Sheikh Levy enters his ninth decade and talks about the pale groping, the relationship with my man, the disconnect from Foley's family, the standupists of today ("Adir Miller doesn't make me laugh, he laughs at the crowd"), Eastern music ("It must be a genius to find out it's in Hebrew" ), And why he hardly goes to the theater

• "Performances are stressful and exciting to me, and when I get excited, tears also come." Sheike Levy

  Photography:

  Finney M. Disposal

Excused from unnecessary paperwork and protections, Shaika Levy opens the front door to his home in northern Tel Aviv with sandals, a short shirt and shorts. His gaze is serious. It is the projection of the haunted house close to his house that bothers him.

"You see, not clean enough here right now. But leave, let's go in. We'll have a little Turk with milk in the kitchen and rattle a little."

Are you excited?

"What"?

You're 80 next week.

"I don't feel that way. Sometimes I ask people, 'Do you look like 80? Me?'" People say, "What is it, which is 80? What is 80? You're not normal."

How do you celebrate the big event?

"Nothing special. At 100, we have a big party. I'm a simple man. I don't like surprises."

The thought of death occupies you?

"She works at any age, even when you're a kid. But who's thinking about it? Who needs to think about it?"

So Shakey Levy, 80. The man and the rolling laughter, the one who laughed and thrilled us to tears in hundreds of skits, songs, movies and language coins, more than 60 years of doing, during which every stage and every corner of the country plowed. Even today he is razor-sharp, full of magic, funny, sometimes sad, sometimes furious, and he prefers to be home, with his coffee and newspapers and crosswords, with his wife Orna and the series he loves on television.

More about the pale grouse:

• "We asked Pasha: What is that name, the pale grouse? Are you crazy?"

• A salute to the "pale groove"

• 50 years, you will remember: a life project for the pale grouse trio

He finds his leisure at night, because he is a man of the night, "This is how I got used to over the years, because of the performances. I go to bed very late, at 4 in the morning. At night I can think quietly, I can read books, see series. Books are waiting for me here in the pile. I have the "Brief History of Humanity" here. "

Why did you stop appearing? The crowd is thirsty to see you.

"I still appear a little with Moshe Lahav, the big tish. I'm like a special guest for him, number and minister. More than 40 minutes I talk about my period as a kibbutznik, how I went to the army, and so on. We appeared in storytelling festival now, and in a few days will appear With him in Or Yehuda. "

And is that enough? Yehoram Gaon, your age, rips the stages.

"Oh yeah, that's enough. I refuse a lot of stuff. Performances stress me and excite me, and I don't want to be stressed and don't want to be excited. Because when I get excited, some tears are coming, too. And Orna tells me, 'Get rid of it already, enough, enough.' The performances ruin your life. Enough. "

To the extent that?

"Sure. I keep thinking about the text. Look, I have a show in a month. All month I'm with the texts of the show. In Gashash we would work a year to find punch. Do you know what punch is in Gashash? Think it's easy to find punch in Finish the skit. "

Today there are no skits, just standups.

"If they do good things to the audience, he will come."

So take my man and make us laugh.

"No, no, no, it's impossible. Polly is not, and as soon as he left, we said 'the story's over.' But listen, people aren't ready to work. Nobody. Which producer will take a band now to work on Punch for a year? All of a sudden."

Can you connect to a standup?

"When there is something good. For example, I really like Adi Ashkenazi. She not only makes me laugh, she is very good. She has the ability to bring everything. The subject, the depth of things, the how, the what, the sounds. "Comedy is music, it's timing and sounds, no smarts. Adi Ashkenazi invites me to her performance, and I go. She knows I love her very much."

Adir Miller makes you laugh?

"No. Adir Miller is very sad to me. Because it's not ... it's not a standup. He uses the crowd. I guided a big insurance company evening, and he was the artist in the evening. I was just the moderator. Then he went up, and I went to the end of the hall And he started the evening going down on a pair of beards. "How's it going with him when he walks like this?" ... I don't know, he laughed at their old man, and the crowd laughed. I turned around and walked to the car quietly.

The audience really laughs at him.

"I saw his show on TV. He didn't talk to me. It just didn't make me laugh, didn't talk to me.

"I'm looking for a standup level. Usually, the standup level is just kids' stuff." Do you know that this way and that? "It's not serious. For Adi Ashkenazi, it doesn't exist. She tells stories and makes things just outstanding."

• • •

"We spoke in Hebrew and in Hebrew, too much Mizrahi. It did not come well for Poles in the cultural committees." Sheikh (right) with Israel Polyakov and Masai Masai // Photo: Gideon Levin

What makes you funny on TV?

"Since" Seinfeld "and" Calm, "it's hard to find things." Calm down "is a tremendous head, and" Seinfeld "is great. Nissim Aloni always said," Don't make me laugh. Do things right - it will be funny. "You can even Cry and laugh at you. Everything is possible, but do it well. "

Are you going to the theater?

"Almost not. After two weeks, every show turns into a gig. Going out, seeing that it's successful, it's okay - come on, gig. I once went with Orna to the Old Lady's Visit to the Chamber. In the middle, I told her, 'Let's go. What is it, they mock the audience? "Orna told me, 'Are you crazy? Impossible. Invite us, we're second row, how will we suddenly come out.'

"I told her, 'I can't, Orna, they just mock the audience who paid money.' They mocked that they were bored with them. Laughing at the crowd. Terrible. But I didn't go out. Well, I'm married to a woman who didn't let me go.

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"Since I'm almost not going to the theater. I'm a good friend of Ruthie Der, a stage designer and stage designer, so I go to what she invites me to. I'm a good friend of Oded Kotler. If he does something and invites me, I come. The same with director Isaac maybe I also went to Yiddish plays, working in Yiddishpiel. "

Have you seen "Halfon Hill Doesn't Answer" Habima?

"No. All the theater is looking for money, ratings. I don't mean to go to that. If you want to see Polly, Masculine and Shaikh, you can see the movie. So do a show to emulate the film? Sky in the back like fabrics? It's just dunes."

You were very upset when Miri Regev was appointed Culture Minister. You said it was the end of the world.

"Not just in my eyes. I think in the eyes of all Israeli culture. Put it there to get rid of it. What is this thing? What does it belong to? What suddenly is a culture minister?

"That's what it looks like. She doesn't understand a thing, she doesn't know a thing, and he nominates it. Maybe to upset the artists, I don't know. Look how she behaves. What, she wanted with Jerusalem dresses? What is this thing? She's just trying to promote herself on crap.

"Almost never goes to the theater" // Photo: Feeney M. Disposal

"That's why culture looks like that. No budgets. Look what it is. The stage doesn't pay salaries. I don't know how long, and the situation is not good. No money, nothing. Nobody cares about having money in these areas. What do they care?"

So maybe you will be the minister of culture? You care.

(Laughs) "What do I understand? I understand something?"

And if they were to call you and say, "Let's save Israeli culture"?

"Could be, I don't know. But I needed a lot of helpers. I'd take people I trust, ones I know for sure they know better than I do. That's what I did when I was chairman of the AMI (between 1993 and 1999; ).

"I was at the peak of my work then, and the great artists came and said, 'Shake? Why does he need it?' The big bodies, the ones who have to pay the artists, were scared of me. If someone worked and didn't pay him, he would say, 'Well, I'll go to Shika.' And the bodies would tell me - 'Leave, just tell us how much we have to pay.'

"One day, Mitzi Aviv and a foreign uncle came to me and told me that for six months they had not been paid for a performance in the south, in some city. I rang there, I said, 'Shayka Levi, the chairman of the AMI,' said. "It's gone." I told the secretary there that if the person in charge didn't call me within ten minutes, I would stop them for the entire cultural budget for the next year. The next day, Motti and his uncle received the check.

"Look, people are languishing. You see, Arabs are collecting donations here for burnt woods, battered women, all kinds of children and patients. And standing on stage are artists, not carpenters. No audience will come to see carpenters or locksmiths or mechanics. Come see artists. And that artist Who has now worked on such a donation evening, coming home and not knowing how he will end the month. "

• • •

What do you think of reality culture?

"Everyone after that becomes a big star. Big brother, big happy."

They know they will come there and then big stars.

"Yes, yes. Celebs, celebs."

Are you watching it?

"No. What, sitting to see people sitting at home? What kind of thing is that? That's not a level. I also know that everything is rigged."

"Next star" you see?

"Yes, songs and singers yes."

What do you think of oriental music?

"There are songs with words we don't know. You have to be a genius to find out that it is Hebrew at all."

But you saw what made Yoram genius and Matti Caspi, who came out against Eastern music.

"Yes. We invented it in Gushash. We did Philpalu, and then the Depression Songs Festival. We went into it with all our might. The Depression Songs Festival is a very big statement."

Isn't Eastern music talking to you?

"There are beautiful things, there are singers that I love. You like Amir Benayun. Yoav Yitzhak sings great. I really liked Zohar Argov. Very, very much. Because he sang, you heard every word, and there were beautiful words, many times from the sources. A nightingale. I had his disc in the car. "

What about Eyal Golan?

"I used to go into a coffee shop with a friend and I hear someone singing on the speakers. I ask the friend, 'Who is that?' And he says, 'What is it? Is that Eyal Golan?' I thought it was a girl, because he sang very high.

Do you connect to the words of Eastern music?

"No. The words are hard. 'My brother' and 'my sister'. I have a song that I laugh about. I called it a 'non-oriental song'."

You couldn't sing oriental songs.

"No, no. Of course not."

But that's the thing today. They fill Caesarea.

"Of course, of course. When Caspi once said 'these are dance songs.' And he's right. Start singing - immediately people get up. You can't get up and dance when you sing 'To the Cisterns.'

"Once people became more connected to the 'water cisterns'. The audience changed, and I don't know why. I'm only with Hebrew songs, the songs of the Land of Israel. Sasha Argov, Matti Caspi, Ricky Gal. Good things I connect with. When there is content for words. "I think Ricky Gal is the best singer from the singers. She's phenomenal. Just singing out of the ordinary."

Did you like Eric Einstein?

"Not too much. I love Shalom Hanoch. I love Shlomo Artzi very much. Both me and Orna. He is wonderful."

• • •

Not to navigate his professional life with laughter and humor. It provided him with years of survival and turmoil, and pushed him away from the hard stops of his life. He was born in Cairo by the name of Shaya, the middle son of Moshe and Masuda ("in Israel they were called lucky"), out of their five children.

"She's stronger than I am. With his wife Orna

"I had three brothers - Shlomo, David and Isaac, all of whom passed away, and one sister - Naomi, who is 78. When I was 3, my father died of illness, at the age of 34. After a year, in 1944, my mother took us and immigrated to Israel.

"We arrived at the immigrant camp in the Zayed Hills in the Jezreel Valley. Here I changed my name to Isaiah. All kinds of delegates from the immigrant camps, from the Youth Aliyah, came and took children to kibbutzim. The educator Shalom Segal came there and took me, a 4-year-old boy, to Kibbutz Ein Hayam, today Ein Carmel.

"I cried when they were taken and my mother said to me, 'Kibbutz is good. You will study there, you will be good. I will come and visit you.' I did not patronize her, even though I did not see her five years later. In retrospect, I realized she was smart when she gave them Take me in. The kibbutz was one of the best things in my life.

"At the kibbutz, I changed the name to Sheikh. I lived there alone, without a mother, and I didn't stick to any family. I was a wild child. The children's home was our central place. Until 9, I didn't even know where my mother was. Then my grandmother said to my mother, 'Come on. We will bring her Shi'a for Passover.

"My grandmother came to the kibbutz to take me for the holiday. Suddenly I see a woman in front of me with a floral handkerchief and a floral dress, something totally Arab. I said to myself, 'It's me.' For her, take her for a tractor ride around the economy.

"She took me to my mom in the Hope neighborhood, where she lives. I didn't see her for five years. The word 'mom' was not in my mouth at all. And I saw her on the roof, she hung laundry. And then she hugged me, and that's it. At Passover, I went back to the kibbutz. "

Were you sad to return to the kibbutz?

"No. I missed the kibbutz. I was already very rooted there. I told you, a wild kid. Very wild. Running around like that. And singing. I sang very well. And I was a little funny. Long before the age of 6. The laughter, the humor, the performance, the shows - it was survival. It was for me to like, to find my prominence in life, to find value for myself. I would sit the children and make plays for them. All kinds of nonsense. I loved the kibbutz. From an early age I sang there in festivities. "

Didn't you have a hard time growing up without a mother?

"No. I didn't have that feeling of 'mom'. I was so kibbutznick, far from this family and holiday and dinner thing together. I never had it. Even as I grew up and became what I was, Mom didn't know who I was, And my people said to her, 'Your son is doing well,' and that didn't make any impression on her. She knew I was fine and applauded. Because growing up without family, friendship with people is the most important thing in my life. "

"At the kibbutz, I changed the name to Shaikh. I lived there alone, and I didn't stick to any family. I was a wild child." With his brother Solomon, David and Isaac and his sister Naomi

• • •

He enlisted in the IDF in 1957. First he served in the Gdna Band, then moved to Central Command. There he first met mason masons.

"I slept in a military hotel in Jaffa, to which we would return after the performances. My husband was in the Nahal band, and they were also sleeping there. In the middle of the night, when they would come back from the shows, they would wake me up so we rattled together. We would sit all night on black coffee and sandwiches, talking and laughing. "

Foley (Israel Polyakov) also served in the Nahal Band at the time.

The pale grouse trio was born on the parting tour of the Roosters in Europe in late 1963. "The band went on a cruise together in Europe, like Cruz. In every town we stopped, I would go with Pasha (producer and promoter Abraham Pashnell) to the market. Buy cheeses, breads, meats and vegetables, and cook delicious things. Pasha asked us, 'Well, what will you do now?' And suggested we stay together as a trio.

"In those days, Shaika Ophir returned from America, after working there with all the greats. Fashnell told him, 'Work with the Pale Explorer.' We told Pasha, 'What is that name? You went crazy?' It was his disturbed head. And he said, 'Why "The beetles are better? Dark purple? And the rolling stones? If it is good, people will stand in line and ask for two tickets for the Pale Explorer, and get used to it." So he was right, wasn't he? "

The beginning was lame. "We started working, and we had no material. We took from here and from there, from the winery and from the garden. I brought 'Palpelo' from my mother's house, my husband brought 'Uzi Uzi', and Polly brought some kind of song, I don't remember anymore. We sat for hours. At Shika Ophir's house, nothing happened, he even told us stories from America.

"After six months, Feshnell tired. He decided to place a watchman on us: Avraham Hirschzon, who later was a treasury minister and sat in jail. He worked for him. We would go for a swim in the Gordon pool in the morning, and when Hirschson didn't notice, flee to a man's house and spend hours there. It was stubborn, and somehow we were able to produce materials for the program. "

The first plan of the pale grouse came in 1964. It was written and directed by Yossi Banai and won the name "Joy of my Old Man". The battle for audience love was difficult; In those years, the Yarkon Trio (Eric Einstein, Yehoram Gaon and Benny Amdorsky), Eric Lavie, and Yossi Banai, who sang in the Renaissance, ruled the country.

"The Yarkon Bridge disrespected us. They sang 'love of construction workers', and we 'Uzi Uzi'. The kibbutzim did not want to hear from us, because we spoke in Hebrew and in Hebrew, too Oriental. It did not come well for the Poles in the cultural committees, maybe they were afraid That it would spoil their youth.

"But we didn't give up, we continued to work hard. The skits took control of our performances, and creators like Yossi Banai and Nissim Aloni started working with us. Then people started saying, 'If Aloni works with them, that's something good.' Orders began to flow, and even kibbutzim demanded to bring Us to them.

"One day, the director of the hall at Kibbutz Yagur came to Pasha's office, and I was there. He told me, 'Aeron Dodd (from Nissim Aloni's first program with Hashashash in 1967; RA), Chamviron Dodd, you know, they love It's there on the kibbutz. Let's take it. "

The band became a resounding success. The best writers and directors offered her skits - Dan Ben Amotz, Danny Raveh, Moti Kirshenbaum, Ephraim Kishon, Yaron London. Key phrases in the skits became part of the spoken language and contributed greatly to the Israeli slang: "The kettlepick of the kettle", "Ask Benny and Naan", "Hot in Tiberias", "Fisherman loves fish?", "The world is so funny and laughing" The Club, "" Who's Just Last "is right," You will give him the respect he deserves, "and many others.

The scouts also participated in several films - the seller of which, "Halfon Hill does not answer," became the country's cold film. The songs they performed were a huge success, including "Water for King David", "Why Did Michal Laugh", "Honey and the Sting", "My Sister Ruhama", "On" and "Lu Yehi", which they performed with Naomi Shemer during the Yom Kippur War.

Looking back, what was the secret of your success?

"We gave the public something popular. At eye level, something that spoke to everyone. Something with a true statement - painful, not painful, everything. There was everything. All the juice of Israelis. And the crowd sticks to it.

"Take, for example, the 'Bloody Wedding', with the Ashkenazi (poly) father of the bride and the eastern father (shika) of the groom, meeting. We showed the people who he is, and it was funny. We gave the people a magnifying glass to see what we think about this behavior and Everything that happened here.

"Songs in the country then had a strong influence on Russian, French, American culture, and we stayed with our Israelis. Polly, Gabri and I were all from the same village."

Were you closer to male?

"Yes. Foley was also closer to male than to me. They both came from the Nahal band, I was a foreigner. But on stage we were very much together. You see, from the army we were together. We have the same humor, the same thoughts, the same opinions, everything. In that we were very similar, really brothers. But not with those friends. Each of us had his friends. "

Did you go out together?

"Sometimes we were going to eat after a show, but it wasn't called going out together. We were so much with each other that we couldn't even go out together after all this work. At our peak, we had 46 shows a month! We were with each other more than with our families ".

There were quarrels?

"No. There were debates while we were preparing a plan. And we worked a year on each plan. It was good to have a director, who arranged everything. But in principle, he was very calm. We didn't break things."

Who made you more funny than both?

"Listen, a man is an outstanding storyteller. Very funny stories." He has the word, "like Yossi like that. And Polly is a performer, he does things well. He was very strict. When he did imitation of something, it was to the end. "To the smallest nuance. Today everyone who does Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian - they all emulate Polly. They don't emulate Bulgarian, emulate Polly."

Is he missing you? Do you miss him?

"Yes, I miss him."

In recent years there has been a disconnect between you and his family. Doesn't it hurt you?

"No. Suddenly? I've never been in contact with them. They've hurt me and Orna on all kinds of occasions, good for us without them. No effort should be made to understand that. We have no disagreement with them, and there will be no."

Poly was different from them?

"Yes, but we weren't some friends."

With a man are you in contact?

"Yes. Here, today, he rang. Returned from abroad. So we say goodbye, and I tell him, 'Man, let's have some coffee in the afternoon. Come on, come on. He lives not far from me in Ramat Aviv, and we sit and talk. Listen, 40 years together, and more roosters before that. It's a piece of life. "

Shosh Polyakov said in response: "There is no conflict. There is nothing, there was nothing."

• • •

The Pale Hashash Trio operated for 37 years, until 2000. That year, the Israel Prize was also awarded for their contribution to the company.

When asked to return to funny or special moments during his career, he thinks for a minute. "There were a lot of funny moments. Sometimes I forgot texts during the show. We used to do the 'Russians are coming' skit, and suddenly a Colt man I already skipped half a skit and flew forward. So he told me, 'You probably wanted to say that ...' and reminded me What I had to say was, I said 'right, right' and went back to the beginning.

"We used to appear in the soldier's house in Tel Aviv, and suddenly a water pipe exploded on the side of the stage. Come on, and water, water. We told the audience to stay in place and proceeded as usual. And suddenly a power cut. Now, what will we do? A crowd comes, paid money, wants to see the grouse.

"We told our electrician, Duceh, to sit in the front row, and he lit us up on the stage with a flashlight. That's how we stood and performed and did old sections, the fishermen and things. It took almost an hour, and we finished. The crowd started to leave the hall - and then the light returned. Don't ask. Once again from the buses back to the courtroom, they wanted to see the grouse, and we did a full show.

"There was also an exciting story with a 10-year-old boy lying on the floor of Reut Hospital. One day Naomi Shemer's husband, the late Mordechai Horowitz, told us about him and said that all day and night he lies with headphones on his ears, where he plays our skits And when he takes off his headphones, he goes wild and screams.

"We went to the hospital with him, we stood on both sides of his bed and we did a skit, with Smart Maimon. And he looked right, once left, according to the voice. It was very exciting."

One of the performances he will never forget was at Carnegie Hall in New York in the 1970s. “There was 80 cm of snow outside. The day before the show, we came to the auditorium to see if you could find accessories for the skits. The stage workers there, each two feet in height, looked at us like crazy. They told themselves, these kids think someone will come to see them in such a blizzard.

"The next day, 3,000 seats in the courtroom - everything is blown up. 600 people were left without tickets, shouting in Hebrew, 'Tell Pasha to follow here,'" Tell Polly Shmuisha here. "What is it, soldier's house? Guys, leave, go home. Carnegie Hall here.

"And what happened? There was a New York Times entertainment critic at the show. He wrote the next day, 'You don't have to understand Hebrew in this show.'

• • •

When he talks about the latest program in 2000, he is serious. "We wanted to stop two or three shows before, and Pasha would always pull another one out of us. He'd say, 'Guys, it's so good, I'll lower you the number of shows.'

"So we did one last plan, we called it 'tracker and goodbye.' We said, we will do 20 shows. Farewell to the audience. In the end there were 100 shows, if not more. The halls were blown up.

"We opened the tour at the Ein Gev Festival. There was no room in the hall, so we screened our performance, 7,000 people stood there. There were screams of pain in the auditorium. Crying. The audience did not want us to leave, we did not let us off the stage."

Do you miss the scouts?

"I really miss Pasha, Polly, what we did and were. I was very lucky to be in the best singer band, the roosters, and the best entertainment band that was and will be here. It wouldn't be like the pale grouse. Even today, if Polly was alive and performing, we would Fill two halls, not one. Not with a new plan, it's not anymore, but with a compilation - certainly. "

He stands up and shows me the figurine he received in 2000. "You see, this is the Israel Prize. This is the mother of the Israel Prize. I am happy for one thing: We did not receive it because we are actors, or singers, or comedians. And to the state. It moved me to tears. "

Since the dismantling of the scouts, Shaika Levy has released three discs of songs in his performance. He has participated in the musical "Madam Madam" and in various television series. He serves as a board member of "Clusters," the Israeli artist's rights-preserving company, appears with Moshe Lahav, and is currently working on a documentary series on Pale Hashash. In recent years, he has starred in commercials for "Red Red" and gas company Amisragas.

After so many years of being familiar with the pale scare, isn't it hard for you to recognize you today with the Amisragas duck?

"No. I do roles there, and I tell you that I brought them great success. Amisragas is a hit, a hit. They had big sales. And red red - wow."

Doesn't that discount you?

"No. Something has to be done. You can't completely disappear. Why disappear?"

So after all you've done, you now recognize you from a water boiler advertisement?

"Okay, but why did they take me to Amisragas? Because of the pale groping."

Did you feel you were gone?

"No, not really. There is no one who does not know me. It is precisely abroad, when they do not know me, I feel great."

Are you arrested on the street?

"Occasionally, adults who grow up on me are arrested and want to be photographed with me. Young people also arrest me, but I don't know if it's because of 'Hillafon Hill' or Amisragas. I don't expect the kids to know the grocer. After all, in 20 years we haven't been on stage ".

Could it be that your identification as the ultimate comedian has not taken you to dramatic roles in shows and movies?

"Yes, certainly. Although I think I could have done it great, better than a lot of other actors. But the director thinks - what, will you see Shaikh, the whole audience is Isaac. You ruined the movie for him. You see?"

• • •

He has lived with Orna in the Tel Baruch neighborhood for 35 years. A modest, extravagant cottage. "Initially there were seven cottages here. Then we built 5,000 housing units around us. It's shocking."

Sheikh was a 41-year-old divorced, at the height of the success of Pale Hashash, and 25-year-old Orna single when they first met at a Tel Aviv electrical products store. "She went in with her mother to buy a store. She bought an iron, a vacuum cleaner, a blender, a mixer. I came to buy a TV. As soon as I saw her I said to her, 'Too bad you buy, I already have everything. We'll have to sell.'

"She didn't recognize me, but her mother did. I asked the mother, 'Will you call me your daughter?' She replied, 'My daughter does not marry.' I told her I was not married, and she said, 'Then take my daughter's phone from the check.'

"The next day, I called, and we decided we were going out. The one I was not talking to was pale. The first time we went out, I don't remember where, I told her right away, 'This, you're not dating anyone anymore.' With no one. "It's an instructive story. We're really the best friends there. She's a very smart, poignant woman, she knows everything. She works with me, I trust her. She'll fight for me like a lioness, and I'm for her.

"Sometimes attorneys and other professionals come here for meetings. Everyone wants her to come to work for them. To everyone, she says, 'No, I work with Sheikh.'"

You also experienced great suffering together, you never succeeded in having children.

"Certainly this is the hardest and sad thing that ever happened to me in life. We made every effort. We went through a lot of treatments, for years. It's the most painful thing for me. Not so much for me, as for Orna. I would like her to fulfill her femininity and make a child. It really didn't happen.

"At the time, the best doctor in the field came from the country, from America. She came to teach Israeli doctors how to do this thing of inserting the semen into the egg right away. She was here, and promised us she would succeed, and ..."

He pauses, looking down.

"It was a great suffering. But luckily, our friendship only grew stronger. We went through it together, together."

Who strengthened who?

"Orna is stronger than I am. I am volatile. That way, in Chick I'm crying. Really. I'm a whore. She's a hero. It's a shame, I think I could have been a good father. I was what it took care of for my children. So I worry about Orna."

She is next to him during the interview as well. When I ask him if he does sports, she laughs: "What is sports ... all day long? He never stops doing sports."

Sheikh: "Don't you know that sports are not healthy? In 1997, I underwent bypass surgery. I had a very central artery occlusion. Prof. Danny Gore was analyzed. He was an exemplary man, one of the best doctors in the world. I told him, So he told me, 'Tell them they will go. The heart works hard enough like that too.'

And now health is okay?

"All right. No sports, nothing."

Do you like to host?

"I do, but I don't have anyone to cook. Orna doesn't like cooked food. She loves steak in the pita and that's it. So today we mostly go out to eat. I used to host all my friends here on my birthday. I cook whole potatoes ... I know how to make eggplant With great meat, patties, artichokes, green beans, and mangold.

"People wouldn't eat the week before because they knew a language they beat a meal and licked their fingers. But suddenly it gets tough. All the shopping, cutting, doing, and then tidying up the house, you go crazy. Tools, stuff."

"I am very sensitive. Everything touches me" // Photo: Pini M. Disposal

• • •

What is your favorite thing about our country?

"There's something big about us that doesn't exist in the whole world: the friends, the simplicity, the folk. I'm a friend of friends. I come to them in sandals. No tie, no graces.

"I have a parliament of friends dating back to the 1960s. Yitzhak Ben-Ner, who was my commander in recruiting, Yitzhak Shauli and Dalia Gutman (longtime TV producer; RA). We would sit in Fridays and Ditsa on Friday. Also added are Oded Kotler, Ruthie Derr and director Avi Cohen, talking about theater, cinema, politics.

"On Friday night, we always go out with Ily Gorlitzky and his partner to a restaurant. Ili and I have been in a Central Command band, and we have been friends ever since. I have another parliament, of friends who never come to the entertainment and stage. We meet every Monday and Thursday."

What do you wish for the birthday?

"That life will look better in this country. We will be a little happier and less desperate and less sad. Everyone says 'brothers we'. We are not brothers. Not at all. I am not a brother of all these clowns and shits. They do not belong to me. another world.

"There are also religious and ultra-Orthodox people in America, but they behave normally. And you see the violence here, following what our heads gave us. That is, we are an orphan generation."

Who did you vote for?

"Blue and white. I really like Benny Gantz. I met him on the Habima and told him, 'Come on, save the country.' But it's hard. He's a gentle man, and here's a bulldozer. Everything's going to be here, fanatical. There's a huge polarization. And rich, oriental and leftist. Terrible. Terrible. It's just such a shame because there was beauty here. It was great here once. Just fantastic. There was a good education, everything.

"Most of the poverty in the country is ultra-Orthodox and Arab. And the ultra-Orthodox do nothing, donate, only take budgets, invent inventions, and they always sit on tap. Always Moshe Gaffney sits on tap.

"I'm very pleased with what Ron Kobe does in Tiberias. She was a tourist city and turned into nothing. Haredi, black, poor, poor. And Ron Kobi came and said - this city will come back to be what it was."

You take it hard.

"I'm very sensitive. Very-very. Too much. Everything touches me. What's wrong, not fair. The people who really know me know I'm a serious person. Very serious, even too serious. Strict and serious. Justice, fairness and honesty are above all for me.

"One day I left the house, and I was almost run over by someone on the scooter. And one day someone with a bicycle almost killed me on the pavement in Ibn Gvirol. And someone else on a bicycle dropped my wife's mother, 93. And moved on. Does he care?

"It's insolence, it's rudeness, there's no country here on the road. And people don't care. It's dangerous, it upsets me. I want to once turn on TV to the public and say, 'Hello, the drivers, think there are people here. There are people here.' .

"One day I told a friend everything inside. And friends who sat with us told me, 'Shake, count to ten, you don't have winks.' If someone invites me to a bad show, he won't hear a good thing from me after that. I won't paint. "That's very bad. That's what he invited me to, isn't it? To hear my opinion."

And if someone said something bad about the hunchback?

"Very happy. I'd say he just doesn't understand anything."

What seven? The seven pale skyscrapers that Shaika Levy particularly likes

1. The Exorcist

"Oh, how much I liked this skit. I brought it to fumble. When I was single, I had friends, car dealers, and I saw how they sell cars without it and without it and with cosmetics. From them I learned what 'antenna preparation' is, and the phrases' close with it. "And we will build a price for you." I came up with the idea, and the guys said, "Come on, we will make it a skit." Danny Rave wrote. I play Baruch, and he's a man, and we're in our car lot, and Polly, in the role himself, came looking A small car. And we sell it a scrap. " In this skit, phrases like "Just Who's Just Last" were born, "There's a pity he's gone, do you see a mirror" and "Have you ever heard Julio Iglesias from the bottom?"

2. Cracker vs. Cracker

"You see, we were all divorced, manly, Polly and I, and also Yossi Banai who wrote it. We knew it front and back, first hand. When I divorced my first wife, I barely took a towel and underwear. Really. So we connected very much to the text and everything that went in between it." Here are the sentences "What I remember from your father is just your mother", "Be a man, humiliate yourself", "The world is so funny and laugh", "Make me some little Turkish", and more.

3. The Civil Guard

"It's a skit about everything being possible and not exaggerated. Danny Rave wrote it. I was a citizen complaining about guarding in the middle of the night at the checkpoint, and suddenly discovering that the guards next to him, Polly and Male, are Arabs. Well, then it shows that everything is possible here. "Why isn't the landlord here?" And the Arabs say, "It's not a job for Jews." Among the memorable phrases from the skit: "Every night is a morning game", "There is a lot of dirt in the cleaning", and more.

4. A tiger in Givatayim

"It was written at the time of the Atta factory shut down in the 1980s, and all of Finney Grove's (head of the workers' committee) fight against the factory's closure. Moti Kirschenbaum wrote the skit, he was a very political man and socially painful. The skit is about having no job, And come unemployed (Foley) to the employment bureau to look for a job. Gavri and I work in the bureau, and at the end we find him a job: catching a tiger in Givatayim. And he says yes ... It was fantastic. Funny and witty. "

5. Bookstore

"Dan Ben Amotz wrote this skit, where my husband and I sell books in a respectable 'boutique book' in the middle of Dizengoff, and Paulie comes looking for books 'with pictures.' It's about people being willing to do everything so they think they read a lot of books and are 'intelligent.' . Here were phrases such as "Gentlemen's Books", "All Shoemaker - Shoe Institute", "Panty Shop - Ass Boutique," "Curse, Inel My Father's Father", "Six and a Half Tomorrow's Birthday", "The Writer ABGDHU Menachem, "and more.

6. The Bloody Wedding

"A friend of mine told me that there were weddings where the bride was getting off the helicopter. I asked him, huh? And he said, 'Yes, yes. We make weddings here for $ 200,000.' After that, we heard that there were weddings at the Hilton Hotel, which were taking guests from Turkey. , I have to make a skit about it. I told Yossi Banai, and he fell in love with it. The skit is about Dad Ashkenazi (Polly), whose daughter is married to Mizrahi (male), and his father (I), who has a pickle factory, came to meet with the bride's father. "It deals with all the dynamics before the wedding. It was an abnormal skit. I really liked the character I did."

7. The garage

This skit was written by Yossi Banai, according to Ephraim Kishon, and he was the best of life. I play a garage owner (soybean), and grow my assistant (Sammy). And came to Clarshaw with the Romanian accent (poly), and that's where this whole section of garage begins.

"It was born of things that happened to us. One day I got smoke from the exhaust. They sent me to the garage in the Montefiore neighborhood, where they told me, 'You rubber bands have gone to the leaders.' After all, what do you know what you really do there. To the garage next door. He said to me, 'This is rubber bands for carriers.' I said, 'But I made rubber bands for carriers.' They laughed at me, 'There are eight rubber bands, you only made four'. "

In this skit, phrases like "what seven - how many", "do you handmade, internally tapestry", "will it get inside it?", "I'm on thorns, have a cast on my head", "don't move Revers", "We replaced the element with you," and more.

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