Sakhim, They Don't Mind When Other People Suffer

A few months ago, a Hebrew blog emerged entitled: "Sakhim, they are everywhere". the term "sakhi" is Hebrew slang derived from Arabic. It was originally used among consumers of canabbis to imply "sober": either someone who doesn't smoke or one who does, but isn't effected. "Sakhim" is its plural form.

In recent months the term came to be used otherwise. It now represents the mainsteam, bourgeois Israeli, as compared to the offbeat urbanite. On the "sakhim" blog, the sakhi is described as "the typical, politically correct Israeli, bereft of self awareness."

The anonnymous authors add that: "Sakhism can be percieved by the sakhi as something cool or just. The sakhi is mistaken. while innovative forces always seek to advance and broaden the barriers of the possible, sakhism will forever draw backwards and inwards, to the mainstream, to the common, to the avarage. Sakhism is not dependant on social status or ethnic origin and it appears in the 2010 Israeli sphere in various forms."

The sakhim blog, mainly showing Israelis making fools of themselves in weddings and other social gatherings, gathered some interest, especially from Tel-Aviv newspaper "Ha'ir" which dedicated two front page stories to what it perceived as a new social divide in the city, that between sakhim and "hipsterim", who seek more experimental lifestyles.

The attempt to paint sakhim as the ultimate conformists and the hipsters as their opposites failed, mainly because hipsters tend to be equally conformist, albeit within their narrower communities, as well as miserable fashion victims.

"Ha'ir" hoped to depict a contemporary version of the split which existed in 1960's Israeli society among the "salonim" and the "tnua". At the time, the salonim, who took on a rockn'roll lifestlye represented western influence on Israeli society, while the tnua kids stuck to the values and dress codes of the Zionist youth movements. Today, foreign influences are everywhere. Both sakhim and hipsterim are westernized, not to say Americanized. They're really not all that different.

Having realized this, I stopped reading the Sakhim blog and went back to concentrate on other things, until today this blog carried the following photo gallery, taken from the Facebook page of a young soldier girl, which was and still is open to the public. The caption on top runs: "Sakhim, the army service is the happiest time of their lives."

This is indeed the girl's heading for her photos: "My military service: The happiest time of my life :)". in two of the photos she is seen mocking blindfolded Palestinians. Such photos are nothing new, we've seen blindfolded Palestinians fed Matzas before and made to play other games. It's that innocence, that Sakhi spirit in which the photos are presented, that draws my attention.

Are hipsterim less prone to be cruel towards helpless individuals when given the chance? Are they more prone to make a big deal out of someone doing so? I wouldn't bet on it.

There are rare people, like the ones who author the sakhim blog, who are appaled by the state of our society and put the time into crying rage, and even they do so in a sardonic manner that signals an acceptance of the dark reality rather than a desire to change it. In action, we're all sakhim in one way or another. We are all of us children of the occupation.

Chat

There are lots of people I like on the various "chat" channels tonight. I'm supposed to be working but the little "bing!" of the Gmail chat, and the wee "click" of the Facebook chat are unstoppable. I think to myself: why are these people all alone in front of the computers? Most of them know each other. They could be having a grand party. Then I think: why need they have a grand party when they have chat?

Anyway, it would make for a messy party. On my Gmail chat I'm currently hosting the members of two couples that split up over the past 48 hours. Don't you know the feeling? Your ex-lover's name comes up and you know that with just one double click you can spin the lost relationship into new depths of disaster. Then, suddenly, the name of a previous ex-lover pops up beneath that of the first one. the names shift places, they nestle back to back, You wonder: what are the gods of chat trying to convey?

Currently on my Gmail chat list there's one proper ex and another girl with whom I once had a wonderful romantic adventure. Pretty cool. Facebook? only that same romantic adventure girl, nothing heavy duty. but wait! everyone on my facebook chat list is a woman except one man and he's gay. I count how many of them I find attractive and arrive at about 80%, leave the two married women out, and you still have a lot of potential romance and sexual tension in my lonesome nocturnal room.

Girls look surprisingly good in two dimentions. I go to my friends list to rate the top three loveliest profile photos. It is a beauty peagent like no other. The swimsuit bit and the evening gown bit are mixed, as every contestant is free to choose her attire freely. Please, my friends, I do not masturbate to Facebook, but I am fascinated by the state of romance today. This is where it begins - with little flirts and xx's, this is where it ends, with names resting back to back, like corpses in one of those multi-level burial plots they now offer in Israel for lack of land. Chat is both the maternity ward and cemetary of post-modern love, it's its inferno, purgatory and paradisio.

Well, not quite. You really have to meet face to face for paradisio. At least that.

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.

Guf B'Goof

Nefesh B'Nefesh (“Spirit in Spirit”) is an organization that assists Jewish youths, all born in English speaking countries, in immigrating to Israel. It gives them a stipend on top of the government one, arranges social activities for them, and provides general encouragement to "do the deed". All of this is lovely or revolting, depending on your views on Zionism.

My friend D. is a leftists with a capital L, which in this country means you're ususally not too staunchly Zionistic, but she's an open minded lass, not neccesarily too dogmatic and an American Jew who is sensative to the relevant world view. Her opposition to Nefesh B'nefish is mainly aesthetic: She attended one of their festive events with a friend who accepted their support, and couldn't stand the cheesy Yiddishkeit, the music, the aloof comments. D. is a first class party girl, and that was one unhip party.

This is why she started “Guf B'Guf” - “Body in Body”.

The first step in creating an organization in the cyber age is pretending it's a living fact and posting it on Wikipedia. Here is what you would have found on the Nefesh B'Nefesh Wikipedia page until yesterday, at section 14, entitled: “competition”.

Nefesh B'Nefesh has recently faced competition in recruiting olim from the rival Guf B'Guf organization. Based in Tel Aviv, rather than Jerusalem, Guf B'Guf solicits secular English-speaking olim looking to date virile Israelis. GBG events include pool parties, Hebrew-language speed dating and free condom distribution. As GBG was only recently founded, their inroads into the traditional NBN population remain unclear.

"What's 'Virile'?” I asked her.

"Kharmanim,” she explained.

Which is when I cracked up, but D.'s contribution to the page was not all comic material. She pointed out a very factual point made on an earlier section:

In January of 2007, Ambassador Danny Ayalon former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, joined Nefesh B'Nefesh as it's Co-Chairman. In August 2008, Ayalon joined the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party and stated that the Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the Galilee constitute a fifth column:
"If the government of Israel does not act to have a Jewish majority in the North, then the Arab majority in the Galilee will declare independence and [demand] international recognition on the basis of the precedents of Kosovo, Abkhazia and [South Ossetia]."[1]

Which isn't cool. Since her friend's photo was featured in the article, smiling and waving her new Israeli ID card, D. added the caption: “Olim smile for the last time before diving into Israeli Bureaucracy, taxes and living expenses”, as service to those contemplating Nefesh B'Nefesh and Aliya in general.

Of course the real service we can provide to new olim is the actual, physical establishment of Guf B'Guf. I offered to appear bare-chested on all promotional material, and suddenly felt more connected to the Hebrew homeland than I ever did. If anyone else feels virile or Zionist enough to go Guf B'Guf with us, send us a message via Jdate.

Late Bloomer

My friend Y the spy is an expert in making people do things they never intended to do and tell their innermost secrets to the mass media. Last night she did a truly unbelievable thing: she got me to go on Facebook.

I've been Facebook resistant for years, now I'm going a little psycho, sitting overwhelmed, playing with little gadgets, trying to figure out the politics, the etiquiette and the technological quirks of the great cyberbash. So far I have 27 friends and nothing to say to any them. One ex-lover accepted my invitation, another declined, I defined my religious nature as being "Tinkerbell agnostic". Those who know me, know what this mean, those who don't - need not apply. (o, but do apply!)

Meanwhile, Y the Spy is hiding behind a bush in a northern city, spying on a real life murderer. She's been doing it since the early morning. it's her job, I'm not making this up. this woman lives in multiple virtual realities. I guess in this age it's a skill we must all posses.