You may consider this one as a special issue, since it is mainly a book report...
...
It is quite rare that a book takes my breath away, last time it happened was with Salinger's nine stories, so it took me some time to catch my breath and write this post.
The book is by no means translatable to another language, a virtuous performance of words on paper. (as someone toying with B&W sketches, I'm stunned by this black print on white paper artwork)
The book's name is כפור (NUNTIA), which may be read in Hebrew as frost or atonement, and it unclear which is the 'real' intent - if any.
A mix of futuristic Religious jews, a yearning for a dead sister that parted leaving a huge hole in the heart, Poetry, Cinema, A detective story and Judaism as a practice of segregation.
But mainly the book is a concentrated love to language, without any פretense that even scratches the author's capability.
Shimon Adaf changes scales from Jewish-Aramic to modern-Hebrew to Futuristic-Religious-Hebrew, and writes poetry that scratches your (my) bones to the marrow.
Is there a conflict between religion and art? is religion afraid of the proximity to God?
It is a book one needs (but can't) read s-l-o-w-l-y, and every time I had to re-read a phrase to better understand it I was thankful.
The drawing is of a orthodox-jew waiting for our flight, that was late, I hesitated what to draw in this post: angels, people, religious-jews, letters or plain nothing...
But it is really the right background.
Signing off,
me.
----
On the flight, the boy said, dad, can you draw the clouds?
Not that easy, I replied, show me.
So he did.
...
Oh, and the heavenly music has its own story.
At the airport, I asked an Oud-carrying-dude to teach me all the Oud Torah standing on one foot.
after he did, he played me this piece as a present (that I am delighted to share with you), he was accompanied by another musician, a black-dressed-jew sitting right in front of us (first row center), listening attentively, while noisily eating crunchy stuff from a really-really-noisy plastic bag.
The performance was disrupted by the airport announcement that the plane is ready for boarding.
