There I was, childishly delighted to drink my own face

David’s niece, Yael, works with GNT, a therapy centre in Eilat for survivors, especially the child survivors, of October 7. Lev Otef, founded within GNT as an emergency fund for the survivors, “was born out of heartbreak but it exists out of love”. Trauma, they believe, is imprinted in the body. By the water’s edge they have built a light airy building, where they provide music, dance, meditation and creativity. Then there are the dolphins. They are free spirits who live in the sea but somehow sense where their presence can heal. Apparently these large-brained, intuitive mammals choose which child they will swim with. The effect is soothing, diverting and, some say, utterly liberating.

One boy had not taken off his shoes since he and his mother were captured, for fear he would have no shoes on if they came for him again. He slept in his shoes. On the second day he took them off and walked on the warm sand. After contact with his dolphin, he was able to put on goggles and a snorkel mask without triggering gasping flashbacks to the airless tunnels where he was held captive for so many months. If you have a spare bob or two of Chanukah gelt left, you might consider a healing donation (see website below).

This is just one of the aspects where Israel is far ahead in tech and innovation. In the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem I was presented with a cappuccino with my face on it. In froth. Don’t ask me how they did it or why I was singled out for special treatment.

We did have dinner with the actor Kevin Spacey and his manager Evan Lowenthal in Tel Aviv – no, don’t jump to conclusions because a) he was never convicted and b) he, for all his faults, is a philosemitic man, performing his one-man show to 2,000 Israelis and c) he is, without doubt, the finest actor I have ever seen on a stage. Anyway, it is possible they primed the Orient we were a “somebody” because I have no personal profile in the country. But there I was, childishly delighted to drink my own face.

I love going to my local cinema but I have no desire to drink or eat there. I’m there to see the film. We sought out Blue Moon, a Richard Linklater film, wordy and stationary by today’s standards – it all takes place in a New York bar on the night of the opening of the musical Oklahoma!, and basically concerns the sour and envious sadness of Richard Rodgers’ former lyricist Lorenz Hart. All right, it wouldn’t appeal to the Marvel comic crowd but at the Vue on Finchley Road we were a small but appreciative audience of four. Ethan Hawke, a marvellous actor, was neither short, Jewish nor gay but otherwise perfectly cast. Hart wrote my favourite lyric. It is a couplet from the song It Never Entered My Mind.

“You have what I lack myself,

And now I even have to scratch my back myself.”

Plus – my second favourite lyric from Pal Joey, excised from the film version:

“I’ll sing to him, each Spring to him

And worship the trousers that cling to him.”

Not to mention:

“Vexed again, perplexed again,

Thank G-d I can’t be over-sexed again.”

Sticking to a theme, our outing of the week was to the SODS ball. As in Society Of Distinguished Song writers. It is a lyrical event, bringing together some of the honoured writers who have created the music that has accompanied most of our lives. Tony Hatch, tiny in a sparkling tuxedo, bashed out Messing About on the River, Downtown and Don’t Sleep in the Subway; while Marty Wilde, at 86, belted out, with a trace of irony, “Why must I be a teenager in love?” The production values must have been done by Poundland and the food at the Landmark hotel defied the rules of digestion, but it was all so good-natured and sentimental that none of us gave a wham, bam, thank you Sam.

One more thing, then I’m through… Mr Wonderful. If you missed the Sammy Davis tribute on BBC4 – find it. If he didn’t have enough tribulations alongside his God-given talent, he actually chose to convert to Judaism. Famously, one day on the golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. “Handicap?” he asked. “I’m a one-eyed Negro who’s Jewish.”

PS I am frequently told that I am brave to speak out, but of course from the comfort of a safe-ish democracy it is not difficult to appear brave. I am, honestly, as the old BBC used to say, “of a nervous disposition”. I look behind me a lot. At the lighting of the Chanukah candles on Primrose Hill Bridge yesterday, I never stopped looking behind me, whether singing Maoz T’zur or stuffing a doughnut in my mouth. It wasn’t a big turn-out but it had passion and pride as well as fear.

I do not understand, notwithstanding the horror to come of Bondi, how a march can proceed through Birmingham with a wall-to-wall banner saying “Globalise the intifada!” Had it said “Kill all the Jews in the world,” would it THEN, perhaps have invoked the Race Relations Act? I shall be at Downing Street’s Chanukah lighting this week. I shall say, “Keir, you are allowing a premeditated call to murder.”

amutatganat-gnt.org/en/donations/