South Jerusalem

Dear friends,

Flexibility has been the watchword of the Niot Project since its inception. To help teenagers who are having a hard time learning it’s absolutely necessary, as we see it, to tailor an individual intervention plan to the individual needs of each one. But it’s also necessary to make frequent alterations, because these are young people who needs change from year to year, month to month, and even week to week. In this year of the Covid-19 pandemic, this flexibility has become all the more important. The Niot Project has adapted the help it offers to a new set of circumstances in which schools and boarding facilities close and open unpredictably and in which students and teachers have had to adjust to distance learning.

Eden Israeli, the head of the Niot Project, told us this week that over the past year the Niot Project coordinators in all the schools and boarding facilities have continued to work hard to identify students who are having problems and to provide them with help. “The coordinators report that the students having trouble this year are not necessarily those who have had trouble in school before this year,” she says. “Some strong students are having trouble learning on Zoom and doing their schoolwork.” As such, art of the coordinators’ work has been to maintain close contact with both teachers and students in order to identify those who need extra personal help or work in small groups, or simply a personal conversation. “Many of them don’t want another Zoom class,” Eden says. “They want to meet face to face.” Such meetings can happen at the boarding facilities, which have reopened, but it’s more difficult at other schools, where not all grades have gone back to school yet.

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Haim Watzman

Dear readers,

I wrote my first Necessary Story in April 2008. At the end of last month I posted the link to “The Azedarach Tree,” my 157th. At the beginning of this week, David Horowitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, where the stories have appeared for the last two years, regretfully notified me that his publication will no longer be able to serve as a home for the stories.

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Haim Watzman

What a father sees from his window in the dark of an October night triggers painful memories.

Chill autumn gusts whipped the gaunt branches of the azedarach tree across the road and the wind above propelled ragged clouds across the sky. A pale gibbous October moon flickered in the heavens as the clouds passed; the wan light of a streetlamp lit the earth below it. Off to the right, past the tree, in the parking lot by the jerrybuilt shopping center, a heavy man was shouting at the top of his lungs as he emerged from the driver’s seat of a taxicab. It was a quarter to two in the morning, and Eli watched from a half-open third-floor living room window, having just spent ten minutes singing Kobi, his five-year-old, back to sleep.… continue reading at The Times of Israel

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Haim Watzman

A Necessary Story for Rosh Hashanah: a father seeks out the son he sent away, with his mother, many years before.

Eitan presumed that his knock had been heard because he made out a woman’s muffled voice and the sound of children’s scurrying feet. But the door did not open; he looked back at his Kona, parked just off the earthen road, in the shade of a eucalyptus tree.

He’d waited long before getting out and, when he did, he staggered in the thick, damp heat. He leaned against the side of the car as desiccated greenish-brown leaves and pieces of dull bark fell softly on the metallic blue finish and on the wisps of white hair he had combed that morning over the barren spot at the top of his head … continue reading at The Times of Israel

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Haim Watzman

When you’re demonstrating against Bibi, you can’t hurry love, you just have to wait.

Amihai held the border guards in his hard, straight-in-the-eyeballs gaze for a full two minutes. They weren’t letting him and his best buddy Razi past the roadblock. His look told the troopers that he was acquiescing in their orders not because he was scared. And not because he didn’t think he had full right to vault over the barricades and dash straight into the heart of Paris Square. It was just 200 meters up the street, the epicenter of the demonstration in front of the prime minister’s residence. He gave in because Razi was the quiet, law-abiding type, not a barricade buster.

Also, he’d finally managed to get the boy out and on the street after months of quarantine and self-imposed confinement and he wasn’t going to give him any excuse to chicken out and go home. … continue reading at The Times of Israel

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Haim Watzman

Two boys take a hike with their father in an unexpected direction.

Gadi realized that the boys were not behind him. The midmorning sun was now high enough that the shade was shrinking on the path in Nahal Kisalon. Gadi’s t-shirt was soaked behind, below his backpack, and a large wet stain was expanding from his chest downward. To endure the heat he had trudged along, allowing his mind to sink into that hypnotic state of half-dream that closed the world off from his mind, or his body from his mind. Now his sons were not in sight.

“Zevik! Tzvi!” he called out.… continue reading at The Times of Israel

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Haim Watzman

A Shas door-to-door emissary explains Shavuot to a non-religious woman–and tells her own story in the process.

Baruch Hashem. I thought you’d never open the door. I knew you were home, I saw through the window that the light was on, so I waited. You were in the bathroom? Did you say asher yatzar? The one I told you to say whenever you finish in the bathroom. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Just let me step in. The air conditioning feels so good. You wouldn’t believe how hot it is outside. I’ve nearly fainted five times this afternoon, going door to door. … continue reading at The Times of Israel

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Haim Watzman

A lone flower spurs memories of my soldier son, who died nine years ago in the springtime

A lone anemone, petals open to the sky, catches my eye as I cross the trampled lawn in the park near my home. In other parks and vacant lots, the flowers appear in exuberant flocks, patch after patch of red within the sun’s incarnation in green, the smiles of springtime’s return. This flower stands alone, vulnerable to the feet of ball-playing children and the paws of racing dogs. Tears come to my eyes.

It’s the Shabbat in the middle of the Pesach holiday. Nine years ago, on this Shabbat, my younger son Niot died.… continue reading at The Times of Israel

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Previous Necessary Stories about Niot:

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