Joseph Ben-Israel made Eastern culture part of Israelis, and he died at a time when more people were dancing to the sound of the Darbukas than to the Viennese concert sounds and the hypocrisy of haters of tefillin.

Every revolution has a face and a name that bears on the lips of the crowds, but in the darkness behind the glare of the spotlight, an unknown face is hiding and names are almost unknown. People who, for a lifetime, slowly and clerically persevered, added another match to the tower every day. They waited for the moment when the right hawk would appear, the one that would wake their lives in the clear and clear light of justice.

Such was Joseph Ben Israel, a man whose life was the presence of music as a representative of Eastern culture in Israel. His personal story is actually the story of the acceptance of Eastern culture in Israel. Since 1950, Ben Israel has run the Folklore Music Department "Voice of Exile," a radio station set up by the Jewish Agency to persuade Jews from all over the world - and especially from the eastern countries - to return to Israel. If this sounds like a big role to a young 22-year-old musicologist, read the role definition again. The Folklore Department was basically a laundering name for anything that did not align with the cultural vision that the young State of Israel imagined it held.



The melting pot policy of the 1950s wanted to create a new Israeli, a rough aggregate, one that was seemingly innocent of exile and that you were from all the Diaspora. But as immigrants from the East discovered, the melting pot meant being an Israeli with a "concerts mentality in Vienna," and in order to be accepted as less equal between more equal, it was first and foremost necessary to shake off anything that smelled slightly "Oriental." The right model for Lippie Balor and the title was young, bright, secular and loyal to the country.



True, Europeans were also asked to give up Yiddish culture to establish a new and European society here, but immigrants from the East were actually asked to give up their language, religion, culture. The symphonic music from Vienna and Germany had broadcast time and a government budget, but all the ode and darbuka pushed together into a tiny drawer that reads "Folklore."

Ben Israel received a total of ten minutes a day to broadcast on the radio something from the music treasures of Yemeni, Iraq, Bukhara, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and more.

He stood helpless in front of dozens of musicians who came to earth in the great waves of the 1950s - for them he was the tiny hatch that could give them value and recognition as a culture. Ben Israel fought for every minute of airtime in the Diaspora, and in 1953 moved to Israel, where he founded and ran the "Oriental Folklore and Music Section," and began his quiet revolution in transforming the culture of Easterners into some of Israelis.

Ben Israel opened the radio gates to Aaron Amram, Pepper al-Masri, Patti Armo (a wonderful singer, now known only as Kobi Peretz's father) and the most significant discovery - Joe Amar. Ben Israel made Umar record songs in Hebrew and transform Jewish-Arabic music into sacred poems. Afraid of the events of Wadi Salib in 1959, Amar recorded the song "Bureau of Labor," despite Ben Israel's opposition to the radical line his son created. A song with an Arab sound to Mehadrin, mostly in Arabic and mostly telling the truth of the Mizrahi people at the time.

After "Bureau of Labor," Amar tried his luck with Hebrew pop songs, created amonic pop, and thus preceded Hanan Ben Ari and Yishai's fight for fifty years. But his star faded and Amar left the country to become a cantor in the Diaspora. Occasionally he returned to Israel to stay in entertainment programs, where he demonstrated how he sang wonderfully as always - in Yiddish as well.

In the 1970s , the Israel Voice Festival, the Singer Festival, the Hasidic Festival, the Yiddish Songs Festival, the Biblical Songs Festival, and the Children's Festival — besides the Oriental Jewish Music Festival — grew up when Ben-Israel stood in front of his Israeli leaders and demanded such a festival, one of them told him, Okay, we'll throw you a bone, despite the insult, from 1971 onwards Ben-Israel produced the Eastern Singer Festival.

Even if oriental singers such as Moti Fleischer, Sashi Rainbow and Mint Gum Chocolate sang throughout the decade during which the festival took place, it catapulted the vast work of talents such as Avihu Medina, Shimi Tavori, Avner Gadassi, Uri Shevach, Moshe Hillel, Boaz Sharabi and Ofra Haza.

Photo: Miriam Tzahi

In 1977, Ben Yisrael admitted that despite the resurgence of casting music, he had permission from his Israeli executives to broadcast the music of Ahuva Ozeri and Daklon, due to "the low level of texts, rendering and accompaniment." The answer to institutional discrimination came when Zohar Argov won first place at the Oriental Singer Festival with Abihu Medina's "The Flower in the Gardens". Even if few people in Israel understood it in real time, it is now perfectly clear that "The Flower in the Garden" is an Israeli song, immaculate of folklore and to the breast of its cultural bones.

Ben Yisrael passed away last week at the age of 92. In his last years, Ben Yisrael felt, and rightly, that few know about his actions. Fortunately, Hebrew music researcher Uncle Fatimer interviewed Ben Yisrael in his last years, documenting his enterprise on the site "Dodipedia", where he gave him little recognition.

Ben Yisrael passed away in Eretz Yisrael, where the grandchildren of Mapainians dance to the sounds of Dravka more than the sounds of a Viennese concert. Oriental equality is not yet with us, the process of Israeli crystallization is not complete, but music always signals the future to come. In the test of time, the good seeds that Israel has planted over the decades have ripened and made folklore music from time to time what it is today - folk music.

There is a great deal of unnecessary talk about prohibiting the placing of explanation booths and placing tefillin near Tel Aviv educational institutions. Whether it is true or new, the enthusiastic support of many in the social media has made it clear that for a large audience, the laying of tefillin and everything related to the presence of Jewish religion in the public sphere are dreading and perceived as religious. The road from there to the ultra-Orthodox coronation as a virus, very short and dangerous.

Photo by David Peretz

On my last visit to Paris, I saw a tefillin stall in front of the Victory Gate at Champs Elysees. In the land of evil and liberty, except for a few Muslims who harassed a devotee, no one complained about religion. Those who are sure of their righteousness are not afraid of the temptation of other ways. I felt that placing Tefillin at the Victory Gate, exactly where Hitler passed in an open car in front of Nazi ranks, is the right thing to do, and so I did.

Many cite Karl Marx that religion is "opium for the masses" but few read the full paragraph: "Religion is the sigh of a depressed being, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless conditions. She is the opium of the masses. "

Those who are concerned about religion in the first Hebrew city need to worry more about the disadvantage of the urban core, the one who has lost all human compassion, allowing evacuations of Abu Kabir residents and Givat Amal from their home, who dispossess residents of the slum neighborhoods, who prefer real estate to every piece of grass and sacrifice to the weak of the city. As the construction of the modern Babylon tower continues and grows, the demand for tefillin will increase and increase.

Sentences that people say

Railway Station, Tel Aviv University

A: (to the phone) No will! Execution Wills !!! Don't freak me out!

B: Madam, sorry, you're screaming, unpleasant to hear.

A: Listen to me, what's nice or unpleasant to you. You want quiet? Go to a cemetery!