How did Jeff and I get so lucky? When we arrived here in the last days of May, Ron Singer ("tzinger") dropped into our lives. We thought we were hiring a tour guide, but what we got was an advanced college education from a man who knows more about history, geopolitics, entomology, religion, ornithology, horticulture and geology than any scholar anywhere, period. And this from a man who earned his advanced degree in immunology at Israel's prestigious Weizmann Institute. So he could answer our questions about interleukin 2 in his sleep. Only Ron Singer doesn't sleep. He's lecturing (or as he calls it "blah-blah-blah-ing), gesticulating, exclaiming, beaming in awe, defining, skipping, jumping, hugging and laughing what seems like 24/7.
His brain must be stored somewhere other than his head, somewhere bigger -- his abdomen maybe? -- because in it he has every historical date and fact about any civilization you can name, including our own in the United States. He can name every person, place and thing in Latin and at least 4 other languages. But his vocabulary defaults, too, to youthful adjectives like "super cute," "insanely ridiculous," "total nonsense" and "sababa." He knows what's in every dish you eat, every weapon in the Israeli arsenal and the details of every battle ever fought. He recognizes the song of every bird. He can tell you what those weird markings are on those buildings over there: batshit, for example. Did you know that Swifts you see all over Israel are related to our Hummingbirds? They don't have feet and after fledging, fly non-stop for three years with their mouths open so they can swallow airborne plankton a mile high in the sky and they sleep on the wing. He knows the derivation of words like salary (salt) and sarcophagus (sarco: flesh, phage: eat away). And if we hadn't dismissed him at the end of the day, he would have been telling us bedtime stories long after midnight. Ron is from humble Hungarian roots. His mama, as he called her, survived Auschwitz. His papa, he said, had a smile even bigger than his own. An only child, and still single in his 40s, he has spent his lifetime buried in books and documents, reading seminal texts in their original languages. He has served in the Israeli military, traveled for eight months in India and led history tours in California and along the Freedom Trail in Massachusetts. From our experience in his company, Ron is at least as well known throughout Israel as Bibi Netanyahu and certainly more popular. At almost every turn someone greeted him by name, stopping to slap his back and inform us that we were being guided by a genius. We needed no assurances. We asked him hundreds of questions and he gave us hundreds of answers. But the takeaway we really got from Ron is that what's going on today in the Middle East is just a blip in the history of this region, specifically, and human civilization in general. Conquerers and zealots and despots and common folk have been doing this same dance back to the beginning of the human epoch and will be doing it long after we're gone. Borders are drawn and redrawn. People and organisms adapt and adapt and adapt until eventually they don't. It doesn't seem to surprise or anger Ron when missiles land across the street from his apartment in Ashkelon near Gaza. People on both sides want what they want. And while history does tend to repeat itself, things also are ever-changing. So Ron stays optimistic that this "ridiculousness" will lead slowly to a kind of two-state peace. Wouldn't it be nice if Ron Singer, with his big smile, open heart, love of nature and appreciation of history, got to make some decisions around here?
3 Comments
Jim
6/23/2014 09:08:30 pm
Holly Crap! That's amazing. There is nothing cooler than meeting a good natured know or all that knows it all. How did you meet him? Is he a for hire guide?
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Jim
6/23/2014 09:11:52 pm
Just reread. Guide. Where can someone hire hm?
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Pat Sormani
5/4/2015 11:43:43 am
Wonderful blog! I just returned from an adventure in Israel with Ron and he was awesome, as you say! And yes, wouldn't it be great if Ron and his big smile and open heart got to make some decisions? Our group told him we thought he and our Muslim bus driver should be running the country! I hope to go back in a couple of years.
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