“You search for love, that never stops as long as you live, it’s the human condition.  If the love you had when you were little was a little crazy, or very crazy, well, that’s going to explain a lot about the rest of your search,” said the Israeli.  “You think it’s easy to trust crazy people?  But you can’t live without love and you can’t truly love without trust, I can tell you that from my own life.”

“What’s all of a sudden with the fucking Israelis?” asked a second Israeli, no less impatient than the first to be on to his favorite subject.

“I’m trying to explain to him not to feel like a schmoke, him and his beautiful friend over there, I also don’t want her to feel like a schmoke, ” said the first Israeli, “he and his beloved both had very scary starts in the world.  She will deny it, turn it into something that made her strong, he will admit it with way too much not always hilarious detail, but basically similar stories.  You look for comfort in a hostile world and the person who is giving it to you is a victim twitching with terror, eyes darting nervously, cortisol is being released every two minutes.  Children from war zones have this kind of elevated cortisol and adrenalin, programmed with fear as they develop only the most primitive childish theories on how to live without terror.”

“You want to talk about terror?” asked the second Israeli, “I can tell you plenty of stories about terror.  In fact…”

The first Israeli cut him off, “I don’t want to talk about terror, we’re talking about love.  I mentioned the extreme form of fear only to illustrate a point.  Fearful people can act brave, and its an inspiration to the brave among us sometimes, but at the core of their operating system there is fear.  Terror is terrifying, everyone knows about that.”

“I’ll tell you about terror,” says the second Israeli, “I have some interesting theories for you about terror.”

“Terror we’ll talk about another time, love is the subject today,” said the first Israeli, undaunted.  “Love is the highest feeling there is, connection to another, to others.  Love is what every song is about, finding it, losing it, lamenting its loss, getting a second chance, hoping for new love, the redemption of loving and being loved.  ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved, in return’ as the strange enchanted boy sings to Nat King Cole.”  

“Yes, we can talk about love songs, it’s a nice topic, but they are on their way to Yad Vashem, these two, looking for the lost hamlet where the river split into three branches to the southeast of Pinsk.  The place where the angry side of his family was stomped like so many cockroaches.  You think they are thinking of love songs, Shmulik?”   

“Why do you have to say my name, Doody?   We are abstractions, literary devices and you have to pull off the masks like it’s nothing?  I don’t understand you, man.  Yad Vashem is Yad Vashem, love is love, mixing things is mixing things.  You like to mix things, don’t you?”

The second Israeli waved his hand dismissively, “you like to keep things simple.  I get it.  OK, love is love, we search for love, if we were raised in a fearful house where we were not heard, felt in danger all the time, developed massive defenses, it will be harder for us to move past fear and trust people and give and take love in the comforting way everyone hopes to.  Is that a pure enough telling of what you were talking about, Literary Devicesky?”

“You dance so divinely, Doody.  Why is it that you have had so many wives?” said the first Israeli.  

“Look, Mr. Don’t Mix Things In, now we are suddenly talking about my three wives, only three.  Not so many, really.  And why are you… eh, never mind.  Have you noticed that neither of us has let either of these two get a word in?  Not a single word.  That’s kind of funny, I think, since they are your guests.  I think it’s funny.”

“I don’t know if it’s funny,” said the first Israeli.