Boublil, Shmuelof

Waking up to this new week, many Israelis are experiencing a shudder of anticipation. This is the week, the one on which the winner of Channel 2's over-hyped reality show "Big Brother" will be announced.

There's nothing Israelis are mose engaged in, neither their vanishing savings and jobs, the dying education system, the continued disregard to human rights by their government, the organized crime going rampant, nothing. The fate of Israeli POW Gilad Shalit, kept in Gaza now for two and a half years, is suddenly of very little interest. Other hostages are on our minds, and they are kept in a well equipped villa somewhere in the Neve Ilan stuio complex.

As much as I'd like to avoid saying this, they really are important. The final stages of "Big Brother" give us a peek into current Israeli social reality that will be useful to sociologists in centuries to come. Three months into "Big Brother", only five of the house's inhabitants are left within. Two of them are Yossi and Einav Boublil, father and daughter. They are from the south of Israel and their heritage is "Mizrachi" - meaning that the family originated in the Middle East, rather than in Europe. The Boublils have thus come to symbolize, for many Israelis, what we have seen for decades as the "Mizrachi attitude". to use one simple word: They are aggresive. To use another, one that may be found to be more controversial, they are uncultured.

The other participants in the show are all Ashkenazim. There's Leon (an extrovertedly gay man) and Itay (a run of the mill straight dude), who are both weak in the face of the Bublils' hostile takeover of the atmosphere. It's only Shifra, an artsy girl who emerged from an Ultraorthodox family to live a Tel-Avivian, secular life, who's giving them a fight. Israeli society is splitting between supporters of Shifra and Supporters of Boublil the father, who seems most likely to win the show.

In a society that always dealt with tension between the Mizrachim and Ashkenazim, this is no simple experience. The Mizrachim who side with Boublil don't realize that, while being potentially triumphant, he is actually causing them severe harm, tattooing poisonous stigma. Moreover, Boublil has come to embody the Ashkenazim's fear that their society is being taken over by brutes, who disregard not only culture but civil behaviour. Boublil forces the bunch to watch the film he fancies (a light hearted comedy with blue collar, Mizrachi themes) rather than the one requested by the majority (a sophisticated drama/thriller, half set in Berlin). He causes all to disregard Shifra's birthday, simply because he and his daughter dislike her. To many ashkenazim, this reflects a shift away from emphasis on culture and civility in society, for which they blame the gradual empowerment of Mizrachim.

Ashkenazim who side with Shifra are often using her as a tool to express prejudice that otherwise would never have been voiced. In such way, Shifra herself contributes to uglyness in the society. This house will be the death of us. I can't wait till Tuesday!

To be honest, though, what really intrigues me is the experience of people "in the middle", such as my dear friend, intellectual and social activist Mati Shmuelof. Mati devotes himself to the Mizrachi struggle. He is infuriated by the harms inflicted by Ashkenazi society on immigrants from Middle Eastern and North African countries. For the most, those immigrants arrived here in the 50s, into a land ruled by the Ashkenazim, and found advancing in society rather difficult.

Now they have advanced. Le Monde called Yossi Bublil "the Prime Minister of Israel". How does Mati, a cultured, sensative and elegant Mizrachi man, who carries himself about this life in a manner far more reminicient of Shifra's, feel about this? Would he vote for Boublil to support the mizrachi cause? Could he bring himself to vote for a "Fridmanit" (the term for an Ashkenazi woman that originated on the show), attractive though she may be? How does he feel when Bublil is praised in his company? How does he feel when he is being put down?

My guess is that Mati doesn't vote at all, but that if forced to, as a task imposed by "Big Brother", for example, he would have gone for Shifra. Israel still is split between Mizrachim and Ashkenazim, but a much more strongly pronounced divide exists between those who hold education and civil behaviour in high regard and those who don't. On either side of this divide are both Mizrachim and Ashkenazim. If more Mizrachim are to be found on the Boublil end of the map, it is because Israeli society fostered lack of education among them for decades by treating them all as potential Boublils. Let's not repeat this mistake. Yes, Boublil is a Mizrachi, but he is, above all, and in a way to which ethnicity is irrelevant, an asshole.

Equal Partners in the Mystery

Hummus, Akko, 1998

Hummus, Jaffa, 2008

Finnish actress Ullariikka Koskela, with whom I shared 6 months of fine romance ten years ago, came to visit Israel again. Hers is not just any other visit. Ulla served as the base for the character of Nina in my new novel "I'll Meet You Halfway" ("ניפגש באמצע הדרך").

At one point in the novel, the protagonist, Eyal, recognizes that Nina is not the love of his life. Rather, she is the mirror of his life, and his life is her life's mirror. This is true to Ulla and I. both of us went through seven-year-long relationships that ended with much pain, then through briefer relationships that concluded recently. Over the last week we did little but speak about love, conversations that left me feeling strangely calmer than I've ever been.

This is not to say all we did was yak. Ulla met friends,

family,

and even other old flames, (here with downtown lover, in a shot I'll forever hold precious).

She enjoyed Israel's exoticness: watching people sell fruit in the nude,

and shop for fruit in the nude,

she saw wonders: from streets fully empty of cars on Yom Kippur,

to grown men flying kites.

Finally, thanks to the hype slowly generating around the book, she became a minor media celebrity. Not that she's not used to that, being one of Finland's busiest theatre actresses, with much television and film work under her belt. Ulla is an expert in improv theatre, something that comes to great use in Israel, even when one is off camera.

It may come as disppointment for those who read the novel, but we stayed in seperate beds the whole time, preferring to be buddies. This is not a friendship that will die out, and we can't afford to be threatening to each other's future significant others. Attach two mirrors to one another and nothing is visible, place them slightly apart and you will catch a glimpse of infinity.

Tishrei Full Moon

Through some strange fluke, channel 10 decided I am an expert on pirates and invited me to discuss the current Somali piracy crisis on their morning show. I did my best to appear learned. The producers called my appearance: "ingenious".

At noontime I went to the beach and watched a bulky man in his fifties, who can't swim and uses a boogie-board to stay afloat, hit with some success on my Finnish ex-lover from ten years ago, (she was intrigued by the boogie-board).

Then, at night, the most gorgeous girl I've seen since my highschool years walked out of a nightclub toilet, looked me straight in the eyes and said: "In life, everything gets sorted out." She then vanished, leaving only a name: Sivan.

My Finnish ex-lover from ten years ago believes that Sivan was a "spirit". I believe that nothing is impossible.

Concerto for Turntable, Laptop and Moustache

Last night Chicky was strutting his smooth and less smooth bits of lounge lizard punk, up in the cavernous music room of the Third Ear. His act was followed by an acoustic Russian reggae band called "Los Caparos". Tomorrow Flashky will be the Eid al-Fitr DJ at the RiffRaff (Gruzenberg on Nahlat Binyamin, starting at 23:00), expect rock at its most juicy.

In between, I'm sitting here listening to Haydn's trumpet concerto as if the Hammond organ was never invented. What I love about concertos is that they are people. They recreate a human voice so vividly. the solo instrument is a living entity that comes in touch with an environment or a society of sorts (the orchestral backdrop) and communicates with it. I can identify my friends in concertos. in fact, I can even find many of them in Mozart's Concertos alone: Flashky would be the piano in Mozart's 9th piano concerto, butting in just as the exposition has begun, wonderfully self confident and creative. Itka is Mozart's clarinet. David Rapp is the harp in the flute and harp concerto. Efros, though she may protest, being such an Arabic music enthusiast, is the freewheeling piano of the 17th.

As for me, I'd love to identify with the piano in the 23rd concerto, but that would be vanity. It's the one pre-Requiem piece in which Wolfgang really lets loose emotionally. I'll leave it to even greater romantics and share instead this litle old bit of Groucho Marx. Trust me, watch it. It's a piece of television that's as good as Mozart.

Talking Heads

This is either the goofiest or most brilliant link I ever added to this blog, depending on how you deal with brown suits. A reading in a new compandium of secular Jewish thought stirred in me a new interest in Baruch Spinoza's daring approach. Now fancy that: Spinoza is on Youtube! Sometime in the 60s, Professor Anthony Quinton explained to host Brian Magee the relationship between Spinoza and Leibniz in a static, hour long feature, a dreary nightmare to some and an essential to visually inclined ADDers like me, who find reading philosophical primary sources challanging.

This is part of series of modern British philosophers discussing philosophical themes. All I have to do is pick my next one. the link featured is of A.J. Ayer discussing logical positivism, a movement in which he was a key player. He covers a lot of ground and is feeling relaxed enough to smoke at the studio. When falling ill last winter I found on Youtube every single season of the BBC's immortal sitcom "Allo Allo". It kept me alive for a good little extra while. Now the Brits offer more ancient televison goodness. As Spinoza would have it: God is in all creation, cyberspace not excluded.