorway—that is, London’s orbital road—has been closed due to maintenance work. “What?” I cry out to the calm Australian, while the wipers fling back and forth with all their might and no one can hear me. The app also reports that diesel engines are forbidden in the capital city, and that anyone who dares to drive through it will be heavily fined.

The drive isn’t long, just 286 kilometers, so I choose to to drive through quiet villages and farmland dotted with Frisian cows, just like the ones on my kibbutz. The day is beautiful, the green fields are of a deeper green, and out of nowhere, a tsunami of fear washes over me. Images of a tunnel carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of water above it race through my mind, along with the unreasonable crossing time I chose in my well-known thriftiness—three o'clock in the mo

I stay in the village of Ørbæk for about three more weeks, during which the hot water pipe is finally replaced, the hole is sealed, and the floor returns to its original state. However, the vacuum cleaner has disappeared from our lives forever, and the tractor hasn't moved an inch. But I’m having fun.

At the entrance to port of Flensburg stand a statue of the Naked Christophorus.

The blonde asks, “Welche sprache sprichst du?” A second passes before I find my voice and explain that I do not speak German. “What language were you talking?” she asks. “Hebrew,” I reply. “Oh? you are from Israel…?” The blonde smiles and sneaks a glance at her friend. Somewhere in the back of my soul I feel a fleeting sense of loneliness. I want to sit between them, have each of them hug me from either side, and then quietly die.

Everything in Berlin is big - the streets, the buildings, the history, the wall, everything. For the next week or so I will stay at Krosinsee Camping in my humble camper van and just enjoy being nobody in Berlin.

Here in Jena, in the light rain, among the tall trees, I become a Jew. I long for this landscape and this coolness because they are embedded in my history, yet I do not belong here either. Not here, nor in the Near East, where I truly suffer. What will become of me?

Now it’s June 2023. In my home land, in every major town and city book festivals are happening and book booths are sprouting everywhere like mushrooms after the rain. But I am sitting on a hill in central Germany, watching rabbits peek at me from the meadow and then scurry away.