When I Was Anglo-Saxon

Edward the Confessor, an Anglo-Saxon king. Source: Bayeux Museum

I lived for a couple of years in Israel, when the country and I were both much younger. I studied Hebrew for five months with an international group of émigrés, refugees, and wayfarers, and then I took a series of office jobs in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. My spoken Hebrew was pretty good by then. My reading and writing were slightly better than adequate. I carried a teudat oleh: an immigrant certificate that entitled me to health insurance. I…