Flight to Israel

After a two and a half hour delay at O'Hare, I misssed my connecting flight to Israel, and caught the next flight out of Newark, about 7 hours later. Made it through the day on a box of matzoh, two apples, a bannana and a bottle of Naked juice. On the plane, I sat next to an Israeli woman, maybe a couple years older than me, and her daughter. She had a striking resemblance to my sister-in-law, Judy. She was reading Orwell's 1984 in Hebrew, so Iasked her about that and we started talking. The woman had taken her daughter to California as a gift for her bat mitzvah.

After asking me what I was going to be doing in Israel, she told me that she was "not political." (My friend Ayelet, who I will be staying with for the first few days here, had said the same thing when we spoke last week - that she wasn't political.) That's not to say that she didn't have feelings or opinions. Because she expressed both very well. She lamented the political situation and felt very discouraged about any prospect for change. She was a fashion designer and at one time had a lot of her clothing manufactured in Gaza. She said had made friends there and that the people she interacted with in Gaza just wanted to make a life for themselves and their families. But since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and the ensuing chaos, she has her clothing lines manufactured in China and makes regular trips there.Which I suppose allows her to be "non-political" in the sense that she does not feel the urge or need to act on her political leanings.