Kadima!

When a bunch of Tel-Avivians, among them four journalists, one real estate agent, a cult folk musician, a single mother and a former Eurovision star, gather in an apartment in the city's Yemenite quarter, it can only mean one thing: that they are about to stage a play in Israel's largest sewege treatment plant.

"Kadima!" by Roy Chicky Arad (the guy in blue) was already staged twice in more concievable surroundings: Tzavta theatre and the Barzilai club. This Saturday night it participates in the first art event to take place among Tel-Aviv's filtering pools. It will be featured in "Redemption through the Gutters", a large scale artfest curated by the extra-talented Galya Yahav. (Here's the Facebook event, for all details.)

It may seem unethical for me, as a theatre critic, to function as an actor, so I'll hurry up and confirm: I would have given this show a dreadful review. It's a big anarchic mess, no one knows their lines (we're reading them off the page), most jokes are dreadfully juvenile, and the songs took thirty seconds to compose - I know this for a fact. I composed them.

But Kadima! (Hebrew for "onwards", but also the name of the Israel's major center-right party) does have one thing going for it: It makes one hell of a punishing political statement, and it does so in the rustic spirit of true satire.

The story is that of Tzvika Ofer (Yuval Segev), an IDF colonel whose negligance led to the breakout of the second Lebanese war. Ofer, scolded in Israel, escapes to Mexico and works there as military consultant for a dubius regieme. Then he meets a witch.

The witch tells him that she can send him back to one moment in his past. Ofer, cynical at first, finally decides to return to the days before the war's outbreak and prevent it. His wish is fulfilled, history is reversed. Elyakim Firstater (Moshe Ferster), the simpleton sodier who's abduction kicked off the war, is safe.

For lack of war, Ofer is discharged from the army and becomes CEO of the Trilanium weapons company, producers of a radium-spiked bomb called "The Smasher". Firstater himself gets a job there as a bomb-painter. sometimes fate just binds us with the wrong people.

Problem is, with no war in sight, the smasher has no market. The owners of Trilanium count on Ofer to produce one. When he learns of it, from the company's Chief Financial Officer, Benny Guetta (yours truly), he is in denial.

Ofer: but the IDF couldn't use the Smasher, the border is quiet.

Guetta: The folks at the Brussels office were hoping you could perk the IDF up.

Ofer: There was no war.

Guetta: This is solvable.

Ofer: Solvable?

Guetta: It's solvable, this lack of war, this endless wait for something to happen.

Ofer (loudly): They were expecting for me to arrange a war?

Guetta: There's no need to shout, let's speak softly.

Ofer: They wanted me to start a war? with whom?

Gueatta: Look, I am against wars, I hate wars. I was on the square where Rabin died, when they took him away from us. Then again, some situations are win-win. Let's imagine the "Smasher" were a success on the battlefield. It would have given it great promotion - advertisements on BBC, on AL-Jezirah... we could start a production line for the Smasher that could export abroad. People hear the word "war" and get startled, it's a real holy cow. But who could lose in such a war? If the Smasher works well, we may end up exporting it even to moderate Arab nations, like Morrocco or Jordan. It could improve our relationship with them and maybe even contribute to peace.

Ofer: The war?

Gueatta: Yes! War today isn't what you think, Tzvika, it's like peace, like peace - but with a dividend. Look at me, do I want war? Do I want battlefields? Do I want widdows and orphans? You know I'm left-leaning. No one wants war, but on the other hand, it's not a good idea to be stuck with marchendise.

At the end of the day, our bunch of clowns is a somber bunch. We've been through that war and we'll be through the next one, and the next one. Forever we shall be told that our security is the issue and that our army is the "Israeli Defence Forces", by those who pocket the dough. No dough for us, we play for nothing, just as we'll probably die for nothing sooner or later.

What You Did Today, That Was Love.

1. When the novel "Adam Ressurected" (Hebrew: Adam son of Dog) came out in the early Sixties, it was met with grave misunderstanding and hostility by the Israeli public. Its protagonist was not palatable to Israelis: Here was a Holocaust survivor battling severe PTSD, who also happened to be a human being in the full sense of the word: worldly, passionate, a whisky lover, a womanizer, a hot temepred man and a professional clown, no less.

We like our Holocaust survivors as unhuman as the candles we light in memory of the victims. Yoram Kaniuk's Adam is a man who goes very credibly to the two extremes of the human existance: On one hand he is perhaps the most fully complex man of modern Hebrew literature, on the other hand, he's a dog. The chief officer at the concentration camp kept Adam as his dog for an entire year, forcing him to eat and act like a canine, while coordinating the murder of his family. Sometimes that memory overtakes him, then he barks and bites and becomes ever more human.

It was a strange book to read, and the new Paul Schrader film based on it is just as strange (which is an artistic achievment). The imagery is truly difficult to stomach, the experience of loss and humiliation penetrates more powerfully than it should in a Hollywood film and Adam, portrayed by Jeff Goldblum, is exactly that impossibly surreal and therefore real being. Goldblum gives one of the most beautifully human performances I have witnessed, breathing life into a rare tale that is truly humanist.

2. The first complements given to my novel "I'll Meet You Halfway" come from Roy Chicky Arad, a gentleman who truly deserves many complements himself for his diverse activities, and has received them on this blog before. What I like especially is that he calls this blog "One of Israel's finest". Dude! I feel special now for writing it and I hope you do for reading it.

3. No man in his right mind would admit this, but I got emotional watching the final episode of Sex and the City. I wrote about it for Haaretz at the time, and described it as being made up of four very different statements about love. After Miranda washes her demented mother in law and cares for her, her child's nanny tells her: "What you did today, that was love". Samantha's lover returns early from filming in Canada to mend her post-cancer self confidence crisis and make her orgasm madly and beautifully. Charlotte and her husband lovingly give up on adopting the baby of parents who are unsure of the sacrifice, and Carrie distances herself from the man who is ignorant of her needs, finding her way back to the one who is willing to invest in her.

Four lessons in love.

It would make a wonderful, albeit cheesy habit to end each day by asking oneself: what have I learned about love today? I am doing so tonight. I've learned many things I did not know.

Cellphone Purim

Such a fool I am! I left home without my camera on Purim! I really should have had something better than my phone on me when I ran into Che Guevara (alias Flashki) on Herzl St.

Or when downtown lover and I tried to dress up as a stuffy French couple and ended up as two goofy Marcel Marceaus

(though a wig left behind by someone at a party saved at least one of us from complete ridicule.)

I should have had it today in Jerusalem, where the ultraorthodox kids dressed up as Elijah the Prophet and as the Grand Priest of Solomon's temple (top left is what they usually look like)

and certainly, certainly I should have had it today at Maayan magazine's top notch party, when at last the Guevara hat reached the head it was meant for.

Do Arabs Bleed?

On his excellent blog in Hebrew, Roy "Chicky" Arad points out this day's main headline of Yediot Aharonot, Israel's largest daily:

"Fire in Gaza, Blood in Sderot"

Yesterday, a volunteer from Ecuador (I've previously written Uruguay, my mistake) died at a kibbutz near Sderot from Hammas fire. The killing was tragic and indeed newsworthy - partially because of its rareness. While life in Israel's southwest has become stressful and difficult, there are seldom any victims from fire shot out of the Gaza strip. Simultaneously, In the past three days, about twenty Palestinians were killed in the besieged, impoverished and completely vulnerable Strip from IDF fire. Judging by the headline, Chicky deducts that they died without shedding any blood. How neat!

I've repremended Yediot Aharonot for their wording once before. The newspaper is printed at about 600,000 copies each day and is responsible for Israel's most popular news website. Its approach to human life at one time reflects that of the mainstream Israeli and influences it. Scores of red blooded human beings read this headline without seeing anything the matter with it.

I can say in my defence that I haven't seen the paper today, though perhaps I too have become desensitized. Chicky, a poet, a performance artist, an editor, a Tel-Aviv social catalyst and a former Eurovision star, is no mainstream Israeli. His way of looking at things is original and deliberate.

Make a sharp u-turn from the headlines and look at the sentence that opened his previous blog post: "Real swinging isn't when the guy is switched with another guy and the wife with somebody else's wife. It's when the entire couple is replaced by another couple, preferably forever." This was followed by a poem about the pleasantness of meeting a vacationing urban hot-dog vendor, then by another, dealing with checkbook stubs.

Apparently none of this goofy surrealism has anything to do with people dying and bleeding in Gaza and in Sderot, but it does. Someone who doesn't take swinging, hot-dog vendors or checkbook stubs for granted will not take cheap "fire vs. blood" talk for granted and will not be easily fed fascist manipulations. By voicing cynical boubt, he's reclaiming humanity and performing a service. Chicky informed me today. no thanks to Yedioth editor Shilo De-Beer.

Democracy is dependent on wacky artists and thinking people who look at things twice. They are so much more valuable to it then newspaper editors with little or no universal values and human integrity.

Metaphores for Fun

On paper, poetry doesn't stand a chance at the "Desert Poetry Days" festival, primarily because of its location. The Sde Boker desert educational facility is situated right on the clifftop overlooking this:


Desert nights also have a bad influence on "Desert Poetry Days". Gather scores of passionate souls from across the country, many of them young and unattached (or pretend-unattached) to a secluded oasis and you're going to get some serious sexual tension and the breaking thereof. It's interesting to see how unpoetical poets can be when casually courting. A party at nearby kibbutz Sde Boker was the primary amorous crucible of the festival. It was wild, loud and filled with such complex works of verse as:

Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa.. (OHH OH)
Heeyy Yaaaaaaaa.. (OHH OH)
Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa.. (Don't want to meet your daddy, OHH OH)
Heeyy Yaaaaaaaa.. (Just want you in my Caddy OHH OH)

No one showed any criticism and the older poets who stayed by the clifftop, drinking vodka and chatting, weren't taking life a lot more seriously. There are exceptions there, of course. Editor and poet Raffi Weichert annoyed me earlier in the evening by announcing that he is editing an anthology of contemporary Hebrew verse that is to be "devoid of junk and vanity". Junk and vanity clearly being the experimental works of the younger scene. I quickly let him know that a competing, kickass anthology is a long time in the works.

What Weichert overlooks as an editor is that poetry is an adventure. So vast canyons, Outkast and hormones can go very well with it, and broadening its horizons doesn't render it junk.

The most successful event of the ones I attended this year was a half-impromptu nocturnal session with high school students. "Ma'ayan" poets Chicky Arad and Nimrod Kamer, popular poet Rony Somek and yours truly brought a guitar, a few original works and a translation of a poem by Brecht. The students shared their own material which was both spicy and precise. They amazed us with their talent.

This morning I mediated a panel with editors of the "younger" literary reviews. This was no easy task after two nights without much sleep, but we held the event outdoors in a small ampitheater and all present, including the 100 or so spectators, were being relaxed and fun (and equally tired). I was impressed by the editors of "Dakah", published in Beer Sheva, and experienced for the first time some of impressive poetry appearing in "Meshiv Haruach", a journal dedicated to Jewish themed verse. Poetry ended up taking center stage after all. I even went on directly from the panel to an indoor reading session, but not before stopping at the clifftop where a herd of gazelles was leisurely hanging out, taking in the view of the expanses and having a little romantic daydream of my own.

In the photos: Chicky jamming (with Yehezkel and Seffi) Matti Shmueloff flirting (with Michal but not with Ellain) Yours truly reciting (with a few young poets waiting to strutt their own stuff).

Mystery

I made a mistake, rather then rest and recover after the surgery, I decided to write an article for Time Out Tel-Aviv, and uncover a mystery.

The project was to tell the story of a lie and if possible find out the truth behind it. A mysterious female poet named Tze'ela Katz was responsible for several biting poems published in the cult magazine "Ma'ayan", for an active website and for hundreds of Internet comments and emails, many of them subversive and insulting.

New's of Katz's death were first given two weeks ago on the blog of Ma'ayan's editor, Roy "Chicky" Arad. The rumor soon spread that she was fiction - a nom de plume of a man, perhaps several men. could this be so?

Trying to dig into the story involved getting in touch with a lot of interesting figures in the Tel-Avivian literary and artistic underground. It also cost me my health. Someone started stalking me under a false name, threatening me via email, mocking my temporary inability to speak, discrediting me before my editors and sending cryptic phone messages.

When the article got published, with a fair bit of praise to the artistic endeavor and only a hint to the mystery's solution, he called to apologize.

I figure that this man, a talented and sharp high tech professional, is responsible for at least the majority of Tze'ela Katz's texts. He was afraid of being uncovered, worried that all journalists are there to trash people, and spun into what appeared to me as some sort of a paranoid episode.

I respect his needs and won't publish his name here. I will say, however, that whimsical musician A.B. Dan, who was named as Katz on her website one day after publication, wasn't the primary figure in the project.

The full story features a nocturnal journey into a basement in Tel-Aviv's dead suburb of Nes Tziona, where a memorial service to Katz was held. It includes several emotional late night exchanges and a climax involving Time Out's editor in chief and publisher. Rather than go into all that, I'd like to present you with a translation of a Tze'ela Katz poem. It is the art, after all, that matters.

(Notes for the foreign reader: "Superpharm" is an Israeli chain of drug stores, where perfumes and make-up products are available along with pharmaceutical goods. "Burger-Ranch" is a chain of fast food restaurants. the word "overdraft" is used in Hebrew as is, to imply a checking account minus.)


Superpharm / Tze'ela Katz

1.
Don't drip sun on me
Take me to the Superpharm

2.
The word Superpharm has a young sound,
Like Burger-Ranch or Overdraft

3.
I'd like for you to shave your chest hairs
Before we go into the Superpharm
I'm mad at all the women of the world
How is it possible to enter the Superpharm in peace?

4.
You remind me of the days
When I can hardly fall asleep
Afterwards my sense of smell sharpens
And entering the superpharm becomes a nightmare

5.
All girls go to the souk and to the Superpharm
The superpharm's design says beautification
The souk's design says discrimination

Actually
The souk's design says: "There's fish sold here
Here you won't pay for sex"

6.
The orange vendor at the souk says:
"Half to eat and half for juice."
He knows how to talk to a woman.

Picturing myself at the Superpharm
buying orange-chocolate
flavoured condoms.