• culture

• in what

• theater

Joshua Sobol: "The intimate closeness to death pushed Jews in the Holocaust to create. Not to depression and not to animalism."

"Ghetto" playwright author Joshua Sobol analyzes the secret of the play's success in the world, explains why there was culture in the Holocaust, says that traffic restrictions in Corona will hurt us in the long run ("it was almost ghettoization"), disapproves of vaccine opponents wearing yellow badges but clarifies: "Man refuses to experiment."

Interview

Tags

• Joshua Sobol

• ghetto

Sagi Ben Nun

Wednesday, 07 April 2021, 20:35 Updated: 23:11

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on general

• Share on general

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

0 comments

"It is impossible to compare suffering with suffering."

Joshua Sobol (Photo: Niv Aaronson)

In the first episode of the series "Naps", created by Meyslon Hamud and aired a month ago on HOT, there is a scene that connects the Holocaust with the occupation.

The character of Verda, played by Maisa 'Abd al-Hadi, is a playwright who presents to her teacher, played by Shlomi Alkabetz, an excerpt from the successful play "Ghetto" by Yehoshua Sobol.

The play deals with a theater group operating in the Vilnius (Vilna) ghetto and the dilemmas of the Judenrat there.

Verde says she is very sympathetic to Haya, feeling her pain.

The actress behind the character, Maisa, also said in an interview that although she acknowledges the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, she believes that there are parallel lines between the experience of Holocaust victims and the Palestinian experience.

"I do not make comparisons and do not think it is possible to make comparisons between suffering and suffering. All the tragedy and pain it creates and its weight," says writer and playwright Joshua Sobol who wrote "Ghetto" in an interview with Walla!

Culture, "I saw the passage you're talking about. The teacher character there tells the gang that Verda can understand the character more than all of us because she understands her from her present, and we understand her from history. I think that statement is problematic and not so true. One of the things every actor One has to do in any role to find where he connects to the character.But it is true that a Palestinian actress is faced with this question of whether to do theater and whether theater is really a device that sharpens awareness or just sharpens illusion and distances from reality.This question was asked in the ghetto. "At the Haifa Theater in '84, 'Yusuf Abu Varda played Yaakov Gens, and brought this character with great power and also understood her."

Sobol's Ghetto is part of a trilogy of plays taking place in the Vilnius (Vilna) ghetto - the other two are "Adam" and "Basement".

It was released in 1983, translated into about twenty languages, and has been performed in over 80 versions worldwide, about half of which have been staged in Germany and Austria, the last of which is currently being staged at the theater in the German city of Liebeck.

What made "Ghetto" one of the most successful Israeli original plays of all time?

"First of all, it speaks to audiences in all sorts of very different countries. What speaks to people is the feeling that in any situation, no matter how difficult it is and also with a constant presence of death, if human beings organize together they can give value to their lives and give them meaning. Always in the question of what happens in our lives in the face of death. In fact, all the tragedies deal with it. In the play 'Ghetto' we see how an entire community in the Vilnius ghetto organizes and brings out a creative theater, which puts on plays almost every night, and gains popularity. "It was destroyed in a terrible earthquake in '95. The Japanese audience was very excited, people cried in the hall. I asked them what the show was telling them, and I was told that in a state of disaster that excites a community, it must seek the power within itself to overcome."

More on Walla!

Joshua Sobol warns: "Israeli government is moving in the direction of tyranny."

Interview

To the full article

"It's hard to deal with moral issues in the theater."

Joshua Sobol (Photo: Niv Aaronson)

You said that this play is mostly about non-oppressive creativity.

"Creativity is irrepressible and also gives value to life. I think what sets us apart from animals is that man is a creative creature, he creates in his imagination whole worlds that give him meaning."

Criticizing the latest version of "Ghetto" in the Hebrew theater in Israel, Nano Saturn in Haaretz wrote: "Suffers less well in creating the intimacy of characters or a very original world but excels in writing 'themed plays', journalistic-something. He knows how to summarize an important and broad moral dilemma Effectively for a dramatic scene. "

"I accept that. It's not a negative critique. It's not easy to deal with moral issues in the theater, and to bring in characters who get flesh and blood existence. I think if the characters were not given the existence of real and full of life characters no idea would go through them. I do not believe In a theater that is purely ideological or in a theater that preaches morality. In the 'ghetto' there are also characters who provoke moral problems. The most complicated character in the play, Gens, the head of the ghetto, faces terrible choices and he stands the bargain when the Nazis demand him to select children. He said there was no choice but to give priority to parts of society that could secure the future of the race and the people. He is a very tragic figure, he is not a man who acts out of wild instincts, but acts with complete awareness and tries to act right in conditions where any choice is terrible. "This is a character that probably touches many people. Among other things, the play probably conveys this complexity of life in the shadow of an extermination plot."

Sobol will talk about the success of "Ghetto" around the world as part of his participation in a joint literary-musical event called "Prayer of Man", hosted by Avi Gil, which will take place tomorrow (Friday).

Prof. Dan Laor, Malka Adler and Daniel Salomon will perform alongside Sobol, among others.

More on Walla!

"The left camp must make a mental calculation that Gantz chose to lead it"

To the full article

From the play "Ghetto" by Joshua Sobol, directed by Omri Nitzan, The Cameri Theater, 2010 (Photo: Gerard Alon)

The Holocaust is always viewed as a distant historical event.

In the future these corona days will also be viewed as a distant historical event.

Unlike thousands of differences, even now we are in an ongoing global historical event and changing world orders.

As a creator at a global historical event you have new insights How is art created in a difficult and extraordinary time?

"Necessarily yes. The change in lifestyle is sharp and drastic. For example this restriction on freedom of movement, which people responded to out of fear. In fact it is almost a kind of ghettoization, to tell people you do not move more than fifty meters from your house. In 2020 I sat and wrote three plays, one of which expresses A sense of a world that has been destroyed, and to me that's what happened. I think we are not yet completely internalizing what happened. A lot of things were severely destroyed, including the fact that humans for a whole year did not go to places where they meet the community and come to terms with isolation at home. "The rest has to do with getting together. I don't know what the impact will be on children who used to meet their friends, it's one of the most important things. Suddenly isolate them. I'll leave it to the question of whether it was necessary at all. The consequences will be many."

What did you think of the Corona deniers and vaccine opponents in Israel and around the world who compared this period to the Holocaust, and following the expectation that they would be vaccinated protested the "selection" and there were demonstrators in the world who wore yellow badges.

"The yellow badge was marking human candidates for extermination. It was a means of committing genocide. Any use of the yellow badge for non-genocide protests is disproportionate demagoguery done in bad taste. However, violating the rights of a healthy citizen, paying taxes and guarding A law solely because it does not agree to the introduction of controversial material into its body is a violation of the Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty. Just as every person has the right to donate his body for a medical experiment, so does every person have the right to refrain from doing so. The results of introducing RNA messenger into the human body at different ages, so just as everyone has the right to contribute to this experiment, so does everyone have the right to refuse to contribute to this medical experiment. The US Drug Administration has restricted the use of this substance to emergency only. "Even if it turns out in the medium and long term that the substance caused damage to various systems in the body, there is still no justification for wearing a yellow badge in protest of this medical experiment, because it was not done with malicious intent and certainly not for mass sterilization or anything remotely reminiscent of Nazi crimes."

More on Walla!

"The girl could not open her eyes": Adi Gilat and her and Yahli Sobol's children were attacked with pepper spray

To the full article

"There is no justification for a yellow badge."

Joshua Sobol (Photo: Niv Aaronson)

This week, Habima and the Cameri returned to activity, after a year of shutdown.

Tzipi Pines, director of the Beit Lessin Theater, told Walla!

Culture: "In the Holocaust it was much worse and they still did plays there, and there are works that were born there."

"During the Holocaust, they made sure to have a culture and even inside the extermination camps. There is all kinds of evidence and stories about activities that took place, for example they wrote songs inside the extermination camps. The Sonderkommando, the guys who would take the bodies out of the gas chambers With death. It's a very blatant song, which says - we laugh at all the honorable peoples and humanity if that's what happens. The song was written and performed in the extermination camps. One can learn a lot from this very intimate existence with death pushed the Jews to creation and not to depression That's an important lesson.

"I think it was a mistake not to open the theaters during the Corona.

It was possible to hold outdoor performances.

In Israeli weather this is possible for at least 8 months a year.

Imagine Habima Square.

If they were doing shows out there it would not hurt anyone.

It was just helpful and gives people again the feeling that they are a community and not individuals sitting at home in front of the TV or computer.

I do not understand why they did not do this, and do not understand why the theaters did not fight for this right to continue performing in these conditions outside, in the open air, with some distance.

It's a pity they did not do that. "

In October, your daughter-in-law Adi Gilat and your two grandchildren were attacked with pepper spray during a demonstration in Tel Aviv. How did you feel?

" I felt that people had largely lost their social senses, and became much wilder.

I see it also when I drive, the behavior of people on the roads.

People have lost the knowledge of how to behave at all in front of other human beings.

Became much more aggressive, nervous and impatient.

This is a phenomenon of corporate destruction.

This is one of the things that preoccupied me at that time when I was writing in Corona, one of the effects of Corona on me. "

More on Walla!

From the same planet

To the full article

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on general

• Share on general

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

0 comments