{"id":4456,"date":"2019-03-19T20:51:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T00:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=4456"},"modified":"2019-03-20T09:38:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T13:38:40","slug":"the-statue-over-ben-gurions-desk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=4456","title":{"rendered":"The Statue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My mother always called it &#8220;the credenza,&#8221; a fancy name for a small cabinet holding a few liquor bottles (for my parents&#8217; few parties) and blackberry Manischewitz (for shabbat). On top sat whatever family photos were in rotation and a bronze statue of Moses holding the ten commandments.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t always know it was Moses. At first I thought he was a mythological creature, and given my views on religion sometimes, that wasn&#8217;t far off. Plus the statue, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rome.info\/michelangelo\/moses\/\">a replica of the one made by Michelangelo<\/a>, had horns. As a kid growing up in the south where some people\u00a0<em>believed<\/em> Jews had horns, I didn&#8217;t think Moses was doing a good job bucking stereotypes. But he was there through my childhood and teenhood, watching with steely eyes when I stole a taste of rum and refilled the bottle with tap water. Consider him a biblical precursor to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elfontheshelf.com\/\">Elf on the Shelf<\/a>. One day, after college graduation, after my parents divorced and remarried other people, Moses was replaced by a crystal bowl.<\/p>\n<p>This February,\u00a0 I traveled to Israel with a group of 17 other children&#8217;s writers, a trip that was sponsored by the <a href=\"https:\/\/pjlibrary.org\/home\">PJ Library<\/a>. The goal was to make connections, with Israel and with each other. I&#8217;d been in a stuck place in my writing for many months, and I thought what I needed was desert air and a brand new landscape. But in many ways, Israel felt like a return to a place I&#8217;d never been. That feeling was confirmed when we visited Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev and the last home of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.myjewishlearning.com\/article\/david-ben-gurion\/\">David Ben-Gurion<\/a>, the first prime minister of Israel.<\/p>\n<p>There on a shelf was the statue of Moses I knew from my childhood, watching over Ben-Gurion just as he&#8217;d watched over me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4457\" src=\"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"3024\" height=\"3024\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956.jpg 3024w, http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956-768x768.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_7956-1024x1024.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3024px) 100vw, 3024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mother always called it &#8220;the credenza,&#8221; a fancy name for a small cabinet holding a few liquor bottles (for my parents&#8217; few parties) and blackberry Manischewitz (for shabbat). On top sat whatever family photos were in rotation and a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=4456\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287,286,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel","category-pj-library-israel-trip","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4461,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions\/4461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}