We have two lovely rooms here at the hotel but I hate shelling out so many pounds just for sleeping! It even costs six pence to say "good morning" to the hall porter. I decided to find a vacation apartment and go housekeeping.
"There's a charming place on Edgerton Road" so Harrod's told me. In fact Harrod's tells everyone everything here in London. Whomever I ask and for whatever I ask, I am told, "Go to Harrod's."
So I went to Harrod's to have my hair set and I went to Harrod's for the apartment. The hair turned out quite "charmant", the apartment quite mordant! a deadly place! The dust on the walls reached out with cobwebby fingers and the dust n the floor oozed forth with each step, murmuring, "Don't disturb me. Let me rest! "The lady of the place couldn't understand why she hadn't had more inquiries but I think I know. The people couldn't survive the hill.
I went to another agent, The estates agent, as they say here, got some more addresses. There was one set of houses, rented by the week- all white and gold, charmingly arranged very "Madame Pompador"-ish. The lady of the house agreed with me when I said the place was less for us than for a batchelorette.
"Looking for adventure" she added.
"And what a disappointment if she doesn't get it!" I added.
No, it was not for us.
"A lovely place", said a third agent looking for the key to the W.C. and the kitchen, "I don't seem to have the key" he stuttered searching his pockets. I searched the room with my eye. I didn't see any door to put a key into.
No bathroom
No kitchen
No!
"why don't you look in the personal columns of the Times?" my wise English friends asked me.
So I did. "Luxurious flat, Mayfair, Mayfair! Even I knew that Mayfair is Mayfair. And I called up.
"Mrs. Gateshead, speaking". (Sounded like 'spicking'
"Mrs. Hollander spickimg, I answered Englishly. When can I come over to see the flat.
"Oh, when ever you like"
"Will 9:30 be alright?"
"If you don't mind finding me in my dressing gown."
"Not if it's s lovely dressing gown. "I felt very Mayfairish. You should have heard my put on English accent!
I put on eye make-up and wore my highest heels. The doorman let me in. The "dressing gown" was nothing but a plain nylon smock and the Mayfair gentille-dame, a tall attractive Brunhilde. The apartment was nice for a single female full of small furniture and nic-nacs from Rome, Florence, Geneva, Stockholm and all points west.
"A sweet place, really," I said, but I don't exactly see my husband navigating among all these things."
"Oh", she said encircling her precious little possessions with a gesture, "these I shall put away"
"Good Idea" I thought.
"We looked over the apartment. Frilly bedroom, silly guest room, willy-nilly kitchen.
We sat down on the Empire davenport and had a "chat".
"It's 22 guineas with help, you know". I didn't but I was glad to hear about the help.
"I hope the help won't be going on vacation when I'm to be here." I had learned something from bitter experience.
"Oh, no" she fluttered, "You see she's on vacation now. That's why everything is so upset.
It was!
Couldn't I get someone in to give it a good going over?
"Oh no!" she shrugged her shoulders in absolute ridicule, "You can't get any help these days. Nobody wants to work anymore.
"Not for any price?"
"Well they get four bob an hour!"
"Seems to me it's better than being a secretary. Don't they make less?
"P'raps they do", she said, "but they would all rather be secretaries"
"Social prestige", I said.
"Yes, social prestige," said Mrs. Mayfair, "That's it! That's the ruination of England Everybody is seeking social prestige. That's why I spend half the year in Italy. There, thank God, the servants pick up the things I drop as well as their own!"
"I'll be needing references, you know". she continued in a slightly conciliatory tone. "The property owners are quite particular They won't let me sublease to us anyone. No colored people are allowed here and last year I almost rented the place to someone who turned out to be Persian. It was most embarrassing and I had to make all kinds of excuses. In fact there was a couple with a colored maid and they wouldn't rent to them either."
I really was surprised at that. A colored maid can add distinction- in a white uniform - Quite Mayfair, I should think.
"But this one slept in the building!"
I was enlightened.
On the way home, I got to thinking about this conversation. L looked in the mirror. Nobody could mistake me for a Negro and as for being Persian, my blue eyes belie that.
So I called her up when I got back to the hotel.
"You know," I said "you said some things that caused me a little uneasiness. "You see, I am Jewish and I wouldn't want...
"Oh no," she laughed in her most boisterous Mayfair. There's nothing like that! Why half the property owners in London are Jewish.
"Is that so?" I said, "Really? and it sounded just like "rilly".
Of course I could make a cause celebre about not taking an apartment where there is discrimination. but the real reason is that I couldn't see Herm among all that feminine furniture,
So, we're still at the Rembrandt paying six pence to say "Good Morning".

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82 THE TESTIMONIAL HERE CALLED MASADA MOOD
"But certainly our hands are still at liberty and have a sword in them; let them then be subservient to us in our glorious design: Let us die before we become slaves under our enemies and let us go out of the world together with our children and our wives in a state of freedom" ,Eleazer of Masada" (from Josephus)

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Masada
Masada is not just a hill in the desert that as been "unearthed. It is a code. It is a way of life. It is an essence. I felt it from the beginning.
The morning held its breath in a kind of "nature holiness", like a hymn. The dawn slowly broke the darkness in the distance with a pale yellow light. The tents stood like trees on the treeless hill. The bare stone crags
outlined the sky. From the "White Promontory" two thousand years of silence met my ears. Wonder dinned my heart and mind.
How had they ever picked this spot?
How did they ever get up here?
Water- where from?
And they built buildings "with corner towers sixty cubits high" Who had carried heavy bondstone after heavy bondstone and placed ponderous boulder on ponderous boulder?
Asses, oxen, sheep and camels! How many had slipped on their unaccustomed hooves into the wadi below?
The women, the children. the men. The guts of them!
The newspaperman's tape recorder was an anachronism. I heard him interviewing the archeologist. "Yes, we've found mosaic floors, a water heater, monogrammed jugs, a Beth Knesset, a pool, pieces of glass, stone fixtures.." the inventory went on..
My small pickaxe rang, "skirk, skirk, the warning ton of metal against pottery. A spot of umber peeked out in the earth. I gently coaxed the jug handle out of hiding. There under a pile of hundreds of stones toppled from walls once straight, pressed day and night for one hundred forty-eight million nine hundred and twenty thousand hours they had been lying in oblivion, waiting for this moment when I would come and sift it out from under the dust of time. Who was I to come and find this testimonial? I with my long generations behind me belonged here because of them and was squatting here on the floor of their storeroom under the constant sun digging out the broken pieces of that life that had so long ago started mine.
I lifted the shard up into the light. Whose were the fingers that had molded, the hands that had raised, the feet that had trudged? Men's souls beat within the clay!
"Found a coin!" shrieked a voice behind me. I felt a streak of possessive jealousy. I wanted to have found the bright green circle, oxidized by winds and rains and storms and suns, giving testimony by its very existence .
There was fascination in expecting the unexpected, compulsion in the search, adventure in the discovery and intimation in the revealed.
"Here's a small bone," I called to ,y neighbor. Probably, a chicken", I said, not liking to think of the death of a child even so long ago...
Would we find a graveyard where those who were killed before the end were buried? Will the stones say, "Here lies:-
"Yochanan ben Aryeh who stood guard at the North Gate and after four days and nights of ceaseless watching fell with a Roman arrow in his throat" or Yael bat Gurieh who met her death carrying water to her loved one on the night watch" or Gad who died before his time at the age of eight because he forgot that children do not play in the shade of a tree when catapults play havoc with the world.
We noticed a plant tendril incongruously competing for space with the inanimate bequests of long ago, pushing itself very stubbornly into life under the debris of this hermetically sealed vault of ages, a ridiculous bit of weed. insisting on growing in this lunar like geologic stratum, putting out little feelers, grasping at the tiniest irregularities on the smooth face of the worn stones in order to help itself to its feet in its climb towards the sky, finding every crack, every empty space to creep forward into. It endured ,survived, grew to eight thin inches in unnumbered years. Why must it grow? What for? How long?
The little weed was like a prayer there in the grit, or better, like a blessing, asking for nothing, just bearing witness to an indomnitableness, to a birthright, to something that is forever!

Like a poem A gaunt and tender poem. Being its own opposite in its very essence Its nature forged Tremendously strong and immeasurably weak. Quite crazy. An idiot thing on the floor of the mausoleum Seeking nothing but to live. Why? Is the answer in the broken jug? In the coin marked "Israel"? In the double walled edifice? Is the answer not in the charcoal heaps, The unburnt logs In the papyrus shreds In the words that were written The thoughts that were believed And is the answer not in the lines recorded Out of the seed of memory Is the answer not in the man, Eleazer, the Jew, In the man's idea Handed down, as he said From his forefathers, Their natures being forged Tremendously strong and immeasurably weak Nine hundred and sixty burned everything But the Testimonial Killing themselves there near the weed now seen Now green Seeking nothing but to live They died. "The soul of man continues," Eleazer said,

Invisible to the eyes of man.. for whatsoever it be which the soul toucheth, that lives and flourishes and from whatever it is removed, that withers away".

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ALMOST 1947 47

Dear Herm,

Last week was really hectic. I had two written reports to hand in, each over 15 typed pages. The typing wasn't so bad but the organizing and gathering of material!. I spent hours in the library, reading. It was great fun Most of the stuff I read had nothing to do with the report I was making but it was so interesting that I just read on and on.
I am very proud of my two "opuses" and am waiting impatiently to get them back. One is an experiment on learning that was pretty innocuous in itself but led me on to many curious thoughts and made me aware of things I had never thought of before. It would be interesting to record "thought gestures". Have you ever noticed that most people, when they are trying to remember something hold their chins, knock their foreheads, stick out their tongues or hit their fists against each other. They usually tense some muscles when trying to "remember something. On television, on the quiz shows, it is sometimes ridiculous to see the kinds of faces that are screwed up "in order to remember". It must help! But how? and why? As far as I know, no one has pursued this line of thinking.
The attitudes on both teachers and students are rather "unscholarly". The kids say if we didn't have to worry about marks, we'd do much better. The Profs say If we didn't have to give exams, the kids would never learn anything. The kids say , If the Profs didn't have to give marks, they'd never prepare a lecture! So there you are!
I did find a book in the library which I thought of sending you, "With Love From Gracie" by Hegger, Sinclair Lewis, first wife. She paints rather an unattractive picture of Lewis as a human being but keeps harping on his genius as a writer and excuses his egotism and selfishness. He used to bore people by the hour, she says. At first, she thought it was interesting and thought that everyone else did, too. Then she couldn't listen anymore. Life is crazy! Theirs was a real romantic love affair. Ended up in divorce!
SHIRI
Sunday I went up to Maple Lake to see Shiri. She looks
wonderful, talks a bit hoarse. They all do up here. They yell around so much. Of course, she is the best swimmer in her bunk and swims in deep water already. We brought her a lot of candy "junk" and she is very popular, even without the candy, all the kids like her,