He was quite an old man. I don't know him personally, but I totally knew who he was. A familiar type. An ultra-Orthodox rabbi, serious, occupies a senior position in the ultra-Orthodox public, heavy-tempered and pretentious, and also an extreme type who is considered very conservative and detached from the Israeli experience.
We met completely by chance, at the neighborhood supermarket. He's in the detergent aisle, I'm in the canned goods aisle. It was evening, the supermarket was pretty empty, and it was quiet between the shelves. And out of the silence suddenly came a soft, warm and familiar buzz, and also contagious. I realized he was buzzing, there was no one else around, but still, because it was so strange and unbelievable, I walked softly down Central Avenue and sneaked in, heel to thumb, into the corner. And there I saw him, standing in front of a shelf of fabric softeners, examining brands and prices and humming a handsome singer. The melody and also the lyrics:
"Maybe a snake snake me / Maybe a hook hooked me a wink // Elad Good evening how are you / Elad good evening what sounds // I was under the tree of the jackin / And I barked."
I don't know how to describe the dissonance between the character and the piece that was sung in her mouth, but it was really extreme. Really, really extreme. And from that moment I pretty much clung to him, at a constant safety distance, and followed him in all corners of the great writer, savoring the pleasant hum. He did not miss any detail, even the pause of the syncope before the second "of the jackin". And I realized that if he, too, fell into this trend, then we are probably really talking about a huge and unprecedented cultural explosion. And most importantly, one that needs to be discussed.
***
Here is a summary of the episodes for the few who have just landed from Mars, and do not know what it is all about: About six months ago, one man, whose name I do not know, distributed a recording of what he thought was a funny WhatsApp message he received from an Arab worker apologizing that he would not be able to come to work. The worker says he sat under a fig tree, was bitten by a snake or stung by an insect, and he suffers from swelling. In the worker's mouth: "Maybe a snake snaked me, maybe a snake collapsed me, winked and I barked."
It has to be said that the recording is indeed funny. Hebrew with a heavy foreign accent, especially an Arabic accent, makes Israelis laugh. The disruption of a snake instead of a bite or bite (both standard, by the way), is a disruption of old children and is always cute. The creative disruption "Kertz Me Kertz" is almost conscious and at all ingenious: a wink in Arabic is a bite, hence there is a backward analogy: if a snake snakes then who collapses? Sure winked (one of them is the noun and one the verb, it's not clear who is what).
The pastoral location, under the fig tree (tin = fig in Arabic), also evokes pleasant warmth. The disruption that ends with the Arabic accent "barking" instead of "pompous" at all flies skyward, and on all of them: the light and endearing cloud of crookedness that rests on the whole event and turns it into a piece of satire. Who doesn't want to complain about the liarism of workers and craftsmen who make excuses? Every listener who hears this recording immediately remembers his practice, his plumber or his renovation contractor, and says to himself: If he was bitten by a snake, then I was bitten by a purple naked man with a tattoo "together we will win" on his ear.
***
This recording reached many ears, but exhausted its viral potential quite quickly and sank. Then came the war and this crazy period, and one night the musical creator Oded Davidov sat in front of the computer, took the recorded message, which like many made him happy, and assembled it with extraordinary skill on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence", and within a minute and a half the work became a national anthem.
It is sung, hummed, covered by hundreds and thousands. It crosses sectors and ages and never stops giving and giving. I've been wondering for a few days now: Why? How did it happen that this cute joke, which has many layers of sophistication and engines of success but is ultimately nothing more than a piece of musical nonsense, quickly became "Hatikvah"?
How can we create a satisfactory explanation for a group of students who will be sitting at a university 50 years from now, analyzing this period and suddenly stumbling upon one of the most psychic texts they have ever read, and discovering that it was the most watched and heard in the winter of <>?
It starts, of course, with the melody. He is tremendous and wonderful. I read that when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel recorded it, it started out as a failure, became a joke and suddenly caught on and climbed to heights and launched their careers as a duo. Which means that this is a song that knows how to create a "situation", and especially that it is a melody that functions well even in comic areas. Sound of Silence is pleasant, moving around the body and very relaxing.
Try it right now with any text in the world, including: "Social Security is by your side in life's important moments," or "Next stop: Tel Aviv Center. Passengers to the Ben Gurion Airport and Modi'in stations are asked to change trains at the next station" - and see what pleasure suddenly melts in the limbs. Combine this success with a text that also wins in itself, do it with precise musical timing and correct assumption of the words on the melody, and you have a schlager.
***
Then the war. Two main things happened in the war. One – the soul is thirsty and hungry for any humorous or casual distraction or whatever. Just give. And what has also happened, excuse me, is that a window of legitimacy suddenly opens for things that on other days smell of racism.
This passage has no existence without the Arabic accent and the disruptions, and without the indirect critical allusion to the dishonesty of the worker. Alek barked. In normal times it probably wasn't legitimate at all, and now it's completely passing. Perhaps because of something else hidden, which I'm sure is true:
I remembered that there used to be a similar trend. Even before TikTok and its distribution engines, a simple, casual children's song went viral at an insane rate. Remember? Six years ago, Hebrew teacher Jihan Jaber taught her students a favorite song using Darbuka. She sings a line, and they reply after her: "Rain dripping rain, rain rain what fun, they bought me a new coat and I'll put it on."
This song, performed by Jihan, went online, and soon became a hysterical hit. In my lectures, I take pains to explain that in the history of the State of Israel there is really only one figure who is really a consensus, of everyone, and that is Jihan Jaber and the song "Rain dripping".
Jihan is not the deceitful verb, and there is nothing funny about her text, except for one double similarity between them: both have a very noticeable slightly disruptive Arabic accent (dripping, wearing, snake, wink, bark), and both have something very innocent and cute. And Israeli Jews, ladies and gentlemen, love these moments of warmth and coexistence. It creates confidence and faith, and it connects to an inner yearning for friendship and love of man and neighborliness and stability and normalcy.
And this also happens on ordinary days known as "peacetime," and even more so now, when we were all sitting peacefully under the tree and suddenly a snake snaked us, collapsed us, winked, and we are swollen and swollen and aching and bleeding.
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