Basia Monka

My motto: keeping life interesting and meaningful!

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Dec 26, 2023, 1:18 AM

Monday. December 25th is Christmas for many of you. For me, it is Monday, the 80th day of the war. As with all Israelis, 80 days of worrying about the hostages. The 80 lonely days on so many levels. Everything,...

Aug 27, 2021, 5:51 PM

Elul got me by surprise

Elul got me by surprise, and by the time I absorbed the notice of coming to the end of the Jewish year, the month of Elul is almost over. It suddenly feels like everyone around me is planning the...

Mar 13, 2021, 11:47 PM

I went to a concert — I’m alive!

I am a culture addict, so neither opened bars nor restaurants; certainly not shopping malls and sports centers gave me the feeling that we are going back to life, but the open cultural institutions. I missed listening to live...

Dec 18, 2020, 1:33 AM

We need a miracle – here and now!

In the last few hours of Chanukah, I am asking for a miracle. We, who lit candles in the last eight nights, were saying blessings and singing about miracles that had happened in’ those days’, have we prayed enough...

Sep 22, 2020, 1:18 AM

“Enjoy the ‘seger’!”

“Enjoy the ‘seger’!”, “Enjoy the lockdown!” – the most common sentence I heard in Tel Aviv, in the last two days of 5780, just before Rosh Hashanah, The Jewish New Year. Of course, no one knew how the ‘seger’ will...

Jul 1, 2020, 1:31 AM

Subjective diary of corona ‘surnormality’

For the last few months I have been asking myself, what does it mean normality? What makes life normal, and what does not? What makes us, humans, normal, and what defines us differently. I cannot find a clear answer. Going back...

Apr 7, 2020, 9:48 PM

Pesach in Quarantine

Warsaw, it was 1990 or 1991, the restaurant “Menora”, the only Jewish restaurant in Poland at that time, and the first Seder Pesach I remember. I was the youngest of the community crowd singing “Ma nishtana?”. Tel Aviv, 2020 –...

Mar 18, 2020, 10:27 PM

Art & culture ‘corona free’

“Amazing, subtle, and at the same time the precise sound of Sir András Schiff in the beautiful Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no 4! I am not always a fan of a pianist & conductor in one person, but in Schiff's...

Sep 12, 2019, 11:15 AM

‘Shway, Shway’… Let’s try to slow down in this fast world

“Shway, Shway” – kept saying the Bedouin woman who was my private guide, I met on top of the mountain in Petra. She appeared suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, while me and some other lost tourists were looking...

Aug 28, 2019, 2:53 PM

Poland and Israel before elections — reflections, on the bus…

Last Friday, I was on the bus from Be’er Sheva to Tel Aviv, it was my second bus already that day, on the radio there was Limahl and Spice Girls. When I first visited Israel it was 1993, a...

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About Me

Basia Monka is a multilingual journalist with many years of experience in TV and leading respected international publications, specializing in both culture and politics. By education, a psychologist. Besides, she is a coordinator of international high profile events, Jewish educator and consecutive interpreter. In Poland, she worked also in the film industry, as an assistant director and interpreter on the set. Always passionate about culture and travel.

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