savoy096

View from the sixth floor of Soroka Medical Center. Four months after arriving in Beer Sheva, I have begun to appreciate a patch of greenery in the desert. This green oasis exists within the borders of the Soroka Medical Center campus.  Soroka is unlike any hospital I am familiar with back home in New York City. Other, more familiar hospitals are comprised of one or two vertical buildings with different wings and extensions added over the years. In contrast, Soroka is a sprawling, beautiful campus, similar to a compact college.  There are various small buildings, each with a different purpose, providing different services. The courtyard connecting these buildings is covered with trees and green grass.  Real flourishing grass. Not the astroturf which “grows” in front of my new apartment building in the Dalet neighborhood. Our days in medical school are long, occasionally ending as late as 5:00pm or 7:00pm.  It is refreshing to step out onto the beautiful green lawns o...

Thoughts on stories (photo by Joy Moy) I’ve been thinking about the purpose of writing. I’ve joined a creative writing circle on BGU camps and we are meeting early this week to talk about the pieces we’ve worked on. I haven’t started yet, and I’m not sure how far I’ll get with it today. It’s been a quiet, odd weekend. The clouds were heavy in the mornings and there’s talk of rain. It’s an odd feeling when the atmosphere has yet to decide if it’s going to pour, or dry the ground underneath it. I think the reason we write is manifold. For me, sometimes I write because I process best through writing. Most often I like to write by hand: 0.4mm black ink on firm Moleskine paper (I admit I’m a snob when it comes to paper). Sometimes I write because I have to, like these blog posts and the poem I need to start; sometimes it just comes and I write in the moment. We have been communicating by the written form for a long time. But before words and symbols, we depended on oral traditions and story...