Soldiers, Sons and Daughters

It is painfully clear that Israel needs a strong well equipped army in order to  defend the country against threats from our enemies. Some countries, like the United States have professional armies where service is a career choice and there is no draft. That's good and bad. Good because it's efficient for training motivated soldiers for service and bad because the burden (and consequences) of army service is not evenly distributed among the citizens.

In Israel we do it differently. Israel Defense Forces (Tzahal) is known affectionately as 'the army of the people'. That's because (in theory) there is universal draft here. By their 17th birthday everyone has received a letter from the army to report for preliminary examinations. Thus begins a series of physical, psychological and aptitude testing geared to finding the right people for the right jobs in this complex organization.

In addition to keeping us sage and secure the IDF figures heavily in educational, economic and social aspects of our country. Through programs like MAKAM which gives young people from problematic situations (drop-outs, disadvantaged, delinquents, immigrants having difficulty adapting) intensive help so that they can serve better and also build up their life skills and help them get further in life. There are special programs for integrating deaf soldiers as well as those with other handicaps into appropriate jobs in the army.

Mystical Paths, a charedi blogger describes his daughter's army service here. (definitely worth reading the whole post)

  "Among general Israel you move from immigrant to real Israeli when you or your child enters the IDF. You’ve joined the ranks of those who have put their blood on the line to defend our common lives and community."

Lives depend on soldiers doing their jobs right. It is dangerous for us to treat soldiers like children. Of course on a personal level, they are our children. (Although I'm 62 my mother still expresses concern about my losing sleep when she realizes that it's sometimes midnight when I call her, so I know that you are always your mother's child.) But, in a world where adolescence is often prolonged well beyond the age of 18 these men and women are trusted with adult responsibilities and all of us have to take that seriously.

This week, Anat Kamm was sentenced to four and a half years in jail for systematically stealing and passing on hundreds of classified documents to a journalist. Her father testified "in her favor" saying that his daughter had not intended to harm state security but was merely “foolish, stupid, idiotic and vapid.”

The court disagreed saying that it was difficult to believe that "the defendant, who has a high level of intelligence, did not understand the meaning, implications and danger of transferring huge amounts of data to a journalist for publication.” They also dismissed the notion that this was youthful folly pointing out that the security of our nation depends on the commitment of  young people to the responsibility of military service which they take seriously and do well.
Our soldiers bear this tremendous responsibility with honor and we owe it to them to treat them as responsible adults.

Here is another heartwarming project of the IDF: (Can't help but love this army!)

A Night at the Movies

This week's Haveil Havalim is here. 
I love the theater. There is something magical about seeing real live people on the stage. Movie theaters on the other hand are noisy places where I usually don't enjoy myself. When I do watch movies, it is usually at home where I can get up in the middle and move around The last time I went to see a movie in a movie theater (not counting with my grandchildren during summer vacation) was when I went to see Yochai Rosenberg's "The Yard"  documentary in Tel Aviv. That was a lovely experience where we got to visit with the filmmaker and the film itself was a moving piece of Jerusalem experience.
Last night, my daughter and I went to see Joseph Cedar's new movie "Footnote" הערת שוליים which won the prize for best screenplay at the Cannes festival this year.

We both enjoyed the movie immensely. The story is about a father and son, competing for recognition. It's also about the academic world with its own special brand of jealousies and intrigues. It is believable and the main characters are well drawn. There are a few (but really very few) scenes about relationships that are not so well developed and maybe should have been left out. Mostly the story moved along smoothly playing off family relationships against academic rivalry, truth playing against love and loyalty. Can they coexist?
Add to the story a backdrop of great scenes in Jerusalem which strike a nostalgic chord and I am captivated. The professor walks from Rehavia to the Hebrew University through the valley which is today criss-crossed by roads, public buildings and whatnot but the film  ignores that. There are scenes in the Jewish National Library on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University as well as of the Rehavia neighborhood.
Something I usually don't notice is the background music in a movie but this time it just seemed to fit making the entire movie experience very pleasing.
Keep this up and I just might go to the movies again, one of these days.

Learning to Ask ~ Passover Preparation

ראש חודש ניסן תשע"א

Rosh Chodesh Nissan 5771

Frume Sarah's World is hosting Haveil Havalim #311- The Warp and Woof Edition here. Ima on (and off) the Bima has the latest Kosher Cooking Carnival here. 
 Like everyone else, I am getting ready for Pesach. Of course I'm cleaning, planning menus and shopping planning to shop. There is Pesach in the air here. The day after Purim, all the stores are advertising cleaning materials and housewares. Pesach has taken over the airwaves and the advertising.
Our shiurim (classes) are all about Pesach, getting ready for the holiday spiritually and practically. This Shabbat we announced the coming month of Nissan and read the Maftir emphasizing the importance this month, calling it THE month. And what a month it is!
 No holiday beats Passover for nostalgia. I believe that some of my earliest memories are of the seder night. I remember sitting at the table in my grandparents house and my grandfather getting up to go to the kitchen to wash his hands and my mother calling me over to take a matza from the table. She said "we"ll hide this in the other room while grandpa is washing" and we went into the small closed porch where there was no light on because my baby brother was asleep there (just shows how long ago that was) and she said to me "we'll wrap it in this diaper and put it here near the baby so they won't see it". I remember feeling vaguely confused as to why my grandfather was making such a fuss about getting up from the table to go to the kitchen and why we needed to put the matza near the baby.
 Then first grade rolls around and I am attending an all day Jewish school where we learn Jewish subjects and Hebrew reading in the morning and the three R's in English in the afternoon. We have been given a Hagada and we must learn the Ma Nishtana (4 Questions) by heart in time for the seder. We spend  what seemed like weeks repeating the Hebrew words alternately with the Yiddish translation.

Tate, ikh vil dir fregn de fir kashes
Ma nishtana halayla hazeh mikol haleylot.
Farvos iz di nakht fun peysekh andersh fun ale nekht fun a gants yor?

The Yiddish, it was explained to us, was so that our grandparents would understand (and be impressed with us). My memory of getting up that year and singing this is of a great feeling of accomplishment at having done it and lots of smiles and encouragement from the assembled mixed with a total blank as to understanding what I was saying. I'm glad my grandparents understood what I was singing, because I certainly didn't. Oh well. What I did understand was what the English teacher taught us and that was this song:

At the time, I didn't know it was associated with slavery in America. I really did think it was about Moses and the Jews.Over the years I have developed an understanding of the significance of feeling that I too was led out of Egypt and have tried to pass it on to the next generation. Now, dozens of seders later I am getting ready once again. Only now it's my turn to prompt grandchildren to 'steal' from their grandfather and ask questions. What a privilege!

"New" Halachic Ruling by Rav Ovadia Yosef on Women Saying Kaddish

The grandson of Rav Ovadia Yosef, who was the Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1983-1993, maintains a website where he records halachic rulings (psak) that he learns from him grandfather at the Yeshiva 'Yachveh De'ah' in Jerusalem. It was pointed out to me that there is a ruling involving a woman sitting shiva whose parent died and there is no son to say kaddish. Rav Ovadia rules (here in Hebrew) that she may say kaddish when ten men are assembled for prayer or learning (the times when a man would be saying kaddish in this situation).
(You can read about this psak - with a short excerpt translated at the Vos Is Neias site.)
Although the practice of women saying kaddish is referred to historically it still is not universally accepted practice. It is interesting that the custom is becoming accepted in many synagogues as well. (Rav Ovadia specifically does not allow the practice in synagogue - but only in a private home.) Rabbi Hershel Schachter of Yeshiva University in a very encompassing lecture available at the YU Torah Online site  "Halacha and Modern Family" states that the merit of saying kaddish in memory of a parent is specific to the children of that parent.Rabbi Schachter tells us that the deceased is judged not only by his own deeds but by the legacy s/he leaves behind in the world. The deceased direct descendants therefore show their devotion to mitzvot by saying kaddish and doing other mitzvot in their memory over the period of mourning. The yahrtzeit is considered a date when not only the judgement of soul of the deceased is reviewed in heaven but also the actions of their children and grandchildren are scrutinized. He brings up the practice of asking someone who is not a relative say kaddish in the case say where there are no sons to do so. He says that some women are not comfortable saying kaddish in shul so they might ask someone else to say kaddish for their parent. But the direction that he is taking is definitely that in terms of the effect on the parents soul in heaven it is well served if she herself says the kaddish. In the shul where I go, women do say kaddish (along with the men) and it is satisfying to see that this is becoming more widely accepted.
In poking around on Rav Ovadia's halacha site I found this psak in English this time relating to women saying the HaGomel blessing upon being saved from some catastrophe or recovering from an illness. He maintains that the women can and should recite this blessing in the synagogue with ten men answering amen.

Song Worth 1,000 words!

I've got to admit that US President Obama and his Secretary of State Clinton's  reaction to the 'student unrest' in Egypt came across to us ex-pats here in Rehovot (representative sample of 2, me & David) as being only randomly tangential with reality. It was a flower children view of 'protest' conjuring up Pete Seeger-esque scenes. Sandy Cash, who is maybe a tad young to remember the sixties has captured the spirit of our response in this lovely ditty she posted on Youtube.
Apropos Sandy here's a personal favorite of mine.(non-political) Enjoy!

One Melody - Two Renditions

Modzitz is well known as THE most prolific and melodious of the chassidic dynasties. The founder Reb Yechezkel of Kuzmir zt"l was a student of the Baal Shem Tov. the founder of the chassidic movement. The history of the group is fascinating and you can read more about it here in English. The second Modzitzer Rebbe, Reb Shaul Yedidya Elazer Taub zt'l escaped Poland to the US in 1940 where he remained until 1947 when he came to the Land of Israel to join his son Reb Samuel Eliahu Taub zt'l, with whom he had traveled to Eretz Yisrael in 1935 and who had remained in Tel Aviv with his family. Reb Shaul arrived in 1947 to join his son and lead the chassidut. He took ill and died on November 29, 1947, the very day that the UN voted on partition. He was immediately buried on Har Hazeitim (Mt. of Olives). He was the last Jew to be buried there and his family did not even have a chance to put a stone over the grave. It was not until Jerusalem was re-unified in 1967 that the family was able to do this. The musical chassidic court thrived in Tel Aviv and later moved its headquarters to Bnai Brak.
Over the years the rebbes and their followers have composed and sung hundreds of melodies. But, as happens with folklore, the melodies were sung but not written down (none of the rebbes had musical training). All that is changing now. There is a group (site only in Hebrew) which is recording the melodies and archiving them. They are collecting tapes and interviewing chassidim and have published two disks already.
Both David and I like this kind of music. A few weeks ago we attended a concert in Tel Aviv by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Yuval Cantors Choir and five guest cantors in a program of chassidic music. It was amazing! The clip below is of a Modzitz melody. (recorded with my still camera acting as a video so the quality leaves much to be desired but you get the idea)

Now, listen to real chassidim singing the same melody celebrating Tu B'shvat. (The melody starts around 5 minutes into the video right after the l'chaim.)

Enjoy!

Memories and Music in Gedera (of all places)

Gedera holds pleasant memories for me. When I came to Israel after the Six Day War in June of 1967 our group ended up right near Gedera. There wasn't much to do after we finished work, so we ended up going to Gedera a few times, mostly on foot. Once we got to Gedera we usually had a felafel and a drink at one of the two places on the main road. For lack of much else to do we watched the traffic on the road. What we saw was mostly tanks and other military vehicles many of which still bore the Egyptian markings. These were the spoils of war being transported.  

Gedera was founded by members of the Bilu movement in 1884 and was one of the first settlements of the modern period. The main street in Gedera is Biluyim street after these first settlers. It is tree lined and is home to some very nice restaurants and galleries set up in these renovated old homes.

Badolina is a cafe and bakery in Gedera. We celebrated my daughter's college graduation there a few years ago so I have particularly warm feelings about the place. The food there is very good and they have really excellent cakes. Badolina has a new branch in the restored Port in Tel Aviv which was the first and for a long time איקonly kosher restaurant in the area. 

This week we spent a lovely evening in the yard listening to the brothers Ehud and Shachar Ariel sing accompanied by guitar and harmonica and a drummer who drummed on a wooden box. They performed mainly songs by their father, the late Meir Ariel.  

Meir Ariel (from the official site)

Meir Ariel was a paratrooper in the Six Day War and helped liberate the Old City of Jerusalem. He later recorded a song to the tune of Naomi Shemer's Jerusalem of Gold called Jerusalem of Iron. It was considered at the time very cynical because he mentioned smoke and blood and the black of mourning the soldiers.After that he lived in the US for a while where I guess he picked up his own style. His songs are in the vein of Bob Dylan in his folk-rock period and some of them lean toward blues. You know, the kind of music that appeals to those of us who came of age in the sixties. (Remember don't trust anyone over 30? sigh) The evening was very successful. We arrived early and heard the performers warming up. The weather here has been warm so sitting outside was very pleasant. (We are praying for rain, should I feel guilty for enjoying the mild weather?) and in honor of the occasion I even had a drank a glass of sparkling wine. David had beer. We also ordered some light food to nosh on which was very good. I had salmon in teriyaki on skewers served over a salad and David had penne noodles with mushrooms and cheese.
The music was great. Ariel's two sons have become religious and sometimes it seems a little incongruous because this is not what you would associate with Breslever Hassidim. Well, that's not totally true because Shuli Rand does music in this style but his lyrics are of a more religious nature. Ehud is a very talented guitarist. The drummer Omer Seri was amazing because instead of a set of drums he sat on a box and drummed on it. They did add a medley of Jewish songs and the audience sang along enthusiastically. (It is much easier to sing along with these songs than with the folk-rock - at least for me.) All in all, we agreed that it was a very special evening and look forward to doing this again some time.

Women, Rabbis, History - 5771 is going to be an interesting year!

Reform Rabbi Frume Sarah has done a lovely job of Havail Havalim #285 called Back to the Beginning.
And yes, this has been a week of so many beginnings that I had to pick a few to begin this week and few will have to wait till next week. Oh well, happy 'after the chagim' to everyone!

My 5771 beginnings: 
Monday evening we returned to our regular women's gemara class at my synagogue led by our amazing teacher Nahum who demystifies (did I just invent that word?) the world of the Talmud and helps us as we slowly but hopefully steadily improve our Aramaic and learn to analyze the gemara's logic.We are learning Brachot. (This dvar Torah is from the siyyum of the first chapter.)

Tuesday morning I went to the first class of the year at the new women's beit midrash (literally: study house) appropriately named Bina Yetaira (literally: greater wisdom*). The class is given by Rabbanit Malka Piotrkovsky is entitled "The wisdom of the sages - selected studies of educational philosophical halachic issues taken from oral Torah sources". The first topic was women and Rosh Chodesh (the new month). Rosh Chodesh is considered a special day for women and we followed the discussion about how the women marked this day and why. We read from the Talmud, midrash and halachic sources. Her teaching style is very interactive and there was never a dull moment.  There were about 50 women there from many different cultural backgrounds and some of them shared the special Rosh Chodesh customs of their mothers and grandmothers. There are many women in Rehovot who are interested in expanding their knowledge of Jewish sources and it is gratifying to see that the demand is being taken seriously. Kudos to the Amit women's organization and the Rehovot municipality  for sponsoring this program.  It was an amazing learning experience and I look forward to participating in this class.

Tuesday evening (in between I did go to work) I went to see the first play in this year's series subscription that I share with my friend Yael (6 plays that are fixed and 1 which you get to chose out of 4 possibilities). I like the subscription idea for several reasons. One is that it's cheaper than buying individual tickets. The second is that it exposes you to plays you might not choose yourself either because they are by new or obscure writers or because you just are not familiar with them and besides I would never be organized enough to find out about and buy tickets to seven plays in one year. The play was Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge. I will write more about that soon.
Wednesday morning found me at orientation for the transcription and digitization of Sir Moses Montifiore's censuses of Jewish communities in the land of Israel and Egypt and Sidon. I already participated in this project for the censuses of 1855 and 1849 and we are now doing 1866 and 1875. I find it exciting to deal with these real life lists of people who returned to Zion and see where they came from and what they were doing. On Sunday night I missed a celebration of the launch of the online census searchable database in which we volunteers were given certificates honoring our part in the project. I was given my certificate this morning. And here is my name in the credits on the site (my 15 minutes of fame?).

*The Torah says (Braishis 2:22) that G-d created Eve from the body of Adam. The term used is "vayiven", from the verb bonoh, "and He built". The rabbis had an oral tradition that this verb "vayiven" has an additional level of interpretation, from the root "binah". "Binah yeseirah" was given to women more so than to men. Women mature intellectually at an earlier age than men; therefore girls should become bat mitzvah at age twelve, while boys only attain their intellectual maturity at age thirteen (Talmud Niddah 45b) (from here).

Israeli actors and playwrights want to boycott audiences in Ariel

Savion Liebrecht whose play The Banality of Love I saw and found so profound and really special has joined over 50 other people connected with Israels theater industry in signing  a letter declaring they will not perform (or in her case have her play performed) in the new cultural center in Ariel. See the articles here or here. I saw Liebrecht's play as part of a series  organized by the Rehovot community center. We get to see seven plays which are chosen by the center and then usually one or two shows (not always plays) which we get to choose from wider range of events also sponsored by the community centers. We see the plays at the Wix Auditorium in the Weizmann Institute, which is the largest auditorium in Rehovot. I love the subscription because it gives me an opportunity to see many plays during the year and exposes us to work we might not choose ourselves.I am a native New Yorker (home of Broadway) and I love seeing real live human beings perform! Movies and TV don't even come near the thrill of seeing and hearing real people on stage! Many of the plays we see are original plays written in Hebrew and these I find very interesting because although they are not all great plays they do reflect a lot of the culture around us and it is interesting to see Israeli culture develop. 

Ariel is a municipality founded in 1978 and now has a population of close to 20,000 residents with another 10,000 students who study at the college there. The town jus finished building a new cultural center and contracted for a series of plays to be performed for the local residents. Ariel, as you can see from the map here is right in the center of the country but it is 11 miles (17 km) over the 'green line'. And here the plot thickens!. Many of the people connected with the theaters are refusing to participate in the productions planned to be staged in Ariel. They don't want to be in the conquered territories. This is what they say: 

"We wish to express our disgust with the theater's board's plans to perform in the new auditorium in Ariel. The actors among us hereby declare that we will refuse to perform in Ariel, as well as in any other settlement. We urge the boards to hold their activity within the sovereign borders of the State of Israel within the Green Line."

Israelis consume a disproportionate amount of culture and one of the reasons is that the theater companies (as well as orchestras and other cultural organizations) are marketed to the public through subscriptions like mine as well as through labor unions and other groups that buy blocks and resell to their members. So although the Habima Theater (now undergoing renovation) is located in Tel Aviv, the troupe plays to audience around the country in setups like ours in Rehovot. Other theater companies that perform around the country are the Cameri Theater (also of Tel Aviv), the Be'er Sheva Theater and the Haifa Theater. There is also the excellent Gesher Theater, whose home theater is in Jaffa, which was started for and by Russian actors in 1991 at the height of the great aliya, to give them an opportunity to perform in Israel.  Needless to say, in a country as small as Israel supporting so many quality theater companies requires a good deal of government subsidy.
I'm sure that Habima's management means what they say on their website in the context of 'dialoge with different audiences' (emphasis mine):

 "Annual awards given to theater professionals for outstanding achievements in their work. HaBima has performances throughout the country, giving the Israeli public, from anywhere at any age, the opportunity to participate in theater - Jews and Arabs, secularand religious, young and old, from the central region to the periphery; Zabarim (sabras - born in Israel) and Olim Hadashim (new immigrants)."

Well, that may be what the management and the taxpayers want to think, but 'artists' have a right to decide where and to whom they will perform. They feel that by their presence they are lending credibility and legitimacy to the occupation. These 'artists' don't mind being in Jaffa, Haifa and Safed of course because that's Israel, right? Oh, excuse me, but Abu Mazem thinks he should be returning to the home he was born in in Safed. Who's going to tell him that the 'artists' don't count that as occupied territory. Oh, and Jaffa of course, also isn't occupied.  Maybe they should make sure that their audiences in the "central region" and in the "periphery" aren't comprised of people who are serving or have served in the occupation army or pay taxes that support the occupation government. 
These writers and actors have the right to say all this, they have the right to act on their convictions too. Culture should be a unifying factor for us. I can't help feeling that these people are more interested in partisanship than in unity. So if they want to be political they should run for office and face the practical day-to-day problems of running a country. In the meantime, till they take over they must accept that the audiences (and the government) don't have to finance their endeavors. 

Klezmer Music in The Abuhav Synagogue in Tzfat

From May to say the end of October the weather 'forecasts' here in Israel are pretty boring. Creative weather reporting consists of 'hot', 'temperatures hotter than normal for the season', 'seasonably hot', 'a small drop in temperature' and these last few weeks we have been hearing the phrase 'extreme heat'. Now certain parts of the country, like our hometown of Rehovot, can have 80% humidity and on an 'extreme heat' day just walking across the street can produce the sensation of walking through a hot mist. On days like those Rehovot folk dream of  being the hilly areas like Jerusalem and the Gallil where we think it's better because the humidity is lower.
To escape the humidity and because we love the views and the music we booked a zimmer in Tzfat (or Safed, if you prefer). A zimmer (from the German word for room) is a room or small apartment, usually attached to a home which can be equipped with a bath or shower and sometimes a fancy 'jacuzzi' and some kind of kitchen corner usually with a fridge. Fortunately ours was air conditioned because humidity or no, it was HOT.

In recent years, Tzfat has become famous for hosting a Klezmer Festival where over three evenings there are over 100 performances in eight spots in the historic section of the city. Thousands of people sit on plastic chairs or the stone steps of amphitheaters and enjoy traditional Jewish music.Besides the festival itself, Giora Feidman  (who has done more than anyone to popularize and revitalize the genre) has been organizing master classes in clarinet. He invites master musicians from around the world and students come and learn from them. In the evenings there are free concerts which are open to the public. These are less formal and include performances by the master virtuosos as well as the students.  This year we visited Tzfat when the master classes were being held. 

On Friday afternoon there was a 'Kabalat Shabbat' (welcoming the sabbath) concert in the Abuhav Synagogue. The synagogue is named after Rabbi Yitzchak Abuhav, a 15th century Spanish rabbi. and was built to resemble Spanish synagogues incorporating kabbalistic symbols into the design. It was recently refurbished. It was an amazing experience. The musicians played lovely traditional shabbat music in various arrangements. At one point some of the women musicians came up to the balcony where I was sitting and continued playing along with the musicians playing downstairs. It gave new meaning to music-in-the-round! 
After having spent the morning exploring the old Jewish quarter and visiting the city's first cheese factory this concert was the perfect way to prepare for a really restful Shabbat in this beautiful city. 
Below is a clip of Chanan Bar-Sela who is one of the moving forces behind the Klezmer Festival and the master classes and concerts. The man getting his picture taken with the talented musician is the mayor of Tzfat. 

Tel Aviv - Revisited

One sweltering Friday morning in August I accompanied a few young members of our family on an outing to Tel Aviv. Our destination was the open air arts and crafts fair held every Tuesday and Friday at the Nachlat Binyamin pedestrian mall which is right next to the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately the fair itself has no English website (that I could find) but there is a photo gallery here on the Hebrew site. 










Tel Aviv got it's start in the area when the first homes outside Jaffa were built by the "Ahuzat Bayit" group which got started in 1909.(Tel Aviv just finished celebrating it's 100th anniversary.) The Nachlat Binyamin neighborhood was founded just after that (1911) and the homes there were less expensive than the Ahuzat Bayit ones. It seems that the source of the name Nachlat Binyamin  is disputed. One story is that that the founders applied for financial help from both the JNF (Jewish National Fund, an organization which collected money from Jews in the diaspora to fund land and forestation projects in what became the State of Israel) and from Baron Rothschild. They said that if the JNF gives the money we"ll say it's named for Binyamin Ze'ev (Theodore) Herzl and if Baron Rothschild come through then it will be for Binyamin (Edmond) Rothschild. 















The neighborhood has long since lost its lost its original character and now has Tel Aviv's unique mixture of 100 years of architecture. Some of the buildings are better preserved than others but you can still see the old grandeur. 


The fair it self is colorful, crowded and lots of fun. There is even some street entertainment. Below are some photos of the craftspeople and their wares. By the way, to participants have to be selling their own wares (so that you actually meet the artists themselves). 

C

The Banality of Love

Last week I went to see the play "The Banality of Love" presented by the Beit Lessin Theatre.


Playwright Savion Liebrecht's parents were Holocaust survivors who brought her to Israel as a toddler in 1950 from their native Germany. In her latest play she grapples with the relationship of the "Yekkes" with their love of German culture and their betrayal by their fellow Germans.


The play about the love affair between Hannah Arendt and her professor Martin Heidigger is a forceful dramatization of this conflict and Liebrecht exploits it brilliantly. The story begins with the adoring young Hannah entering into an illicit relationship with the charismatic philosopher to the dismay and chagrin of her Jewish fellow student and suitor. That was 1929. By 1933 Heidigger was a member of the Nazi party and as newly appointed rector of his university at Frieberg banned all Jews from campus - including his own mentor. Heidigger was tried at Nuremberg where he refused to express regret and was not allowed to return to teaching. Arendt kept in touch with Heidigger after the war and refused to condemn him. Indeed her attitude of forgiveness toward Germany as a whole was met with resentment and enmity by the Jewish world and in Israel in particular.


Liebrecht's play sets an old sick Hannah on one side of the stage and a young vibrant Hannah on the other. The part of the older Hannah is played by Leora Rivlin who is one of my favorite actresses and the young Hannah is well played by Michal Shtamler who really looks like a young Leora Rivlin. Heidigger played by Oded Kotler also moves between the past and present but the Hannah characters interact with each other across the years. The movement between present and past is done very skillfully by interweaving a fictional set of circumstances that emphasize the incongruity that leads so many Israelis to resent Arendt's position.


Many German Jews who came to Palestine (Eretz Israel) in the 30's and 40's never really gave up the German culture. Even when they did learn Hebrew and used it in their daily lives German remained their idea of culture. After the war some, even some survivors of the Holocaust were able to make the distinction between German culture and the nightmare of the Nazi era, But their children for the most part didn't make this distinction and the atmosphere in Israel in the early sixties was one of zero tolerance toward German Nazis. 


It was against this backdrop that Hannah Arendt came to Jerusalem to report about the Eichmann trial for "The New Yorker" magazine. She later published a book about the experience called " Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ". Her idea was that evil was just a function of thoughtlessness—the tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion and not thinking critically about the results of their action or inaction. (Sort of 'it could happen to anyone'.) A Jewish woman, one who had even suffered at the hands of the Nazis, who advocated forgiving or overlooking the Nazi connection in favor of continuing German academic and cultural traditions was not a popular figure on our landscape. The play presents an Arendt who is bothered by the attitude of Israelis towards her. Arendt's attitude was couched in philosophical terms but Liebrecht's play leaves us wondering if this ardor wasn't really coming from a more emotional place.

"The Yard" A documentary film about a Jerusalem neighborhood by Yochai Rosenberg

KCC is here.JPix is here. Haveil Hevalim is here. 
Yochai Rosenberg made a film about the neighborhood he grew up in. Yochai tells a very personal story about The Yard overlooked by the apartment where his parents raised him and his six brothers and sisters. Yochai brought his bride Reut to live there after their marriage seven years ago.

The film juxtaposes Yochai's memories of the yard as a happy mix of Jewish kids from many religious and cultural backgrounds. But the yard has changed. The neighbors are mostly cut from the same cloth nowadays and that cloth is the black and white of the charedi (ultra-orthodox as it is sometimes translated) world. This is a world that doesn't like mixtures.

The film is a mix of observations of the current residents whose windows overlook the yard. Daniel, like Yochai, remembers the yesteryear of the yard. But unlike Yochai, Daniel yearns to leave the yard far behind and start over again in Paris. There is Yisrael a charedi boy struggling to grow up in a world that hugs him and holds him very close, too close for him sometimes. Then there's Reut who is talented and artistic and makes every effort to make her corner of the world colorful. Reut paints her window frames blue and has plants on her window sills. Clearly she doesn't share the sense of belonging to the yard.
The film brings us into the personal lives of the people who inhabit Yochai's yard while skillfully leading us to reflect on our own childhood 'yards' and our own attitudes toward change.
We all have stories to tell and I'm glad that Yochai was able to tell his so artfully. I'm sure the exposure was not easy for him (or for Reut). I think the film was well done and I hope that more people will get to see it. I am told that it will be shown some time on television here in Israel and I hope it is soon.