Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel » Marian Lebor

My mother’s photo album

Marian Lebor — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:41:26 +0000

At the bottom of a drawer in my mother’s bedroom there was a large album full of sepia photographs. As a young girl I sometimes took it out and looked at it and wondered who all the people were. But I had learnt over time not to show it to my mother and ask her about [...]

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Once more into the bleach, dear friends

Marian Lebor — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:03:07 +0000

No sooner have we put away the peroxide hair dye than it’s time to go once more into the bleach, dear friends – at least once more – as we begin the mammoth task of Pesach cleaning. A wide variety of cleaning fluids currently line the entrance to every supermarket in Israel, but bleach is [...]

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My First Christmas as an Israeli

Marian Lebor — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:32:48 +0000

It may seem a little odd considering it was eighteen years ago, but I remember my first Christmas Day in Israel very clearly. I’d been here almost five months and I went to my ulpan class that morning, as usual. The classes were held in Raanana’s immigrant absorption center. As I waited for the teacher [...]

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Israel needs an ehudna

Marian Lebor — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 08:53:02 +0000

Ehud Barak has announced his retirement from politics. Please. I don’t buy it for a moment. We’ve been here before. By rights, Barak’s political career should have been over for good after his humiliating electoral defeat in February 2001. At the time, he said he was taking a break from politics. But he omitted the word “mini” before “break”. [...]

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Amidst the doom and gloom, a bright light shines at Alyn

Marian Lebor — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:33:43 +0000

“Doesn’t anyone have any good news?” was the plaintive question a friend posted on Facebook yesterday. “Yes, I have,” I replied. And here’s my good news. After braving torrential rain, fierce winds and rocket fire as they rode from Arad to Jerusalem via Beer Sheva, hundreds of cyclists have just completed the 5-day Alyn bike ride [...]

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Remember the 4th of November

Marian Lebor — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:23:01 +0000

I remember exactly where I was on the evening of Saturday November 4, 1995, when I heard that Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. My family had spent a lovely Shabbat away with a group of friends at a field school in northern Israel. My children were then aged 12, 9 and 7. As soon as we [...]

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From the still of Yom Kippur to the hustle and bustle of Sukkot

Marian Lebor — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:12:21 +0000

As soon as Yom Kippur’s palpable sound of silence comes to an end, there is the unmistakable clank of sukkah building and the flurry of activity that traditionally accompanies Sukkot. By the next morning, sukkahs have sprung up all over town, including on apartment balconies specially designed to fulfill the halachic requirement of seeing the [...]

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Time to introduce Yom Kippur Time

Marian Lebor — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:04:13 +0000

It is officially winter time. So have we brought our winter duvets, woolly hats and thermal underwear out of storage? Not yet. From where I sit – which is in my garden, early this Sunday morning – the temperature is already in the 70s Fahrenheit, and climbing. There isn’t the slightest hint of a wintry [...]

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A silly season with plenty of nukes, but where are the cukes?

Marian Lebor — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:33:11 +0000

We are almost at the end of what is known in media terms as the silly season. It’s summer time; politicians are away and in theory there are no important news stories. Even though the news here is usually deadly serious all year round, a local equivalent to the silly season does exist. It’s known [...]

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Do we really sanctify life?

Marian Lebor — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:55:14 +0000

Today is Gilad Shalit’s 26th birthday, the first one he is celebrating as a free man since he turned 19 in 2005. Although I organized and joined demonstrations for Shalit during his captivity, I admit that I still balked at the cost of setting him free. But then I heard Benjamin Netanyahu’s official statement when [...]

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Give all Israeli kids a sporting chance

Marian Lebor — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:59:44 +0000

My Olympic withdrawal symptoms started in earnest today. Yesterday’s TV programmes and newspapers still featured reports of the final day’s highlights, so it’s only now that I’m having to contemplate life without my daily fix of any and every sport. Who would have imagined the appeal of fencing, dressage and ladies weightlifting to name but [...]

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Oh to be in Finchley, now the Olympic torch is there

Marian Lebor — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:28:45 +0000

It’s been almost 18 years since I made aliya, and by now I don’t pay too much attention to what’s going on in the old country. My last trip back to London was in March, when Olympic fever hadn’t yet started in earnest. I went to the viewing platform in Stratford City Mall in East [...]

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Before Munich there was Lod: 40 years since the Lod Airport massacre

Marian Lebor — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:42:50 +0000

Imagine a world where you could turn up at an international airport shortly before your flight was due to leave, and undergo a security check involving nothing more than a perfunctory look through your suitcase. Imagine an arrivals hall that had a glass screen through which you could see the people you had come to [...]

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Lag B’Omer: When you can’t see the trees for the wood

Marian Lebor — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:39:28 +0000

There’s one week to go to Lag B’Omer and right now wood is the most precious commodity in Israel. I have a stockpile at the back of my house which must remain hidden away because, even as I write, children all over the country are roaming the streets in search of suitable bonfire material to load onto [...]

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