A friend of mine from high school moved to Israel many years ago and married, had five children and spent his life as a professor at a university in Jerusalem. I asked him once to explain the Israel/Palestine conflict in a succinct way. He told me that it was impossible to do that. He did say that he had one child who built a house on the West Bank and he had refused to help pay for it. That was the extent of what clarity he could share with me.

I appreciated his candor when I read the book pictured above Can We Talk About Israel by Daniel Sokatch published in October of this year. He walks the reader through the whole history of the nation of Israel, the decisions that allowed its creation, the people who already lived there who weren’t consulted and the inevitable discord that has existed since then.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, promised to “solve” the conflict maintaining that it was “really just a real estate issue.” I knew at the time that his intervention was absurd, but the book clarifies just how much worse his involvement made the region, particularly promoting moving the American embassy.

Sokatch’s careful walk through all the Prime Ministers in Israel’s history was very clarifying. He is able to go beyond the “right wing” “left wing” labels so often used in the American press. I was able to see how radically differently the government at any one time attempted to work with or work against the Palestinians.

The book is easy to read, humorously illustrated and just detailed enough to allow any one of us to admit we know much less about Israel and Palestine than we thought we did. I welcomed the humbling and thought back to my friend’s true answer to my request for a simple explanation: “it is impossible to do that.”

In my professional life I had the joy of discussing literature three times a week with a class of eager and not so eager student readers. I appreciated hearing their different understandings of each writing, but too often was the designated “expert” supposed to tell them “what does it really mean?” No matter how many times I told them literature was not written for college professors but for general readers, they turned to me for the final opinion.

In retirement I have the pleasure of being one reader among others in several iterations of book groups. One group of five women formed after our gym shut down last year. It turns out we enjoy each other even more when we aren’t having to count repetitions! Here we meet once a month for about 90 minutes to talk over a selection made by one of us. We take turns suggesting and choosing the books. It is a time blessedly free of academic language. No “real meanings,” no “hidden symbols.” In fact it usually is a relaxed time to catch up and talk a bit about the books and a lot about our lives.

Once a week I talk to a friend across the country about a chapter of whatever book we have chosen. Again, we take turns picking the reading. We chat for 30 minutes about the reading and about our grown kids. Right now we are half through the tome by Jill Lepore “These Truths,” a history of the United States. Even though my friend majored in American history, it is especially fun to see what each of us never learned in college.

Every couple of months I have the joy of an international book group hosted by a Canadian. This introduces me to a myriad of books that I not only haven’t read but to authors I have never heard of. This humbling experience reminds me that I will never have to run out of good reading. I actually used to be afraid of that when I was younger!

Are any of you in book groups? How do they work for you?

The good news is that I had my hands in my pockets so I didn’t thrust my arms out thus breaking my wrists. The bad news is that 10 days ago I fell from a full upright position to a full lying down position after catching my toe on a sidewalk flaw such as the one pictured above. I was watching a hawk instead of my feet. I have tried to be careful to either walk or look, but I was totally captured by the hawk.

I am grateful that I suffered no serious, as in broken bones or ligaments serious, damage. However, I took a knee first and then an elbow before rolling over in astonishment asking Charlie what in the world had just happened. An x-ray revealed nothing broken. My kneecap did what it was supposed to do according to my doctor and protected my knee. My bruises are ugly and swollen and will take some time to reabsorb into my system. After reassuring me that the hematomas in question were not the kind of blood clots that travel to the lungs(I never miss an opportunity to catastrophize) my doctor told me to rest until I felt better, elevating my knee and icing it periodically.

Be careful out there. It turns out to not take too much to bring any one of us to our knees.