After the death
of Zvika Pick, everyone remembered how great he was.
All of a sudden, the proofs of his genius surfaced, and evidence was pulled from the depths of oblivion.
Everyone took the trouble to remember and remind us who invented Israeli pop, and who is behind the monumental composition of the songs of Tchernihovsky, Ratosh, Alexander Penn and Nathan Yonatan.
And along with memory, forgetting also flourished.
Forget the shameful days.
In the 1990s there was a scene of "freak show" programs that flourished in night TV studios.
Those were ugly days for Hillel.
Arrogant and empty young men sat behind the host's table, and invited guests only to make them miserable and humiliate them.
Many of them were unhappy and humiliated anyway.
The devil knows who decided that it was right and proper to march the maestro in the same procession.
The fact is that too many joined the herd that tried to make Zvika Peak a joke.
It's okay to be a little ashamed.
It is right to ask for forgiveness.
Nevertheless, the month of Elul.
But alongside all of this it is also worth clarifying that the decision to reduce and mock Peak was political and transparent.
It was a routine and familiar move, and Pick was not alone.
One day an artist confesses that he is a Zionist.
He is a patriot.
that he likes religious people or settlers, Begin or the IDF. And in a moment people stand up and claim that he is actually not what we thought. He is not an artist. He never was. He went crazy.
Suddenly Alterman becomes a poet, not a poet.
Ephraim Kishon is a poet and not a satirist.
Uri Zohar will soon realize the bluff and return to the beach peeping, and Naomi Shemer takes insults and finds locked gates in domestic places like Tsvata.
Somehow, at some future stage, usually after death, the balloon of hatred bursts and everyone acknowledges the greatness of the ridiculed and outcasts.
At this stage, everyone understands how much political hatred, like bribery, "blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the words of the righteous."
How small and poor she is.
I say this because Aviv Gefen is still young and healthy, and we as a society are much less homogeneous than before.
It's a shame that Aviv didn't take full responsibility for things he said in the past.
It's a shame that he tried to pass the responsibility on "audience demands".
But this still does not justify the attempt to make him Zvika Pick.
Maybe this time Israeliness itself will succeed in thwarting it.
A little for Aviv Gefen himself.
A lot for us.
Ever since I read
Assaf Inbari's "The Red Book", I find myself quoting from it, recalling it and referring to it in almost every conversation.
I know that's pretty extreme, and it's hard to remember the last time something similar happened to me with a book.
But I have an excuse.
It's not only that the book is excellent, but it also paints a picture that has countless relevant touchpoints for the conflicted Israeli life here and now.
For those who have not yet heard of this obligatory book, it is a kind of historical novel whose heroes are the founders of the Zionist left in Israel - Yitzhak Tabenkin, Meir Yaari and Moshe Sana.
Inbari makes no assumptions about the personalities he investigates.
He presents them as humans, and humans are the kind of creature that can ascend, spread a wing and shoot sparks, then forget to zip up, slip on a banana and fall on their nose.
A human being can be a tragic superhero, and he can be a ridiculous slapstick character.
It is not easy to digest the way in which the "Red Book" presents the exemplary figures of the kibbutz movements.
I sat about a month ago in one of the halls at Tel Hai College, when the author of the book discussed it with Liat Regev.
Many kibbutz members sat in the audience.
Some really hurt.
There were some who came forward at the end and claimed their insult.
I told Enbari that if he had written something similar, say, about Rabbi Kook, there was a certain chance that not all of the offended were 80 years old or older.
And this is perhaps the great tragedy of Tabenkin and Yaari.
In any case, "The Red Book" sorts out some aspects that are not treated enough in our story.
It turns out that the State of Israel was not established by secularists, but by Datalashi. It turns out that the bombing of the King David Hotel was coordinated with the Haganah. It also turns out that if Ben-Gurion was consistent, then the cannon that fired at "Altalana" was supposed to be aimed at several kibbutzim that were also Stock up on quantities of non-kosher weapons.
Among other things, the book made me feel a strong love for the time we live in.
If you are worried about the violent discourse, the divisive controversy and this word, "shisui" - which sounds like an unsuccessful Hebrew name for the craft of sushi rolling - please read the "Red Book".
There was no happy place before you were born.
It wasn't so happy here even before Jonathan Geffen was born.
The debates of the past were many times more violent, just as ugly, and the idea of delegitimizing anyone who thinks differently than me was not born yesterday.
"Listen," he tells me, "we just returned from a visit to South America. Relatives are far away. Don't ask."
I move my butt to the edge of the chair.
we'll go
Don't ask means ask, ask.
He is not a big talker.
I have never been approached by such a "listen".
But now, in the back of the synagogue, he tells about the relatives he met.
At some point they were frightened, but they are not Ashkenazim or Sephardi.
They are half and half.
A problematic situation in the ultra-orthodox world.
So now they live in an ultra-orthodox community abroad, and belong to the most lost caste. The bottom of the pyramid. They repent, so they will never strive to be accepted, and will never be accepted. On the one hand, they are Lithuanians, they despise the Sephardic half of their identity. On the other hand, they are Sephardic, they understand that they have no side.
In the ultra-Orthodox language, all these arguments flow into the big matchmaking question, and if it wasn't tragic it would probably be laughable.
And this is the situation there: they are offered to marry only converts from the community.
When they are offered an oriental bride, they are too offended to return the call.
After all, they have an Ashkenazi pedigree.
"Then let them marry Ashkenazim," I say, as if today is the International Day of Naivety.
At this stage, some of the worshipers are already saying "sha, sha" to us, and the neighbor lowers the volume and whispers to me that they are not ready to meet with Ashkenazim either.
And don't ask why, because they know that any Ashkenazi match that is offered to them will probably suffer some kind of severe beating.
retardation or disability.
I looked at my neighbor to the prayer bench.
He is a researcher by profession, and if it wasn't for a family, he might have enjoyed the anthropological glimpse there.
But these are Jews and this is a family, so he described things with anger and a little disgust.
Well, somewhere, in the third decade of the 21st century, a small Jewish community lives in a not bad financial situation at all, but in a crisis that threatens to destroy it from within.
Their external lives are full of progress and technology, and their homes are smart, well-equipped and full of Wi-Fi, but in the matters most important to them, they are stuck in a dead end that forces their young men and women to find partners only within a limited, suffocating and genetically threatening tribal framework.
When such phenomena occurred in the past, there were explanations such as wars, famine, or evil reigns.
Today it happens mainly because of that exclusive tangle of hatred and condescension.
And no, don't say to yourselves, "Well, these are ultra-Orthodox" - the same tangle, at the same temperature, may also unfold here under our noses, in a tribal discourse that starts with an argument and instantly reaches a violent outburst.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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