The Perils of Internet Purchasing

Throughout the year of Coronavirus lockdown we were confined to our homes and could not venture out into stores, markets or shopping malls. Attending a performance at a theatre or a concert, or even the cinema was strictly forbidden, and even a café or restaurant was out of bounds.

That was a difficult time for many people. After all, man — and especially woman – is a social animal. That was when the internet became our salvation. Quite apart from sending and receiving emails from all and sundry, there was also the consolation provided by Facebook, Whatsapp, Zoom and other social media, enabling us to interact – albeit via the computer, iPad or smartphone screen – with other human beings. Those so-called human beings might in some cases have been robots, but still, we were made to feel that we were not completely cut off from the outside world.

Entertainment was also supplied by the television, Netflix, and other providers of programmes and films, so that our social and cultural desert was not totally devoid of interest.

Another of the consolations provided by the internet was on-line shopping. I don’t know about everyone else, but my screen ‘feeds’ constantly contained images of desirable garments, books, items of furniture, gadgets and sundry items with which someone out there sought to entice me. Most of the time I managed to resist the temptation, but , I must confess that there were occasions on which I succumbed.

For instance, how could I possibly resist a sweatshirt on which my name was emblazoned? My name isn’t a very common one, and so it seemed that this was providential. Using the very efficient Paypal scheme, I sent the money to the address provided and some months later was summoned to the local post office package delivery depot, to collect it.

The items I ordered from Marks and Spencer’s almost always arrived promptly, were well-packed and delivered in an efficient and pleasant way. I’ve learnt from bitter experience not to buy any cheap toys from China, however attractive they may be. Friends have told me that Ali Express is also quick and efficient, but I don’t seem to be on their radar, and I’d rather keep it that way.

Some other items were impossible to resist. So I ordered an illustrated book from a very inventive and ingenious company in the Netherlands which produced a tailor-made A-B-C book for my granddaughter, utilizing the letters of her name. The book was a great success, so I ordered another of their books, this time for her fifth birthday, once again tailor-made using the letters of her name. The idea was charming and the illustrations delightful. When the book hadn’t arrived in time for her birthday, as promised, I contacted the company and asked what had happened. They apologized and sent me the tracking number, telling me that the book was now in Mevasseret. I duly went to the post office package delivery depot, showed them the tracking number and there it was! Because the package didn’t have my phone number on it, the P.O. hadn’t been able to send me an SMS saying that it had arrived. So why do I have an address?

Some items never arrived, and in those cases I notified the seller, and was able to get a refund. One lone company ignored my demand for a refund, and since I had bought the item through eBay, I asked eBay to deal with it. Their reply was that since more than 21 days had passed, the case was closed. But here Paypal came to my rescue. I spoke to their representative on the phone, they opened a dispute for me, and within a day or two informed me that I would be getting a full refund. Luckily, they take responsibility for purchases made via their service, and this period extends to several months.

I would advise anyone buying anything via the internet to make a note of the name of the company, the date of purchase, and all relevant reference numbers when making the purchase. At my advanced age I can’t rely on my memory to keep track of that kind of thing any more. And the emails I kept did sterling service when it came to getting refunds.

The Falling Sword

As an aficionado of historical novels, I was eager to start reading this book by Ben Kane about the clash between Greece and Rome, especially since the cover blurb proclaimed ‘Can Greece resist the might of Rome?’ As I later found out after clarification from the author, this blurb was misleading.

It was in fact a stupid question, as we all know the answer. However, the nitty-gritty of exactly how this came about intrigued me, and I was eager to learn more about that crucial period in the history of the world. Regrettably, by the time I finished the book I was more confused than when I started. I found I was reading about a world in which Greeks and Macedonians were separate (and possibly opposing) entities, but what precisely the difference was eluded me.

Fortunately, the author had kindly provided his email address at the end of the book, and his reply helped clarify the matter for me. This is what he wrote: There was no Greek nation at the time. There was no sense of being ‘Greek’. Someone was an Athenian, or a Theban, or an Achaean, a Spartan, from Corinth, from Aetolia, from Thessaly etc. Macedon was not Greece, no. Macedon was a powerful city state that controlled much of ‘Greece’.

So be it. The book consists of detailed accounts, written in a readable and interesting way, of the battles, tactics, fighting forces, weaponry and equipment of the armies concerned. The author is certainly very knowledgeable on the subject, and the extensive glossary and Writer’s Note at the end of the book contain a great deal of valuable information.

The book starts in the autumn of 198 BCE with an account of the terrain, situation and movemeents of the Roman army led by Tinctus Quinctius Flamininus. Subsequent chapters describe the situation and movements of the Macedonian army, led by King Pbilip V.

In the course of the novel the reader is introduced to several characters of varying ranks in both armies, and despite the author’s best efforts to give them distinguishing characteristics such as names and affiliations, they tended to get mixed up in my mind as I read on. The period described was one in which Rome was challenging the other powers of the ancient world for supremacy, and this involved vast masses of men at arms marching hither and yon and clashing with one another in various horrible and murderous ways. That is the price a nation pays for seeking to defeat its rivals and gain the upper hand. That grim reality is described in considerable and compelling detail, bringing to the fore the brutality of that way of life, quite aside from the promise of reward for participants on the winning side.

In conclusion, I found the book constituted a veritable treasure trove of information about the weaponry, procedures and behavioural minutiae of the armies of the ancient world, giving the reader an insight into a way of life that was harsh but nonetheless the fate of a large part of humanity at that time.

Cover design: blacksheep-uk.com

The Dumbing Down of Israel

Another Independence Day. Another day in which the aroma of roasting meat fills the air wherever you turn. My OH and I are as guilty as anyone else of adding to the general consumption of meat on that day, and enjoy spending time in the open air with friends, because that’s what one does.

Yigal remembers that in his youth in the Haifa area he and everyone else would celebrate the day differently. In those days everyone was out in the streets milling around, then suddenly a few people would form a circle and spontaneously burst into song and dance (the hora, of course). That was long before people started ‘attacking’ one another with squeaky plastic hammer and foam spray.

As a new immigrant in the 1960s I remember enjoying the squeaky plastic hammer experience, though not the foam spray. After getting married and having small children our days of milling around in the streets were over, though we did manage to enjoy picnics in the garden with friends and relatives. Everyone brought their own food, and played games. We didn’t possess a barbecue.

Spending the concluding evening last night watching the Israel Prize ceremony gave me pause for thought, quite apart from my disgust at the censorship imposed by the Minister of Education in refusing to award the prize to a leading scientist because his political opinions were not in line with those of the government.

The Israel Prize is awarded for academic or social excellence, and serves as Israel’s attempt to provide its own version of the Nobel Prize. Sadly, I have never attended a Nobel Prize ceremony, but I have read about it, and I know it is a very stately and serious occasion. Just imagine, if the ceremony would be the occasion for a series of pop singers to pop up, sing and play at the tops of their voices a medley of songs of questionable taste (and certainly not my taste). But that was the overriding tone of the Israel Prize ceremony last night. The whole occasion left an impression of bad judgment and inferior standards.

The recent change in the way the classical music programme on the radio is presented is another sign of the times. Where in the past it was customary to broadcast an entire symphony or concerto with minimal presentation between the items, it now seems to have become de rigeur to play just one movement of a symphony or concerto, and then go on to something else. To make matters worse, certain broadcasters think that their musings and thoughts about music and life in general are of interest to the listening audience. FYI, they are not.

As the torrent of letters of complaint to the newspapers has shown, the audience of the classical music programme is outraged by the change in the approach, as well as by the inordinate amount of time devoted to pop and jazz, oriental music and composers no one has ever heard of.

All these developments reflect the general malaise of Israeli society in recent years, and they doubtless all stem from the political rot at the top. I know it’s a cliché to complain that the country is going to the dogs, but that is certainly the feeling among many people old enough to remember what the general atmosphere used to be. The main fear of my peers and myself is that it’s possible to decline further still.

Remembering

Last night and today (8 April) Israel is marking its own Holocaust Remembrance Day. In another week we will hold a day in which we honour the memory of our fallen soldiers, and then straight on its heels, we will celebrate Independence Day. It’s something of an emotional roller-coaster, but we have learned to take it in our stride.

What it means is that for a week or so the population undergoes some kind of catharsis, with each day marked by special events as well as radio and TV programmes dedicated to the subject. Thus, today, for example, the classical music programme broadcasts music composed by musicians who perished in the Holocaust (Pavel Haas, Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, for example), or Jewish composers who were banned by the Nazis (Mendelssohn, Mahler, etc.). The evening ceremony at Yad Vashem with which the day of remembrance starts, commemorating the six million Jews who were murdered, was televised, and all other TV programmes focused on that theme.

So all in all, it’s a day of sad contemplation of what the Jewish people has lost, not only in numbers but in individuals, parents, children, relatives, people who worked with their hands or their brains, doctors, scientists, artists, writers, and lawyers, and so many others. So much talent wasted, so many minds and bodies obliterated senselessly.

And then there were the children. My Facebook feed shows me photos of well-dressed children who were obviously dearly loved, their sweet, innocent faces looking out at me from the distance of time and space before they were torn from their homes and brutally killed. I sometimes find it unbearable to read the captions under the photos describing who they were and how old they were, and to my shame I quickly continue on to the next item in my feed.

The ceremony at Yad Vashem is also part of the package. I force myself to listen to the speeches, though when the politicians begin using the occasion to glorify their own achievements I have been known to switch away. But the ceremony also includes harrowing personal accounts from survivors, and these I find it impossible to avoid. Of course, those who survived are now in their eighties and nineties, but those who spoke were amazingly lucid and their memories clear, intense and distressing. But they all concluded their speeches by proclaiming their love for Israel and rejoicing in their families.

My cousin, Uri Lowenthal, has undertaken a project which involves transcribing and translating the last letters, postcards and Red Cross messages sent by our grandparents from Germany in 1941. A letter written by a relative some years later to Uri’s parents explained what had happened. True to their methodical approach to every aspect of their life, our grandparents had arranged everything for their journey out of Germany, with papers, train and steamer tickets, and every document required by the authorities. They were at the station with their luggage, about to board the train that would take them to the port, when the official who checked their papers declared that our grandmother, Paula, who was fifty-seven years old, was still young enough to work in a factory, and prevented her from leaving. Our grandfather, Max Hirsch, who was three years her senior, would naturally not agree to leave without her.

And so their fate was sealed. Whether they were sent to a concentration camp or died in some other way is not known. They, too, form part of the six million missing souls whose lives were cut short by the unimaginable cruelty of the Nazi machine. Just another drop in the ocean of sorrow that is part of our heritage.

Learning the Lingo

A recent article (by Elaine Samuels, on Facebook and in the Israel Telegraph online) recounted the trials and tribulations she experienced in her efforts to learn and speak Hebrew. This triggered long-dormant memories of my attempt to learn Hebrew.

Although it’s many years since I underwent that process, the memory came back as if it had been just last week. In my day (some fifty years ago) there was no internet, no ‘Tel Aviv Café’ and in fact computers hadn’t been invented. Learning a language was a lengthy and complex process involving frontal lessons, written homework and much pain.

The concept of the ‘ulpan’ (intensive immersion in a language) was developed to a fine art in Israel, and sometimes even involved a residential option. The idea is to classify students by level of fluency in Hebrew and assign them to classes accordingly.

But when I came to Israel, in the late summer of 1964, no ulpan would accept me. The university term was due to start in late October, and because I made it clear at the outset that I was not going to be able to complete the course I was refused admittance wherever I applied.

And so, completely unprepared as far as the language was concerned, I embarked on my M.A. studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, while at the same time working as a research assistant there. Luckily, my work in the Department of Sociology was based primarily on my ability to read and understand (and edit) the English texts produced by various members of the teaching staff. An attempt was made to test my ability to translate from Hebrew into English, but my ignorance of basic terms soon made it clear that this was not a good idea.

I would sit in lectures or seminars given in Hebrew, trying frantically to catch a word or two that I could understand, and attempting to work out the gist of what I was hearing from that. Obviously, that did not get me very far, and what with one thing and another (war, marriage, children) I never completed that degree.

When my daughter was born I stayed at home to look after her. In my isolation I would listen to the radio, and eventually managed to benefit from some of the programmes. One of my favourites was ‘For the Housewife,’ hosted every morning by now-famous actress Rivka Michaeli. This consisted of a pot-pourri of five-minute talks by various experts. One of these was a chef who provided useful recipes, another was a children’s doctor who doled out advice in a soothing voice, and yet another was the (female) editor of a newspaper who would talk about matters of the day, and so on. In between musical interludes Rivka Michaeli would interview artists, musicians or any other personality who was invited to the studio, and this, too, gave me some insight into what was happening in the world around me.

In effect, that programme was a useful introduction to life in Israel (my years at the university had kept me isolated from general Israeli society). In addition, somehow along the way I managed to pick up enough Hebrew to enable me to go on to my next career, as a translator of Hebrew texts into English.

So it would seem that the standard form of language teaching in Israel is not the right approach for everyone. I was lucky in having very little option but to listen to the radio when my children were small. And once they went to kindergarten and school the Hebrew language made its way into our daily life. My efforts to speak English with them were met with less and less success, though there are still vestiges of English in our communication with one another.

Even my grandchildren can communicate in English to some extent, though whether that’s due to my efforts or their need to keep up with the world around them is debatable.