{"id":1730,"date":"2006-12-05T15:02:31","date_gmt":"2006-12-05T15:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/05\/insert_west_win\/"},"modified":"2016-06-19T13:30:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T20:30:54","slug":"insert_west_win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/05\/insert_west_win\/","title":{"rendered":"THE WEST WING AND THE MIDDLE EAST"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"West\"<\/a> They carry West Wing re-runs in Israel. I\u2019m sitting here on a break between a day of walking through this holy city and dinner watching and crying. Can\u2019t believe it. It\u2019s the one where Mrs. Lanningham dies \u2013 a sad one, yes \u2013 but as my husband just said to me \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s a television show.\u201d He\u2019s right of course \u2013 but not exactly.<\/p>\n

Since the end of the Clinton administration, the West Wing hour was the only hour I felt like I had a president I could count on. Seeing it here so long after the show ended and Bravo stopped running it was a real ambush moment. Just reminded me how much I grieve for all I\u2019ve thought should be\u2026 and how very much I feel we\u2019ve failed. Talking with our Israeli friends about not so hard; their own sense of despair over the state of this country brought it all back. I\u2019ll get over it\u2026<\/p>\n

Before my weeping incident it was a lovely day today. Early morning at the Kotel \u2013 me and the rabbi\u2019s 7-year-old daughter on the women\u2019s side and all the guys on the men\u2019s. It was sunny and cool and the city glows in the morning. Of course it\u2019s unsettling to pass through metal detectors to pray but once you\u2019re there, it\u2019s quite an experience.<\/p>\n

\"Spices2_bags_market_3\"<\/a>We had a great breakfast back at the hotel, then went walking with our friend Asher. We spent a couple of hours exploring the Mehane Yehuda market \u2013 crammed with vegetables and spices; meat, cheese, sneakers and clogs, sweaters, hats, nuts, loose tea, bottled water and almost anything else you\u2019d want to buy. Asher took us from there to his old neighborhood Nachlaot, historic old houses off narrow streets.. strands of flowers hanging off some of the roofs and historic plaques decorating the walls.<\/p>\n

So there it is – another day in Israel — the ridiculous, the sublime and the inevitable intrusion of the political longings that even a great adventure can’t stave off forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They carry West Wing re-runs in Israel. I\u2019m sitting here on a break between a day of walking through this holy city and dinner watching and crying. Can\u2019t believe it. It\u2019s the one where Mrs. Lanningham dies \u2013 a sad one, yes \u2013 but as my husband just said to me \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s a television … Continue reading THE WEST WING AND THE MIDDLE EAST<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,9,98,97,78],"tags":[128,1681,2002,290,2420],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-politics","category-religion","category-television","category-travel","tag-israel-2","tag-jerusalem","tag-middle-east","tag-president","tag-west-wing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-rU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4567,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/4567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}