Visitors from the Old Country

I spent the morning telling everyone at work that my daughter was "Arusa" which means "engaged" in Hebrew, being careful not say that my daughter was "Harusa", which means "destroyed" - although that could be interchangeable once they marry, non?

Last night, though, we were invited to dinner with friends from Canada who were here on a visit. I ran over to them, and was happily met with

"Wow! Did you get a face lift or something. Have you been sleeping with other men?"

Canadians.

Walking to the restaurant, the elated tourists from the Great White North, looked at me seriously.

"What happened to you."

"Whaddya mean?"

"We hear you're into this Peace Now stuff. How COULD you!! You used to be so right wing!!"

Always at a loss for how to start off conversations like these, I said whatever words flew into my head at that moment.

"Look, I'm just tired of all the hate and violence. I want to live in a place where there isn't any of that. So I get together as often as possible with a group of people that have that vision too."

"Don't you know you can't trust any of them?"

"I thought just like that too. Remember."

"Well, we don't live here and don't know everything going on."

"Exactly. There's no simple solution to all the problems. But having little faith in either government, I have alot of faith in people. We'll get it going somehow."

My friends still seemed horrified. They are thoroughly for transferring the entire Arab population in Israel to other Arab countries.

"How can you do that to people who have been here hundreds of years who have roots here?" I said, equally as horrified.

She refused to believe Arabs have roots here. Same story. Many Arabs also refuse to believe WE have roots here. But we have to realize both our people do and respect each other for it. Whatever.

We sat down to eat and drink and be merry. This is the Jewish month of merriment, after all. And I had countless drinks of Japanese sake.

"You heard Wolfgang Droege got shot last year?" asked our friend. Wolfgang was a notorious White Supremist in the 1980s in Toronto. Hubby's gay brother befriended the rather lonely racist and Wolfgang eventually tried to get out of his evil ways, finding it difficult to find legitimacy - because it's hard when you're marked as a racist for people to grasp that sometimes even THEY can change.

"Well, why do you think he got out of being a white supremist? Don't you think the friendship between his new Jewish friend and himself was a bit of a factor there?"

In that restaurant not only was there an abundance of food to stuff ourselves with, but also an abundance of food for thought.