This Place Called Hope

OU.org ^ | February 07, 2007 | Daniel Gordis

[APRPEH]

A couple of months ago, I had an appointment with a new doctor, just hours before I had to fly to the States. We didn't know each other, this new doctor and I, but he seemed like a nice guy. I was in a rush, and needed to get back home to pack. All I wanted was my prescription, so I could get meds before I got on a fifteen hour flight to LA.

But he was in a kind of friendly mood. “Why you going to the States?” he wanted to know. “Work,” I said, not terribly effusively. “What do you do?” I was feeling way too lousy to explain what the Mandel Foundation does, and referring him to our website seemed a bit obnoxious (and wouldn’t help me get meds). So I lied, a bit, and said, “I write.” “What do you write about?” he persisted. Really not wanting to have this conversation, looking hungrily at the printer which I was praying would soon spew out a prescription, I said, “About the future of Israel.” At which, he looked up from his keyboard, turned to me and said, “Oh, you write short stories.”

I laughed, and he did, too, but it was clear that neither of us thought that it was terribly funny. And in the weeks since that brief encounter, I’ve thought about it more than a few times. For it captured, I think, the mood here, a mood that no one talks about, but that everyone feels. A mood, a kind of desperation which isn’t about the war that was, or the one that may be coming, but about something deeper.

[APRPEH]

This is a long but interesting read.