Helen Katz Kaye Eleasari (1934-2020)

 

[On the night of Saturday, 16 April 2022, I discovered some very sad and upsetting news.  My Tel Avivian friend, Helen Eleasari, who wrote for the Jerusalem Post as Helen Kaye—I’ve posted many of her pieces, including theater reviews as “Dispatches from Israel”—died nearly two years ago and I never knew.  Apparently, no one in her family had me on a list of people to notify. 

[I had written or e-mailed her a few times over the pandemic period and just afterwards, but the messages weren’t answered, even though they didn’t come back.  I knew she’d been unwell; she wrote me that on 22 September 2016, she “fell over a bollard on the sidewalk (don’t ask how—I don’t know) and broke my hip.”  

[She had a partial hip replacement and had been in the hospital for 24 days.  She was doing rehab and physical therapy, she told me, and after six weeks as of 4 November, when she wrote me about all this, she was looking at six more before she expected to be “completely healed.”  Meanwhile, her mobility—she had just graduated from a walker to a cane—was severely curtailed.

[On 23 May 2020, Helen e-mailed me from the hospital again.  She’d gone to the ER at 4 in the morning of the 22nd because she woke up an hour earlier with intense pressure on her chest and was afraid she’d thrown another pulmonary embolism.  (She’d thrown one in September 2018, but had recovered completely, she reported.)  “But no,” she wrote at almost noon on the 23rd. “Thank heaven.”

[She’d been given a CT scan and was taken to the chest surgery ward at 5 that evening “because [the] docs did not like what they saw on [the] CT.”  She explained in a later message that evening that she was now awaiting a bronchoscopy, but she hadn’t said what diagnosis was anticipated.

[Indeed, Helen had signed off in the first e-mail with the line: “As Lady Bracknell says ‘a life crowded with incident’!”  (It’s a line from Act 3 of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.)  The word ‘cancer’ was never used in any of the messages Helen sent me, so I just assumed the best.

[As it turned out, that was the last message thread I got from Helen—though I didn’t actually realize it.  I knew she was fighting some illness she didn’t specify, but she appeared to be healing, however slowly, from the busted hip.  She’d seemed otherwise fine—Helen was a little over 10 years older than I—from her attitude in the last e-mails.

[When I continued not to hear from her, I started to get worried, but I was actually afraid to look into the situation.  I wrote to her about posting my 1982 Israel/Egypt travel journal on Rick On Theater, which I was sure would interest her, but I got no response.  (I turns out, she’d died a year earlier!)

[Late yesterday, while I was doing some research on a Habima stage production for an upcoming post, I hit on a review of Helen’s (it was a passing mention; one of the actors in whatever show she was reviewing had been in the earlier Habima production), so I was finally prompted to look online for news.

[The first hit on the Google list was Helen’s JP obituary (posted below).  What a shock!

[Well, I guess not really.  I was already convinced that something dire had happened.  I just hadn’t wanted to confirm it.  Now I had.

[As ROTters will remember, I’d known Helen since I directed her in a showcase of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan back in 1978.  Helen played the Duchess of Berwick and she did the costumes for our no-budget, non-union showcase production.  After rehearsals at the theater’s West 20th Street storefront, members of the cast often gathered in my living room at 15th Street and 5th Avenue, just five blocks south of the theater, and worked on Helen’s costumes. 

[For practical reasons, I’d reset the 1892 play in the 1920s.  Helen designed a gorgeous kimono dressing gown (worn by Mrs. Erlynne) from an embroidered tablecloth.  After the production ended, one of the actresses kept the robe—I don’t remember now if it was Helen or our Mrs. Erlynne. 

[Though she was born in the U.K, (Walton-on-Thames, Surrey), Helen lived in the States for years and became a dual citizen before making her aliyah to Israel in 1983 (a year after I visited the country; see “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982,” 11-23 July 2022).  We kept in touch regularly and she visited New York several times after she made her aliyah.

[(Aliyah is the Hebrew word meaning ‘ascent’ or ‘the act of going up.’ It’s the word Zionists use for immigration to the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael, which today means the State of Israel); ‘making aliyah’ is the term for immigrating from the Jewish diaspora to Israel and is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism.)

[The articles Helen’s sent me for ROT included “Berlin” (posted on ROT on 22 July 2013), her account of a trip she made with her daughter Rava, and coverage of the 2012 Acre (Acco) Festival (9 November 2012), summer theater for children (“Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” 12 September 2010), and “A Trip to Poland” (7 August 2015).

[The 20 installments of “Dispatches” ran randomly from 23 January 2013 to 25 February 2020, five months before her death.  Her reviews, for which she was allowed a very small amount of space, were always concise yet complete.  I always admired how well she conveyed her estimation of the shows in such few words.  (I’m terrible at concision, but Helen did it excellently and I was very jealous!)  Over the years, Helen also covered the cultural beat for JP.

[Aside from her writing, Helen directed local productions in English, both musicals and straight plays, classics, standards, and originals.  She spent two years teaching English at a provincial university in China in 2003 and ’04.] 

“VETERAN CULTURE WRITER HELEN KAYE DIES 2 WEEKS SHORT OF HER 86TH BIRTHDAY”
by Greer Fay Cashman

[Cashman’s obituary for her colleague, Hellen Kaye, the pen name of my friend Helen Eleasari, ran in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, 26 July 2020.]

Critic and journalist began working for the ‘Post’ in 1987

                               photo credit: Courtesy

 

If there was a single phrase to sum up Helen Kaye, the veteran arts and culture reporter whose byline in The Jerusalem Post publications first appeared in July 1987, it would be mistress of the metaphor.

Kaye had a unique gift for allegory. She also wrote succinctly, and invariably succeeded in packing a lot of information and drama into a small amount of text.

For instance, a theater review would include not only her impressions of the performance, but also the reactions of the audience, a brief history of the play, and the future plans of the theater group, the director, or the main actors.

Kaye, who died on Sunday [26 July 2020], after a short-lived battle with an aggressive form of lung cancer, would have turned 86 in early August [3 August].

She did not originally set out to be a theater critic when at age 18 she first made aliyah from her native London. All in all, she made aliyah three times: the first time from England, the second time from the United States and the third time from China.

When she first came in the early 1950s, her ambition was to be a nurse, and she trained under the late Dr. Chaim Sheba, the founder of the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv.

She worked for several years in her profession until 1963 when her husband, Jacob Eleasari, decided to go to America to study filmmaking at UCLA, because at that time there was no film school in Israel.

There’s an old Hebrew saying that a change of location means a change of luck, but for Kaye, it meant a change in calling.

She enrolled at a theater course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts.

When she returned to Israel in 1983, she opted for yet another career – journalism, working initially as a freelancer.

When she began writing for The Jerusalem Post in July 1987, it was for the now-defunct Metro weekend supplement that was distributed throughout the Coastal Plain.

It did not take long for her to begin writing for the Arts and Entertainment section of the daily paper and to eventually become the editor of that section.

When Barry Davis, who is today the key writer for the Arts and Entertainment section, first encountered Kaye some 20 years ago, their work relationship did not exactly get off to a flying start.

Perhaps, because of her nursing background, she was a stickler for detail and accuracy.

“On more than one occasion I was subjected to a bit of a ticking off over some professional matter or other which, Helen felt, dipped below her requisite high standards of editorial and literary excellence,” recalls Davis. “Once – feeling miffed one time too many – I fired back that she was being dogmatic. She suggested that, in fact, I meant didactic and I replied that I meant what I said. She went very quiet for a while and I became aware that, behind the stern, professional and, seemingly, unforgiving exterior lay a sensitive and warm soul.

“Once Helen recovered her poise, our relationship changed – for the better. I learned to appreciate her attention to detail and, after reading some of her reviews of theatrical and dance performances, I realized she had earned the right to be critical of anything she considered not quite up to scratch.

“I also learned to appreciate her warmth and generosity, and it became clear to me, over the years, that she had taken her fair share of knocks in life and managed to stay true to her principles and to veer to the sunny side of the street. She will be missed, professionally and personally.”

Following her retirement, Kaye was far from ready to just sit and ruminate. Instead, with boldness and courage which were typical of her, she shot off to China to teach English, and stayed there for several years.

She thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and long before cars gave way to bicycles in the West, Kaye was traveling by bike wherever she had to go in China.

On her return to Israel, she once again began writing critiques of theater, ballet and opera performances, and of various special events connected with the performing arts. One of her last news items, written as recently as late April of this year, was about the Israel Festival, which she had long written about annually.

This time, her opening paragraphs were completely different to anything she had written in the past.

“No other event – not the 1967 Six Day War or the 1973 Yom Kippur War or the 1991 Gulf War – has in 59 years done what COVID-19 did this year: scupper the Israel Festival.

“Festival general manager Eyal Sher announced Sunday that due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 59th Israel Festival in Jerusalem, slated to take place from June 4-20, would be indefinitely postponed.”

Given the rapid deterioration of her health, it is doubtful that Kaye would have been able to attend the festival even if it had taken place as originally scheduled.

She is survived by her two daughters: Rava who lives in Israel and Eylat who lives in Los Angeles.

Despite travel restrictions, Eylat was miraculously able to catch a flight to Israel, undergo isolation, and still spend a few days with her mother during Kaye’s final days.

The family will hold a private funeral on Monday [27 July 2020].

[Helen was survived not only by her daughters, but also three grandchildren; Rava gave her two, a boy and a girl, and Eylat another granddaughter.  I only met Helen’s daughters once, when she was still living here in New York.  I did a small Thanksgiving dinner in my apartment one year and invited Helen; she brought her daughters, then both still little girls. 

[I said above that Helen came to New York City several times after she moved back to Israel.  One evening during one of those visits, I was home, but Helen was out seeing other friends when a phone call came.  Eylat, who was pregnant with her daughter—the reason for Helen’s visit to the States that time—and a complication had occurred. 

[This was years before cell phones were available, and I had no way to reach Helen.  I had to wait until she came back and after Helen called L.A. to find out what had happened, we spent the rest of the night getting her on a flight west, repacked, and to the airport. 

[Helen got to L.A. in time to see the crisis resolved and Eylat delivered the baby, not without difficulty and, I daresay, a lot of anxious prayer, and all ended well.]

*  *  *  *
MANIFESTO
by Helen Eleasari 

[Helen sent this to me on 17 March 2019.  She had submitted the manifesto—the word she used to characterize the piece, to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper published in both Hebrew and English and known for its left-wing and liberal stances.  The paper, considered Israel’s newspaper of record, didn’t publish the manifesto, which didn’t surprise Helen.  She also posted it on her Facebook page (no longer on line). 

[I didn’t know what to do with Helen’s manifesto, with respect to Rick On Theater.  It seemed too tied to Israeli politics to be of general interest, and too personal to Helen to fit on a blog belonging to someone else (that is, me).  I never did figure it out, so it never appeared on the blog.  I felt now would be a good time to unveil it

[According to Wikipedia:

Early legislative elections were held in Israel on 9 April 2019 to elect the 120 members of the 21st Knesset. Elections had been due in November 2019, but were brought forward following a dispute between members of the current government over a bill on national service for the ultra-Orthodox population, as well as impending corruption charges against incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's Likud [Israel’s principal rightist political party] tied with Blue and White alliance of Benny Gantz [a centrist and liberal political alliance], both winning 35 seats.  The balance of power was held by smaller parties, with a majority being right-wing and religious parties that had previously sat in coalition with Likud, which would have allowed Netanyahu to form the next government.

Due to continuation of the disagreements over the national service of the ultra-Orthodox, a snap election was called, and was held on 17 September 2019.  (April 2019 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[Then:

Snap legislative elections were held in Israel on 17 September 2019 to elect the 120 members of the 22nd Knesset.  Following the previous elections in April, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition for a second consecutive time.  On 30 May, the Knesset voted to dissolve itself and trigger new elections, in order to prevent Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz from being appointed Prime Minister-designate.  This election marked the first time the Knesset voted to dissolve itself before a government had been formed.  (September 2019 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[And:

Legislative elections were held in Israel on 2 March 2020 to elect members of the twenty-third Knesset.

The election result showed a political stalemate, which was resolved when Likud and Blue & White reached a coalition agreement.  Under the terms of the agreement, the premiership would rotate between Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, with Gantz given the new position of Alternate Prime Minister until November 2021.  These elections followed continued political deadlock after the April and September 2019 Knesset elections.  (2020 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[Finally:

Legislative elections were held in Israel on 23 March 2021 to elect the 120 members of the 24th Knesset.  It was the fourth election in two years.  Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett announced they formed a rotation government on 2 June 2021, which was approved on 13 June 2021.  (2021 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia)

[Since December 2016, Netanyahu, the prime minister to whom Helen refers below, had been under investigation for corruption by Israeli police and prosecutors.  On 21 November 2019, he was indicted on charges of breach of trust, bribery, and fraud.  Due to the indictment, Netanyahu was legally required to relinquish all of his ministry posts other than the prime minister position prior to his ouster.  Helen had died before the final resolution.]

Not since November 29, 1947 has there been so critical a date for the state of Israel. On that day the United Nations passed Resolution 181 that divided Mandatory Palestine into two states, one for the Arabs, one for the Jews. On April 9, 2019 we shall vote in a general election that will either confirm us as a democracy or denigrate us to the state of a third rate banana republic mired in the sludge of corruption and toxic nationalism that have here become the norm.

Politics are frequently murky, but over the last few years our politics and politicians have attained an unparalleled level of indecency. It began with the assassination on November 4, 1995 of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, continued with the enactment of laws and statutes curtailing civil rights, such as the recently passed Nation State Law, interfering with due process, such as the law attempting to curtail the activities of the High Court of Justice, and most recently readmitting the outlawed Jewish supremacy party, hitherto Kach, now Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) to the electoral rolls.

Over the last decade our Prime Minister, in word and deed, has denigrated and insulted the Arab citizens of Israel. He and his government label as traitors any person or institution that dares to suggest that promoting discrimination, lawlessness and extremism is not the way to go. Israeli citizens have been detained at the border for presuming to question government policy, and the list goes on.

Many years ago, and however much it’s quoted, it’s still relevant, German pastor Martin Niemöller wrote his famous poem:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Is that who we want to be?

[Kach was a radical Orthodox Jewish, ultranationalist political party in Israel, existing from 1971 to 1994.  The party was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-90) based on his Orthodox Jewish-nationalist ideology (subsequently dubbed Kahanism).  

[Kach was barred, however, from participating in elections after 1988 under the revised Knesset Elections Law banning parties that incited racism, and banned outright in 1994. 

[Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor.  He was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, but he became best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem “First they came . . .,” the verse that Helen quotes above.

[Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in English.  The best-known versions of the poem in English are the edited versions in poetic form that began circulating by the 1950s.  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., quotes a version of the poem.]

Dispatches from Israel 20

by Helen Kaye

[My friend Helen Kaye has been sending me articles and reviews from her work on the theater and culture desk at the Jerusalem Post since 2010 (“Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” posted on Rick On Theater  on 12 September), just under a year-and-a-half after I started the blog.  Her first “Dispatches from Israel” was posted on 23 January 2013, a little more than seven years ago.  Below is “Dispatches from Israel 20,” the latest in Helen’s line of 23 posts on ROT.

[I’m always glad to post Helen’s reviews from the JP because, first, it’s a window into the theater world of another society, and, second, I get to bring another voice to ROTters aside from my own.  Furthermore, when I read Helen’s JP reviews, for which she’s allowed very few words—I marvel at how clear she is in so little space, while I go on for pages and pages to no more effect and probably less.

[So here, once again (and not for the last time, I fervently hope), is Helen Kaye on the current Israeli theater scene.] 

Spring Awakening

By Frank Wedekind

Translated by Ido Riklin

Directed by Moshe Kepten

Habima Theater, Tel Aviv; 13 January 2020

These 14-year-old kids are dirt-ignorant about their physical selves. It’s not their fault but that of the society in which they live; that late 19th century German society that lays a God-mandated taboo on any discussion of the body, let alone reproduction, that makes a near-sacred virtue of obedience to parental or other authority, that enshrines repression as a virtue.

Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (1891/2), aptly subtitled A Children’s Tragedy, lays out the dire consequences in all their awful detail. Moshe Kepten’s unsentimental, spare production shows us these with restraint, compassion and love. This is a reverberant Spring Awakening that leaves us with the apprehension that our own teens, even though the knowledge of human reproduction is no longer proscribed, must also come to terms with bodies that are undergoing the (always) fraught transition from childhood to grown-up.

“One more summer of childhood,”  Wendla Bergman (Amit Farkash) begs her mother (Miki Peleg), who wants to put her in long dresses as a sign she’s growing up, but it’s not to be. “Tell me how babies come into the world,” she entreats but Mrs Bergman, as quashed, alas, as her child, literally cannot. Even after school-idol Melchior (Nadir Eldar) rapes her (he really, really didn’t mean to), she has no idea what’s happened, a letter he writes her leads to Melchior’s incarceration in a merciless reform school, and a botched abortion later kills her.

The sexual yearnings (unidentified of course), assailing Moritz (Sheffi Marciano), his father’s (Gil Frank) unachievable expectations, physical and verbal abuse, are too much for him and he commits suicide. The Utterly Depraved Forbidden feelings battering Ernst (Kobi Marimi) turn him upside-down; he’s caged, outside, yet sings of another world, one that will allow him to be gay, to be who he is without shame.

And yes, there are songs in this production. The melodies are by Ohad Hitman, the lyrics are by Noam Horev, and their purpose (achieved), is to complement and enrich the action, not to turn the play into a musical. Moreover they are sung wonderfully by Ernst, by Martha (Roni Dalumi) whose powerful “My Own Child” vows that he will grow up free of the verbal, physical and sexual abuse she is suffering, by Wendla and some of the others.

And so it goes. The times they live in bruise and maim these children, and if it all seems a tad over the top, it must be remembered that the play anticipates German Expressionism – an emotionally subjective movement.

The acting is uniformly excellent. You never feel that the adult actors who are playing these luckless children are talking down to their characters, whom each has made special. For instance, Shahar Raz, who plays Hansy – the school sneak – has invested him with a delicious snigger.

Some of the adult roles are deliberate caricatures, such as Frau Knochenbruch (Ruth Landau) or Herr Sonnenstich (Rotem Kenan), the names themselves deliberate parodies, while the others, such of those as Peleg and Frank, are cast rigidly in the mold of their time.

Eran Atzmon’s set comprises 10 chairs, a carpet of dead leaves and a ‘stone/wood cage’ that turns (literally) into a variously lighted (Avi Yona Bueno) arena – a boxing ‘ring’ turned on edge – for many of the variously venued events. To this must be added Guy Rotem’s rich video art that also enhances what’s happening.

Habima’s Spring Awakening? Theater at its most rewarding.

[Wedekind’s Spring Awakening [Frühlings Erwachen] is the source of the rock musical of the same title with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik that ran on Broadway   Conceived in the late 1990s, it went through various workshops, concerts, and rewrites to open at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on 10 December 2006; the production closed on 18 January 2009 after 859 performances and 29 previews, winning eight 2007 Tonys (including Best Musical), plus 14 other Broadway and Off-Broadway awards.].

*  *  *  *

The Wanderers

By Anna Ziegler

Translated by Roy Chen

Directed by Amir I. Wolf

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 28 January 2020

What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How come we’re at once transparent and opaque? Can we really say of somebody “I know you”? Aren’t there things we keep to ourselves, deep within the crannies of the heart? The Wanderers Anna Ziegler’s very accomplished, tightly knit Chinese puzzle box of a play takes a step or two toward telling us because in its essence Wanderers is a play about love, about intimacy, about levels of intimacy among two seemingly disparate sets of people. Among us all therefore?

We meet Ultra Orthodox couple Esther (Tali Osadchy) and Shmuli (Henry David) just after their arranged marriage. Each is holding one end of a black ribbon (the ties that bind?). They have not yet consummated their marriage. We meet Ultra Secular Sophie (Netta Shpiegelman) and Abe (Shlomi Bertonov) at a perilous moment in their not unfraught marriage. Both are celebrity authors. Then Abe’s initially impulsive online flirtation with glamorous movie star Julia Cheever (Lena Freifeld) pushes itself between them.

What subsequently occurs takes place on Michael Kramenko’s admirable set of ramps and screens under Karen Granek’s elusive, evocative lighting, as the connections among these five people slowly emerge.

Mr. Wolf has directed his actors as if in a series of screen close-ups, and they have responded with passionate, precisely nuanced performances that receive the audience’s absolute, totally focused attention.

“When I left Brooklyn, I thought I’d broken through the fence,” says Esther to Shmuli at once point, “but I find it’s inside me.” Osadchy’s Esther is multi-dimensional, at once fearful and courageous, pliant and adamant, hesitant and determined. As Shmuli, David is both a devout and unbending adherent of his traditions, yet willy-nilly starts to question them because he loves, and to him that love is holy. Bertonov’s Abe (Bertonov also wrote the music for the play), runs the gamut from near abject fear to brashness, as he strives to communicate, to acknowledge his heart. “Of course I hide things from myself,” he says to Sophie, whom Shpiegelman portrays with humor, guts, confidence and lack of it. Freifeld’s sensual Julia is part real, part goddess, part illusion.

This thoughtful, very excellent The Wanderers is a treat – perhaps a signpost – for the eyes and the heart.

*  *  *  *

Gently

By Shiri Nadav Naor

Directed by Moshe Naor

Lyrics by Shaanan Streett

Score by Amir Lekner

Choreography by Tom Appelbaum

Haifa Theater, Haifa; 29 January 2020

There is a deliberate irony – not forgetting the title – to  this appealing, sometimes raucous, sometimes tender, always entertaining, often hard-hitting musical, not least in its (unintentional, I’m sure), stars. They are the comic relief of Adam Hirsch and Ashot Gasparian as a couple of lazy, benighted, racist cops who have some nifty musical numbers as they bedevil, torment and generally harass the poor and black refugees of Gently. Another irony is that (mainly) Ethiopian Jewish actor/singers, themselves the targets of local cops, and whose Jewishness the all-white Rabbinate questions, are portraying African refugees whom nobody wants in a country built upon the ashes of the Jewish Holocaust so that Jews might avoid persecution by having a place to call their own.

The musical’s title is the name of an intinerant musician, the very charismatic Gili Yalo who charms his way through the character of Malachi Gently. The elegant and classy Esther Rada plays his wife Miriam who has recently been delivered of a white baby – the actual delivery scene being a very effective company number to the Hebrew translation of “Amazing Grace”. When the cops see the white baby, they arrest Miriam – she sings the bitter, hard-edged “Just Shut Up” to help her keep her mouth shut and thus avoid a beating. In desperation Malachi turns to Yaron Brovinsky who has a tour de force of his own, keeping his foot permanently in his trying-to-be PC mouth as he plays TV celeb Michael Fried, whose cleaning lady Miriam is. Fried’s intervention does the trick, Miriam and baby are released, and in gratitude Malachi invites him to dinner. Wouldn’t you know that the cops turn up there too – and things go disastrously wrong.

But you can’t have a musical that ends in tragedy, so for the finale the whole company joins in the Hebrew version of “I wish I knew how it feels to be free” by Billy Taylor and Richard Carroll Lamb that was the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement

Lily Ben Nachshon’s outrageous set of pylons, electronic billboards and skyscrapers behind a scrim is perfectly an urban grimscape. Yuval Kaspin’s costumes are ingenious, often glitzy to vulgar, and therefore wonderful, the songs tell their own story, properly complementing the plot, Bambi’s lighting zings along, the singing by both principals and the group called Liberation is top-notch, and if the choreography is prosaic, it doesn’t matter because – bottom line – Mr. Naor has given us not only a humdinger of a production but also something to think about.

Dispatches from Israel 19

[Helen Kaye, my friend in Tel Aviv, sent me a pair of new reviews from her gig at the Jerusalem Post.  As usual, I’m putting them together to post as “Dispatches from Israel 19,” but this installment is a bit different from the previous 18 editions of the series. 

[In her first review below, for Tikun by Amnon Levy and Rami Danon, Helen mentions that the play is a revision of an earlier play, Tikun Hatzot, by the same authors.  I thought it would be interesting to republish the review of the original play alongside Helen’s notice of the current incarnation, just for the sake of comparison —and curiosity. 

[It turned out that Helen saw Tikun Hatzot, but hadn’t written the JP review and had no written record of the performance.  The current publisher of the Jerusalem Post decided some years ago to suspend the paper’s on-line archive, so there are no articles on file for the recent past years.  But I was in luck!  The production of Tikun Hatzot was back in 1996, before the archive was ceased, and the New York Public Library has a database of JP articles from the years before the suspension. 

[So, following Helen’s review of Tikun is Naomi Doudai’s notice of Midnight Prayer, the English title of Tikun Hatzot.  Following that notice is Helen’s recent review of another play, Dancing Lessons by U.S. playwright Mark St. Germain.]

Tikun
By Amnon Levy and Rami Danon
Directed by Rami Danon
Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 19 September 2019

by Helen Kaye

‘Tikun’ is one of those slippery Hebrew words that have a literal, figurative and emotive meaning, as in ‘repair’, ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘reform’ or ‘certain prayers’, all of which come into play in this production, an adaptation by the authors of their earlier Tikun Hatzot.  [I’ve transcribed the 1996 review of Tikun Hatzot, under its English title, Midnight Prayer, below Helen’s recent one.  ~Rick]

That one, like the current production was all about relationships, belonging and identity, to understand which it’s necessary to know that Ashkenazi Jews – aka Lithuanian, aka Eastern European – tend to look down upon, if not hold in contempt, their Sephardic (Mizrachi) brethren as lesser beings when it comes to the Torah world of learning. In an attempt (mostly fruitless) to mitigate this, young ultra-orthodox Sephardic Jews are sent to Lithuanian yeshivot (religious institutions of higher Jewish learning) to absorb Lithuanian learning, aka values and outlook.

Berke (Dan Shapira) is one such young man and is the pride of his Rabbi’s heart until he learns that his beloved Rabbi Shtat (Rami Baruch) intends to send only Mizrachi students to the army – they are so much the more easily dispensable. Moreover, Shtat’s casually contemptuous denigration of Berke’s Sephardic Hacham (Wise Man) Moshe (Shimon Mimran) has caused the latter formally to curse him up hill and down dale.

Now Berke, named Dib by his Moroccan-born father Pinchas (Avraham Selektar), finds himself morally adrift and unsure of who he really is or where his allegiance lies.

One supposes that the bulk of Tikun attempts to answer that question. Perhaps it tries to but never quite gets there. The play lacks a center, goes all over the place in an attempt to make all its voices heard, which only makes it the more confusing.

Which is perhaps why none of the characters seem real, despite the actors’ best efforts to make them so. Shapira brings earnestness and charm to his portrayal of Berke/Dib. Rami Baruch’s nonagarian Shtat offers a moiety of roguishness under his unbending exterior while Mimran as his Sephardic counterpart properly blusters and puffs. Selektar convinces as the simple Pinchas, a man wrenched far beyond where he thought he was going. Eran Mor obediently plays Finger, a young man first at odds with, then allied to Berke, but doesn’t give us a real hint of who or why he is. Then there’s Shlomi Avraham who deftly plays the seemingly slightly retarded Kopp, but again, why is this character here? Whom or what does he represent? Is it the uncritical obedience the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis require from their flocks? The kind of obedience that causes Berke so to flounder when he must think for himself?

The action takes place on Eran Atzmon’s bleak grey set that looks (perhaps deliberately?) more like a warehouse than a school with other venues (such as Pinchas’ home) brought on and off by the actors.

But when the play ends, what is it we’ve been watching? Does this Tikun reflect us, our society, our mores? If it does, it needs to say so.

*  *  *  *

[Below is the review, published in the Jerusalem Post on 14 May 1996 (page 7), of the performance of Tikun Hatzot, the earlier verson of the play Tikun that Helen Kaye reviewed on 19 September.  Both productions were staged at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater and directed by Rami Danon, the co-author of the plays.  The reviewer of Tikun Hatzot, Naomi Doudai, uses the play’s English title, Midnight Prayer, for her notice, although the performance was in Hebrew (as was that of Tikun).

[Doudai includes a box at the top of her column to list the production’s cast and staff, which I’ve chosen not to reproduce here.  Instead, I’ll insert the character’s names in brackets into Doudai’s text as she names the actors.

[Helen gives brief definitions of the words Ashkenazi and Sephardi in her column, geared toward the play’s context.  Doudai doesn’t define the words at all, assuming, I presume, that her Israeli readers will know what they mean.  For Rick On Theater‘s U.S. (and non-Jewish) readers, I’ll give more general definitions for the words.  The explanations below are based on passages in my post on “Crypto-Jews,” published on ROT on 15 September 2009:

Jews descended from Central and Eastern European ancestors are Ashkenazim.  The word comes from the medieval Hebrew name for what we now call Germany, but it also refers to Jews from the Slavic lands, Hungary, France, and even Italy.  The traditions, cuisine, and language of the Ashkenazi Jews are distinctive to that group, influenced by the German and Slavic cultures within which the Ashkenazi Jews lived.  Yiddish, for instance, is derived from medieval German with elements of Hebrew (whose alphabet the language uses), Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Polish.

The Jews from Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and North Africa are Sephardim (from the word that in modern Hebrew is the name for Spain).  Their religious practices are quite different from those of the Ashkenazim, though the religious tenets are the same.  The foods, including the Seder meal, of Sephardim is markedly different from that which we know as “Jewish food” in the United States and Western Europe, and the lingua franca of Sephardic Jews is Ladino, which bears the same relationship to Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Arabic that Yiddish does with German, Russian, and Polish.

[Helen made a parenthetical reference to another ethnic group of Jews, the Mizrachim, closely associated with the  Sephardim.  My explanation of this Jewish group is as follows:

Mizrachim are Jews from the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.  The name, which derives from the Hebrew word for ‘easterners,’ refers today, especially in Israel, to Jews from Muslim-majority lands, especially Arabic countries and Iran.  Also called Oriental Jews, their traditions are similar, even identical to those of the Sephardim, but Mizrachim speak many different Judaic languages based on Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish, or the other native tongues of the regions in which they live (or lived, as most have fled their Muslim-dominated homelands, many for Israel, because of oppression and violence).] 

Midnight Prayer [Tikun Hatzot]

By Amnon Levy and Rami Danon

Directed by Rami Danon

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 14 May 1996

by Naomi Doudai

With the advent of a drama like Midnight Prayer, audiences in this country are at long last being exposed to a convulsive frontal explosion of Sephardi resentment against Ashkenazi attitudes.

The staging of this play marks a rare and rancorous release of what hitherto has been an overtly suppressed though long built-up hostility nursed by citizens of oriental origin against the patronizing-cum-contemptuous view in which they are held by many of their European counterparts. As an outspoken, embittered outcry as well as a significant socio-political manifesto, it should have a powerful impact.

Yossi Graber [Rabbi Shtat] and Arieh Elias [Hacham Atiya] give masterly studies symbolizing the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi religious establishment respectively.

Yoram Hatav [Berke] depicts a Deri-prototype emotionally and slavishly trapped in the former, while Avraham Selektar [Pinhas], in the most genuinely moving role of the evening, plays his simple Sephardi father.

Characterizations apart, the text is however by no means on a par with the performances or the thematic projection. First, the religio-political juxtaposition of sacred and profane is, to put it mildly, out of balance.

There is, too, something of cheap sentimentalization as well as a sense of forced sanctity in episodes like the ecstatic Ashkenazi ritual dance and the Sephardi religious liturgy.

Then there is the psychological aspect. While the agonized frustration of conflicting ethnic identity and its consequent sense of inferiority are graphically documented, they are not realized artistically.

The victor-victim confrontation pictured here is a one-sided, partisan structure of half truths.

[Doudai uses the word ‘Deri-prototype’ above, but it’s not a word I’ve ever encountered before and I couldn’t find a definition of it anywhere on line.  So I e-mailed Helen Kaye to see if she could help—and she did!  Her explanation: It’s a reference to “Arye Deri, a Sephardic Jew educated in a Lithuanian (Ashkenazi) yeshiva, an influential politician (for his adherents)  who went to jail for three years on corruption charges.”

[For a little more background for ROT’s U.S. readers, Arye Deri (b. 1959 in Meknes, Morocco) is an Israeli politician who’s one of the founders of Shas, a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) religious political party in Israel, and acts on its behalf as Minister of the Interior, Minister of the Development of the Negev and Galilee, and a member in the Security Cabinet of Israel.  He previously served as Minister of the Economy (2015), among other posts.  In 1999, Deri was convicted of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, and given a three-year jail sentence.  At the end of 2012, ahead of the elections for the nineteenth Knesset (January 2013), he returned to lead Shas party.  He was placed in the second position, and was re-elected to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).  In May 2013, Deri was re-appointed to the role of Shas chairman.

[Israeli police recommended on 20 November 2018 that he be indicted for "committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses."  In December 2014, however, Israeli television released video footage in which the founder of Shas attacked Deri as a wicked man and a thief.  Deri handed a resignation letter to the rabbinical board of Shas, which refused to accept it.  Deri then presented his resignation to the Knesset speaker.  Nevertheless, he was reelected to the Knesset in 2015 and appointed Minister of the Economy in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth government, in which he held several other ministerial posts.  He resigned as Minister of the Economy in November 2015, reportedly over an unpopular gas monopoly deal, and then resigned from the Knesset in October 2016.  Israeli police recommended in November 2018 that Deri be indicted for “committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses.”

[Last August, Deri, as Interior Minister, barred U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, from entering Israel.  On 17 September this year, Israel held new parliamentary elections and the outcome was indecisive.  Netyanyahu was forced into a coalition with his prime rival, Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White, a centrist and liberal political alliance, in order to form a government. of national unity.  Deri retained his Knesset seat, but at this writing, the government hasn’t been formed and cabinet ministers haven’t been appointed.]

*  *  *  *

Dancing Lessons

By Mark St. Germain

Translated by Eli Bijaui

Directed and choreographed by Miri Lazar

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 5 October 2019

by Helen Kaye

“Only connect” is the recurrent theme of Howards End, C. S. Forster’s 1908 novel about class and convention in England, and connection is finally achieved between Ever (Tom Hagi) and Senga (Meyrav Shirom). Ever, a professor of geo-sciences, wants a dance lesson so that he can function appropriately at an awards dinner. Simple, no? Not really, because Ever has Asperger’s Syndrome, an adjunct of the condition known as autism. Although he functions at a very high level professionally and intellectually, Ever cannot connect, not physically, not emotionally. He can’t bear to touch or be touched by another person. He is verbally, well, indiscreet. Says things that others may not want to hear. Senga – she was supposed to be Agnes but her aunt reversed the letters on her birth certificate – is a dancer, was a dancer, that is, because her leg is in a brace, but she won’t even entertain the idea that she may never dance again, because without dance, what is she, why is she?

Ever, and Senga, both damaged, both stunted, slowly, slowly learn that there’s more to life than their limitations. “Change requires courage,” says Ever bravely, “with courage anything is possible.” And so it is. The emergence of both from the chrysalis of solitude and obsession that constricts them is what drives St. Germain’s often funny, often very touching, sometimes uncomfortable romantic comedy.

Ms. Lazar has not hurried (or constricted) her actors. She has allowed them room, has let them discover; both Hagi and Shirom have grabbed their opportunity and what we see are nuanced, truthful performances that show us the selves underneath the selves we let others see.

Hagi’s Ever is awkward, afraid, inhibited and uninhibited, brave and cowardly all wrapped in a charm that pokes from within and teaches him to listen. As Senga, Shirom is angry, resentful, aggressive, terrified, needy, but slowly, slowly, she too becomes willing to listen. And then they reach out, one to the other.

A huge window dominates Shani Tur’s diagonal interior set, a metaphor, perhaps, for the barriers that initially pen in the characters. It works, as do Shira Wise’s schlumpy costumes and Ms. Lazar’s musical arrangements. The latter sometimes form a backdrop for three dancers whose presence is entirely superfluous because the play, the actors and the direction do the job perfectly well, thank you.

[Dancing Lessons is U.S. playwright Mark St. Germain’s eighth play.  It premièred In 2014 at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  The play was presented at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota in 2015 and in 2016 at the Orlando (Florida) Shakespeare Theater.  St. Germain is also the author of Camping With Henry And Tom, which won the 1995 Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards; Forgiving Typhoid Mary, one of Time magazine’s “Year’s Ten Best” in 1991; and Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer, winner of a 1993 AT&T “New Plays for the Nineties” Award.

[For non-Yiddiphiles, schlumpy is the adjective from schlump (or shlump), which means, according to Martin Marcus’s Yiddish for Yankees: or. Funny, You Don’t Look Gentile (Philadelphia; New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1968): “A slow, slovenly person; a sad sack.  What you feel like the day you wear your shiny suit and ratty tie to the office and the chairman of the board pops in for an all-day conference.”]

Dispatches from Israel 18

by Helen Kaye

[Helen Kaye, a theater reviewer and cultural reporter for the Jerusalem Post, has been a contributor to Rick On Theater for many years now; her last contribution was posted on 26 March 2019.  I’ve published or republished many of her articles on theater and travel (which have been posted under the byline Helen Eleseari), but all her reviews have all been posted under the collective title “Dispatches from Israel,” of which this is the 18th installment, always covering two or more notices of productions from various theaters around the country.

[In this collection, Helen has included four reviews dating from 13 August to 10 September; I’m posting them in reverse chronological order because I want to spotlight the latest play for which Helen sent me a review, Shahar Pinkas’s Next in Line.  I won’t recap her review, but I want to point out that Pinkas’s biblical tale of King David, the 11th-century BCE king of Israel, is presented as a commentary on current Israeli society, politics, and political personalities.  In that sense, it resembles William Shakespeare’s history plays.

[Several of the playwrights and directors of the shows covered in “Dispatches 18” have appeared in previous installments of Helen’s contributions: playwright Pinkas (1 past review), director Omri Nitzan (4), and playwright-director Aya Kaplan (1); curious ROTters are urged to use the search application above to look up these artists’ past work as discussed on ROT by Helen Kaye.]

Next in Line

By Shahar Pinkas

Directed by Shir Goldberg

Beersheva Theater; 10 September 2019

Via the “TV” we are being earnestly addressed by King David (Natan Datner) regarding the necessity of peace talks with the Philistines and the equal necessity of making sure they fully understand the mailed fist in the armored glove, i.e. that real peace is never on the table. During his address David wears his crown, an uncomfortable looking iron circlet to which are attached sharp-pointed triangles that look like spears, alternatively a crown of thorns. And up pops another analogy “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” ([Shakespeare’s] Henry IV, p. 2, Act III, sc.1)

And the crown, right now, and incidentally he never removes it, sits insecurely on David’s head. He’s old. He’s sick. He’s failing. All the more reason to hold on, not to let go, to relinquish power to another. Holding onto power is the focus of his thinking – does this strike a chord? All else is marginal which is why, when Nehemia the Servant (Ron Bitterman) comes in to tell him at various times throughout the play that a ‘representative of the people’ seeks an audience, he’s rebuffed; and when that ‘representative’ dies, the chandelier, oddly enough – or perhaps it signifies the obligations he is ignoring – a larger version of David’s crown, collapses.

Not that the vultures aren’t circling anyway. Chief among them is his eldest son, Adoniyah whom Tom Avni meticulously and beautifully depicts as a traitorous, treacherous weasel willing to suborn, plot, lie, anything to get him the throne, anything to get his father’s withheld love. Not far behind is Yoav (Jonathan Cherchi), his top general who views David’s increasing feebleness with alarm – “If the king is weak, the nation is weak,” he pronounces as he tempts Adonyah to treason, only to be betrayed in his turn.

Then there are the women, Batsheba (Adva Edni), and Avishag (Inbar Dannon), both opportunists, the former blatant, the latter not, each manipulating David for their own ends.

Sitting (more or less) above the fray is Nathan the prophet, a solid, watchful Muli Shulman whose advice the king mostly ignores. And then there’s Solomon (Oren Cohen), also watchful, the outsider, the one who gets the crown – and we all know the story.

This is a good-looking contemporary production, designed by Ula Shevstov and Natasha Polyak, the only oddities being the belts worn by Yoav and Adoniyah, the belt signifying an encompassing will to power.

And as in other Pinkas/Goldberg productions, it’s the cast that move the few set pieces that denote place and time.

It’s a strong cast. For the rest, Datner’s David is a man beset, afraid, employing bluff and bluster to hide his weaknesses from others and himself. As Bathsheba, Edni never lets her guard down, displays an enviable single-mindedness and leaves us in no doubt where her loyalties lie. Dannon’s Avishag maintains her “sweet naivety” mask to good effect. Cherchi’s Yoav is stalwart, a man convinced of his own rectitude. As Solomon, Cohen is not only watchful, but careful and fully aware that all he has to do is let it happen.

Pinkas/Goldberg have described their intense, enthralling drama as a biblical political thriller, and it surely works in that context. As a parable for the politics and machinations of our own time, it’s more inferred than demonstrated.

[Helen makes only one passing comment referring to the parallels Pinkas depicts to present-day Israel—but remember that she’s writing for an Israeli readership.  Severely restricted in the length of her JP reviews as she is, it’s reasonable for Helen to assume that any Israeli theatergoer seeing Next in Line or reading her notice will immediately glean Pinkas’s intentions.  For us here in the U.S. and elsewhere outside Israel, suffice it to say that David is meant to evoke Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; ROTters can look up or deduce the other characters’ contemporary avatars.  (The Beersheva production of Next in Line was staged, and Helen’s review written and published, before the parliamentary elections in Israel on Tuesday, 17 September 2019.)

[By the way, I contend that Next in Line, at least from Helen’s description above, sounds as if it could apply a little to the current U.S. political scene and our political dramatis personae—perhaps not directly, but in the vein of the way Macbeth was adapted by Barbara Garson in 1967 as MacBird!  Just a thought . . . .]

*  *  *  *

Pregnancy

By Edna Mazya

Directed by Omri Nitzan

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 8 September 2019

When Efi (Maya Dagan) announces that she wants to have a baby, old flame and now fertility expert Ido (Oded Leopold) cackles mirthfully. Efi? Baby? Oh come on! Successful businesswoman Efi and famous physicist Yoni (Micha Selektar) have a wonderful and deliberately childless marriage. In fact, at her 39^th birthday party (which starts the play), Efi lets loose a pretty vicious antikid rant, so a kid? Yes, well, biology starts talking, Efi obtains Yoni’s unwilling assent and they get going. Except that Efi doesn’t get pregnant, and doesn’t get pregnant, and what started as a desire for a child has become an obsession with seemingly disastrous results.

Efi is a go-getter, successful in all that she sets her hand to. It’s therefore inconceivable that she cannot accomplish the most mundane of biological processes – that of reproduction – and it’s her growing obsession that drives this intelligent, quick-witted, and meaty drama. Pregnancy is the vehicle. Par for the Mazya course, it should be said.

Director Nitzan has liberally ladled his considerable talent onto the production so that it too is intelligent, quick-witted and meaty, engaging the eyes and the mind. The cast is uniformly excellent, acting with rather than at, each other.

Maya Dagan takes Efi from a committed, confident and energetic woman to a self-demeaning, self-abdicating wraith that never changes out of her pajamas, as she allows the character’s increasing desperation to infect her life – until . . .

At first Selektar’s Yoni never really leaves the safety of his professional world, then is prized from it inch by slow inch until he achieves humanity, due to his genuine love for Efi, and pushed, it must be said by Na’ama Shetrit, as his passionate ‘I have to change the world’ sister Nati. Kinneret Limoni shines as the exuberant yet grounded Rona, Leopld’s Ido is a tuned mix of torn emotions, Dana Meinrath’s Sarai is out of place among these high flyers but her instincts are sound and the compassion is real. Helena Yaralova cameos efficiently as Efi’s hi-tech partner, Galia.

Adam Keller’s all-white set of oblong boxes - suggesting sterility among the rest – plus an upstage table, serves as the spaces where the events occur while the table is the background for Yoav Cohen’s deft video art and graphics, so essential to move the plot along.

The play ends as it began, with a birthday party, but with a different dynamic this time, because the protagonists have grown. Dare we say grown up?

*  *  *  *

Abdullah Schwarz

By Rami Vered

Directed by Roni Pinkovitch

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 22 August 2019

The Schwarz Family lives in Savyonei Shomron, a West Bank settlement. Tziki Schwarz (Avi Kushnir) is an accountant contemplating divorce from his wife of 30 years, Tirtza (Anat Waxman). However . . .

It’s Lali Schwarz’s (Efrat Baumwald) wedding day. She’s marrying Aviel Tzur (Shlomo Tapiero), not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but . . .

The reading of a seemingly innocuous verse turns Papa Tziki Schwarz of Savyonei Shomron on the West Bank into Egyptian Abdallah with no recollection of his true identity. Reading the verse again turns him back to Tziki with no memory of his Arab identity, except that . . .

Oh for heaven’s sake!

Roni Pinkovitch has directed one of the funniest, smartest local comedies to come along in ages. It gleefully slays every sacred cow in sight while keeping its tongue firmly in its cheek. Events go south and back again as a superb cast imperturbably juggles an incipient security situation, Mossad shenanigans [Mossad is the Israeli national agency for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counterterrorism], hatred of Arabs, co-existence, romance and what not, with maximum brio and without ever dropping a ball (to mix metaphors).

It all happens on Zeev Levy’s convincing indoor/outdoor set complete with outsize Israeli flag, aided and abetted by good costuming (Aviah Bash), lighting (Adi Shimrony), music (Elad Adar), movement (Sharon Gal), and not least by Rubi Moskovich’s Arab/Egyption dialog coaching of Kushnir.

Kushnir is phenomenal as Tziki/Abdullah – there’s no other word for his effortless switching between somewhat hen-pecked, a mite gormless Tziki and the virile, potent man-with-a-mission Abdullah. Anat Atzmon, a truly fine actress, has (unhappily) been somewhat typecast these past few years as a Shrew. Yes, her Tirtza is a shrew, but muted, her pretty pink clothing complementing the mood. Then Tirtza meets Abdullah and all at once she’s bashful, giggly, sweetly smitten and an utter joy to watch. An even greater joy is watching Atzmon and Kushnir working seamlessly together.

Shahir Kabaha is Fadi, an area Arab, or “Israel from Petah Tikva” and he is delicious as Abdallah’s willy-nilly translator from Arabic to Hebrew. Father and son Tzur – respectively Hai Maor and Tapiero – charge headlong and most believably into their roles as security office/father of the groom and bridegroom. Baumwald’s dippy Lali is beautifully anxious to please and Odel Hayon makes a sturdy, eager Reli, Lali’s younger brother. Most ably rounding out this great cast is Tal Charnovsky as big sister Sari, a card-carrying Leftie, who’s come up for the wedding from planet Tel Aviv.

Abdullah Schwarz - 80 minutes of mischievous irreverence and not to be missed.

*  *  *  *

Homeward

Written and directed by Aya Kaplan

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 13 August 2019

We are told that “there is no correlation between the characters and events . . . in real life” in this soggy soap opera whose ‘charismatic guru’ Avihu Tishbi (Shmuel Vilojzny) bears a remarkable physical resemblance to real-life cult ‘guru’ Goel Ratzon [a self-proclaimed Messiah and faith healer from Tel Aviv, b. 1951], currently serving 30 years for assorted cult-related felonies.  Additionally its heroine’s story is based on that of Yehudit Herman, a Ratzon cultist for 10 years, who bore him five children, and now lectures on her ‘lost years’ throughout the country.

The story: Ora (Neta Garti), as she initially demands to be called, also has five children by Tishbi, but  in her case,16 years have gone by since she, then called Noa, fled her kibbutz home and joined the cult. Now, following Tishbi’s arrest, she must come to terms with her past and with real life, unless she wants to join Tishbi in jail – those are the alternatives that Inspector Turgeman (Ruth Asarsai) bluntly offers her. However, it’s not until her eldest daughter, Shuvi (Carmel Bin) blurts out that Tishbi has fed her the same line of guff – i.e that she is spiritually enlightened – that he intends to make her his “wife”, that the scales finally fall from Ora’s eyes. She briskly shops [that’s a British colloquialism for ‘rats out’] Tishbi, and as Noa once again, she and the children make a New Beginning, (or so it seems), at Rosh Hashana.

Cue in the hosannas, heavenly choirs and cooing doves.

However, there’s a problem with the play, and it’s that never, at any time, does it feel genuine; that here are real people showing us what makes them tick. Never, at any time, does it demonstrate the real danger that a cult represents.

A cult has been broadly defined as a system of beliefs and rituals. There are many different types of cult, but all have one ingredient in common, a blind, uncritical, unconditional devotion to the leader whose supremacy in all matters, sacred or profane, is absolute. We have only to think of Jim Jones and the mass murder/suicide at Jonestown, Guyana in 1979 to understand how lethal a cult can be.

As Tishbi, all Vilojzny can manage is a kind of avuncular charm, a kind of cuddly warmth that doesn’t even approach the charisma his character must radiate. Within this stricture, Garty does her best. Her Ora/Noa is driven, blinkered, but the emotions are manipulated and do not seem real even to the character she plays, not even when the scales fall from her eyes. The same is true of the other characters who also do the best with what they have, like Avi Termin as Noa’s stubborn, vengeful father, Odeya Koren as her always-willing-to-accommodate mother, and Asarsai as Turgeman.

The play’s most disposable role, and Assaf Solomon makes a sturdy job of it,  is that of Michael, Noa’s pre-Tishbi boy friend, who’s carried a torch for her all these years. The most difficult role is that of Gili, Noa’s younger sister, whom Maya Landesmann invests with a kind of desperation, as though she doesn’t know what is her character’s purpose in this play, and is playing it by ear. She is not helped by the ghastly costumes Yehudit Aharon designed for her, though those the other characters wear are apt.

Svetlana Breger’s set veers shockingly between a Kafka-inspired police station and the patently picture-postcard, gemütlichkeit environs of the parents’ home in the kibbutz.

Bottom line? Homeward is cult lite. On that level, it works fine.

[The German word Gemütlichkeit (which, like other nouns, would be capitalized in German) is an untranslatable word that means, among other things: ‘comfortableness,’ ‘coziness,’ ‘pleasantness,’ ‘friendliness,’ ‘geniality,’ ‘cheerfulness,’ ‘collegiality,’ ‘comradery,’ or ‘cordiality.’  (I believe Helen should have used gemütlich, the adjective, rather than the noun.)  ~Rick]