Many readers probably know him.
He stands at an intersection in Tel Aviv where you usually turn left from Rokeh Boulevard to Ibn Gvirol.
Sometimes there are also other juggling artists standing there, but he is the oldest and best known.
On Sunday this week, when I made my way to my studio from the Rimon High School of Music, where I teach.
He was standing there on his upside down vegetable crate.
But unlike the other days - he really stood.
No hoops, no balls and no bowling soldiers.
He did balance one bowling soldier on his chin, but that's not what caught my attention and that of the other drivers.
The important and special thing about the veteran juggler's appearance was the handwritten sign he was holding:
"One-hour strike in protest of the incitement in the media and in support of the legal reform and the right-wing government."
I have always loved these juggling artists.
They remind me that I live in a western and free metropolis, and yet - there is also some element of rascality in their joy, which is unconditional joy in the heart of the nervous and busy everyday.
And above all - in Israel, a country that this week we realized again in the most painful way that it is doomed to live on the sword, every clown is a medical clown.
But the guy standing there didn't entertain me - he moved me.
He was completely static, yet took a big step forward and suddenly crossed the line between entertainment and art.
What I saw at the intersection was a brave, yes and true art performance.
Cypress alone against fire and water.
The clown always reminds us of the inner child in us, and this inner child suddenly shouted, in the heart of the city and without a sound, that the king is naked.
that the crowd is wrong.
that the terminology that eliminates the discussion deserves to be called "incitement".
Why?
Because when the reform is called a "coup", when the implementation of the policy of an elected government is called "the end of democracy", and even though we are already used to that - even when the presence of Jews in Judea is called "occupation" - then the other side is pushed outside the boundaries of morality.
He is no longer a worthy interlocutor, and then the basic condition for the existence of the civilized world is not met.
Not for nothing, in the book that shaped Western culture, the first thing that was created was the controversy - the division into two camps, heaven and earth.
In a world where the sky is allowed to be sky and the earth to be earth, the bowling soldiers can fly in the space between them.
The world where it is immoral to be one of them is two-dimensional.
There is no movement in it.
It has one bowling soldier, standing motionless on the chin of one brave artist, facing the stream of cars at the entrance to a city trained to speak with one voice.
I ride a motorcycle, so I stood first at the traffic light, right close to it.
I remembered his name from some article they once made about him on TV, so, before the light changed, I called him: "Sparrow, well done!".
He smiled (the bowling soldier fell, but it's my fault), and told me: "For half an hour no one has paid anything."
Yes, but you entered my heart.
You made me feel like I'm not alone.
And that's what a real artist does to his audience.
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