Whenever we go anywhere these days, we almost always preface it with a discussion about whether we really want to go or not. And our conclusions vary.

We had this conversation this week, and opted to go. We are very glad we did.

The event was a session at American University with Israeli author Etgar Keret. Keret is a very popular writer, mainly of short stories, but also of film scripts and children’s books. His stories tend to be written in plain language (maybe think Hemingway) but have an ironic twist (maybe think Kafka). I have only read a few, and I can’t say that I was attracted to them. Keret also teaches at Ben Gurion University, and I have heard him speak there, as well.

He is a very engaging speaker. Very creative. Short, thin, and with a ready and winning smile.

His major topic was how Israel has changed since the Hamas invasion, so it wasn’t a pleasant talk, but it was filled with humor, and I did take a few notes about his remarks that made me laugh. Let’s see if they seem clever in print.

For one thing, he talked about growing up in Israel, the son of two Holocaust survivors. He praised his mother and her inviolate “rules”. The rule he liked best is that, if it was raining, she wouldn’t let him go to school. Her feeling was that the few things his only moderately adequate teacher would teach him were “just not worth getting wet for”.

His mother is a tough lady. Once, she took him to a pediatrician, and there were two chairs in the waiting room, occupied by another mother and son, a woman whom his mother knew. The mother told her son to let Mrs. Keret sit down because she was a Holocaust survivor.  But Keret’s mother wouldn’t take the chair. She said to the young boy that she was going to teach him a lesson. Holocaust survivors, she told him, are tough. They don’t need to sit down.

And then, there’s his very orthodox sister, who lives in Jerusalem in Mea Shearim, and has 11 children. And she has “more than 50” grandchildren. A little later, he clarified, and now I paraphrase. “When I said she had more than 50 grandchildren, I didn’t mean she has 51. She told me she stopped counting when she got to 50. That it was bad luck. Who knows how many she has? Maybe 70. Or 80.”

Keret himself has one son. When his son was very young, unsurprisingly Keret made up a story for him every night. One night, after the story, his son said “Can you write that one down?” Keret was surprised and asked why. His son responded, “Because that’s the way we make a living.”

…..

Maybe you had to be there.