I'M PRETTY SURE WE'RE BEING HARRASSED

I didn't want to talk about this until I was pretty sure that it's not just a confluence of events.

The benefit of the doubt started wearing off last Shabbat when I invited one of my Family members for Shabbat and that Relative didn't so up. It turns out this person is being stopped on a regular basis by the police and being ID'ed. Usually, it ends with that. The last time, early Shabbat morning, this Relative was taken to the police station, questioned and fingerprinted. They dumped out this person's bag and found tobacco from this Relative's cigarettes. They sent it to a lab. They wanted to hold my Relative until the lab results came back – which can take days. Luckily my Relative convinced the police that there was no need and my Relative was allowed to go home.

This same relative said one day s/he got home and his/her pet was gone out of the house and s/he had to go look for the pet and found the pet wandering around.

My Husband has been stopped twice by local police and ID'ed. The last time was a few weeks ago when he was stopped on his way to synagogue and asked where he was going. Where would an old, religious Jew be going on a Shabbat morning?

Very often when my Husband goes to synagogue on Shabbat evening, while he's out; I suddenly feel stoned out of my mind. It's a terrible feeling and my coordination is off to the point where I need help serving the food for Shabbat. They like to hassle us on Shabbat.

Two of the pets in our Family seem to have some coordination problems. Lula is always missing when she tries to jump and falls often. Sometimes she just loses her balance and falls off a chair. Another pet can't catch a ball on the fly.

My Husband and I had to go to town this afternoon. It just so happened that as I was getting dressed I took pictures playing with the mirrors and you can see that the curtains on my closet are drawn. I had already taken out and put on the caftan I wanted to wear. You can see I drew the curtains. There was no additional reason to go into the closet and I did not.
When we got home about three hours later and went into my bedroom I saw that one of the upper curtains was drawn open and some of the things that I keep there were in disarray. Nothing was missing. They were not thieves. No one from our Family was in our apartment today. We checked with them. There is no animal in the house that could have done that. Lula never climbs that high. If Lula did climb up there she would have shredded the thin, satiny curtains. Whoever came in just wants us to know that someone was here.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
22 June 2010
DoreenDotan@gmail.com