A Strange Juxtaposition

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'The Finkler Question' by Howard Jacobson

 

I finished reading Howard Jacobson’s book, The Finkler Question, and was still pondering its manifold messages in the evening as I attended a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. This was given in Jerusalem by an amateur troupe composed mainly of immigrants from English-speaking countries..

 

Friends had tried to deter me from reading the book, saying that it was boring, difficult to get into, etc. I grant that the beginning is somewhat slow, and the idea of an eighty-year-old man learning to play Schubert’s Impromptu no.3 is utterly ludicrous. I say this as someone who has been struggling for years to master Impromptu no.1, so you can take my word for it.

 

But I found that as I persevered with the book, which is undeniably well-written, it became increasingly gripping. The characters came alive for me and I felt that they were real people. What surprised me most, however, was the book’s principal theme, which is essentially the question of Jewish identity in England today, and what it means to be a Jew in the diaspora. In addition, the book tackles the thorny subject of the attitude of both Jews and non-Jews to Israel and Zionism.

 

Jacobson ventures to poke fun at all those well-meaning and misguided Jews (I’m happy to see that he seems to agree with me on that point) who seek to distance themselves from the Israel of today. Jacobson uses not-so-gentle irony to put those individuals – many of them household names – firmly in their place, showing them up for the hypocrites they are. And he despatches the Holocaust-deniers and belittlers in short order, to boot.

 

But to get back to H.M.S. Pinafore, which targets jingoistic British nationalism as well as the class system and Victorian mores in general. The performance I went to was attended by H.E. the British Ambassador to Israel, which gave the atmosphere that evening an extra fillip. There we were, a theatre full to bursting with mainly expatriate Jews from the UK, America, South Africa, Australia, and sundry outposts of the English-speaking world, all of whom had chosen to live elsewhere, but apparently still harbouring a yearning for the culture of our past.

 

In his book Jacobson seems to be seeking to underline that sense of ‘otherness’ that a Jew cannot avoid feeling, no matter where he or she happens to be living. By extension, this also appears to be the role that Israel is destined to play within the community of nations. Israel cannot, and perhaps never will, be accepted as a ‘normal’ country because it is judged by different standards, just as diaspora Jews, no matter how successful, can never feel that they are fully accepted by their adopted country, because of some innate ‘otherness’ that all Jews share – at least according to Jacobson.

 

The device of viewing the essence of being Jewish through the eyes of a Gentile who is a ‘wannabee’ Jew is elegant and entertaining, and gives rise to some really funny passages in the book. The reader is almost convinced that such a situation could actually arise, and that someone who is not Jewish by birth would seek to enter that supposedly clannish, esoteric world in order to become part of what might be interpreted as an anthropologically exotic tribe.

 

Reality prevails finally, however, and at the close of the book the characters are dispatched to their various ends. And that, I suppose, is the ultimate message of the book. Meanwhile, here in Jerusalem, the Jewish audience at Pinafore – possibly even with the participation of the ambassador – joined enthusiastically in the encore, which was a rousing chorus of ‘For he is an Englishman!’

 

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Gerda

 

Gerda Hoffer was my German teacher for almost fifteen years. I found her in 1998 through a colleague at work who knew I wanted to start learning German, the language of my parents which they had refused to speak after arriving in England at the end of 1938, after Kristallnacht.

My father had left Germany with a suitcase full of sheet music for the piano and several files containing family documents and correspondence, much of it typed. I realized that in order to gain access to this treasure-trove of my family’s history I would have to learn German, and so I embarked on the journey that brought me to Gerda.

When I first met Gerda she was living in a pleasant flat in Jerusalem’s Rechavia quarter. A slight figure with a sharply intelligent face and her long, white hair piled up in an elegant bouffant coiffure, she set me to work almost immediately. To my surprise, I soon found myself writing little essays in German each week as she tried to expand my vocabulary, guide me through the intricacies of German grammar, find subjects of mutual interest to talk about and generally become a fixed part of my weekly routine.

We found that we had a lot in common, including a love of books (she had written several, all in German), an interest in politics (though we didn’t always see eye-to-eye on everything), and a general interest in culture and what was going on in the world around us. Gerda was also a convinced Zionist and claimed that despite having lived in England for over thirty years, she had never felt as much at home there as she did in Israel.

Gerda was born in Vienna in 1921. Her father, Stefan Pollatschek, was a writer and part of the Jewish intelligentsia of the time, rubbing shoulders and establishing friendships with many of the leading writers and thinkers who inhabited the city. As a published author he was brought to England, together with Gerda and her mother, an avid bridge-player, with the aid of the Thomas Mann Committee. In England Gerda worked initially as a children’s nanny, then as a factory worker before studying Comparative Religions at London University and teaching German in the Berlitz Language School.

An ardent Communist in her youth, first in Vienna and then in England, Gerda was even jailed for some time in the former city for her political activities. She had many amusing stories to tell about her encounter with the prostitutes there. As she grew older she modified her political views though never lost her intense interest in world events. Although her marriage to fellow-refugee, the lawyer Fritz Hoffer, was a happy one, they decided not to bring children into the cruel world they had experienced. When Fritz died suddenly one night, after thirty years of marriage, Gerda was left distraught and alone in the world in their London home. They had planned to immigrate to Israel together, and in short order Gerda decided to achieve that goal on her own.

In Israel Gerda started writing, and several of her books found publishers in Germany. One of them, Zeit der Heldinnen, contains a series of well-researched biographies of Jewish women through the ages, another, The Utitz Legacy, gives a fascinating account of her family’s history in Bohemia and Austria, while her novel, Ein Haus in Jerusalem, describes the lives of the families from differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds who inhabit a house in Jerusalem. Her last book, Zwei Wege ein Ziel, an autobiography written jointly with Judith Hübner, was recently reviewed in the AJR Journal. I still managed to read the review out to her as she lay in her hospital bed, and although speaking was difficult for her she managed to smile in appreciation of what the reviewer had written. With the passing years and the improvement in my command of German (and with the help of an enormous German-English dictionary), I undertook the task of translating her book about Jewish women through the ages. Each week I would read out my English version while she sat with the German version in her hand. She would catch every mistake I made, sometimes proffer a better translation, and sometimes even compliment me on my ability to discern her meaning. For me itt was a delightful intellectual exercise, and I think it was for her, too.

Although she never really mastered the Hebrew language, Gerda felt at home in Israel. She conducted an active social life, played bridge regularly, lectured at the Bnai Brith German-speaking lodge of which she was a member, travelled inside Israel and abroad, often to further sales of her books, and enjoyed the pleasures of life. Her ‘adopted’ family in Israel, Norman and Judy Enteen, brought an additional element of joy to her life, and in the last weeks of her life, as her 91-year-old body began to fail her indomitable spirit, Norman was untiring in his efforts to succor and sustain her.

Eight years ago Gerda moved to sheltered accommodation in Jerusalem, Nofei Yerushalayim, where she ensconced herself in a well-lit and comfortable apartment. She followed the news on TV and watched the German TV channels, accessed websites from her computer, and  continued to play bridge. In Nofei Yerushalayim she made new friends and continued to cultivate her old ones. She was still giving German lessons to a few of her veteran pupils until a month before she died, and her many friends and pupils (who were also her friends) continued to visit her in hospital until the very end.

For me she was a teacher, friend and mentor, whose lively mind provided many insights into local, international and historical events. Her untiring curiosity about other people, countries and societies brought her into contact with a wide variety of individuals, and her circle of friends and pupils was very broad indeed. Although she struggled with ill health throughout her life, in our lessons, which eventually turned into a weekly conversation between friends conducted in German, Gerda did not like to talk about her ailments, and always preferred to discuss a book either one of us had read, the political situation, to hear about what I had been doing, or to tell me about an interesting visitor she had met.

The last few weeks of ill health were hard for Gerda to bear, and almost as hard for those who knew and loved her to witness. Gerda passed away on 20 March 2012, at the age of 91. She will be sorely missed by all those who knew her.

My Father

Like many of the refugees forced to flee Europe just before the Second World War, my father, Manfred Vanson, sought to contribute to the society which had given him shelter. For most of his adult life Manfred served as an example of decency, kindness and unflagging dedication to helping those less fortunate than himself. Although his father and brother had died before the war, and his sister survived the war in France, his mother perished in Theresienstadt, to his lasting sorrow.

Manfred Vanson was born in Hamburg, in 1916, and managed to escape to England in December 1938, after Kristallnacht. In 1940, together with his young wife, Frances nee Hirsch, to whom he had become engaged while still in Hamburg, he undertook the care of twenty-five Kindertransport children in a hostel in Hampstead. At the same time he began working for the Jewish Blind Society, then a small organization providing financial assistance to blind and visually impaired Jews. After the war the JBS became Manfred’s life’s-work and vocation, and during the subsequent forty years he built it up to constitute an exemplary communal organization. He worked tirelessly to raise funds, establish residential homes, holiday homes and day-centres and to help blind members of the Jewish community in every possible way. In recognition of his efforts he was awarded the O.B.E. when he retired, in 1980.

Manfred, aided by Frances, was a mainstay of the Jewish community of Kingsbury, helping to make it one of the most vibrant and growing London congregations. His unique charm, sharp mind, and innate modesty won him the affection of a wide range of people. He dispensed charity, both overtly and covertly, and earned the undying gratitude of many people, both in England and in Israel.

After Manfred’s retirement he and Frances moved to Israel, to be near their children and grandchildren. In the 20 years until his final illness and death he continued to pursue his efforts on behalf of the community, assuming an active role in the English-speaking Bnai Brith Lodge in Jerusalem, and serving as its President for two terms.

He died on 16 September 2003, in his Jerusalem home, survived by his three daughters, Dorothea, Esther and Ruth and their husbands,18 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.

My Mother’s Recipe Book

When my mother (Fraenze Vanson, also known as Grannie) died at the age of 80 in1994 her handwritten cookery books and scraps of paper with recipes remained where she had left them, on the kitchen shelf of the apartment in 8b Nili Street, Jerusalem, where she and her husband (Manfred, our father, Grandpa) had lived there since their Aliyah toIsrael in 1982. It was only after the death of Grandpa nine years later that we three ‘girls,’ their daughters, Dorothea, Esther and Ruth, ventured to clear their apartment and go through the various items they had left behind..

It was then that we started going through the cookery books and pieces of paper that our mother had accumulated and hoarded in various nylon bags and paper envelopes, or stashed between the covers of her cookery books. Several of her grandchildren remembered the delicious food Grannie had prepared, and asked us, her daughters, to let us have her recipes. But that was easier said than done.

Those cookery books were not the printed kind that you can buy in bookshops. Our mother had studied cookery as a young woman at a domestic science college in Berlin, Germany, in the 1930s. At that time, under Nazi rule, Jews were not allowed to attend university. As the youngest of four siblings, Fraenze had missed the chances that had been available to the first three children of the Hirsch family. Thus, Kurt had qualified as a doctor, Hannah as a dentist, and Else as a midwife. Cookery and nursing were the only career options that were open for Jewish women at that time, and our mother chose cookery. During her studies she wrote out the recipes she was taught in a stiff, Gothic script in an exercise book with hard covers. We three were not able to read or decipher this handwritten material, and it was only with the help and insights of our friend, Michele Dollfuss, that this was achieved. My sister Esther and I spent many evenings with Michele in her apartment in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighbourhood as she read out the recipes and Esther typed them in German into the computer, with me aiding and abetting in the background.

Fraenze’s studies stood her in good stead. At first, from about 1935 to 1938, she worked in her profession in the Jewish orphanage, the Paulinenstift, in Hamburg, Germany, and it was at a Hebrew class in that city that she met our father, Manfred van Son (later ‘anglicised’ to Vanson). Upon reaching England, late in 1938, she immediately found employment as a cook in a hostel for Jewish orphans in Manchester. After marrying Manfred, in September 1940, the two of them were employed as house-parents at the Sunshine Hostel in London for refugee (Kindertransport) children, first in Kingsbury and later in Hampstead. Because this was regarded as essential wartime work, they were spared internment on the Isle of Man, where many German-Jewish refugees were sent as ‘enemy aliens.’ In the book of her recipes that we published we included some of the menus Fraenze drew up for the Hostel for an average week as well as for the festivals. If we recall that this was at the time of the Second World War, when food was in short supply and rationing was in force, it can have been no mean feat to feed about twenty-five hungry children on a daily basis.

Translating the recipes from German to English, and then from English to Hebrew, has been a voyage of discovery that has taken us several years of enjoyable cooperation. We have included the German names of the dishes, as these are the terms by which some of them were known in our house (Marmorkuchen, Apfelmuss, Saftige Brust, for example). We have not tested the recipes, many of which are very terse and do not contain anything beyond the list of ingredients. Fraenze knew what she had to do, and doubtless never dreamed that one day her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would want to make the dishes she had learned as a young woman or prepared in her lifetime. Many of the recipes were added at a later stage, and had to be culled from the various scraps of paper on which Fraenze had jotted them down. These were mainly in English, in a clear, italic hand, and were much easier to read (but don’t have a German name).

The book of her recipes stands as a testimony to our mother’s dedication to producing tasty and nourishing food for her family and friends wherever she happened to be – whether in Hamburg, London or Jerusalem. Her memory, and that of our father, will always remain with us.

Palestinians: Victims of Whom? (first appeared in Second Generation Voices, January 2012)

Reading about a conference on genocide held in Frankfurt, Germany in March 2011 which appeared in Second Generation Voices, a journal for and by the descendants of Holocaust survivors which is published in England, I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. Admittedly, the title of the conference covered all genocides, the Armenians by the Turks, the Roma/gypsies, communists and homosexuals by the Nazis, for example. But for some unaccountable reason the plight of the Palestinians was also included under that rubric.

 

I’d be the first to admit that some Palestinians are in a bad way, living in refugee camps, deprived of the citizenship of the Arab countries in which they were born, living on miserable handouts provided by the UNWRA, but to call that genocide is a total misrepresentation of the truth. One must give the Palestinians credit for their public-relations acumen in hi-jacking every possible podium from which to present their cause, but claiming that they are the victims of genocide is going a bit too far.

 

Unlike the Jews, no Palestinian – refugee or not – was sent to be ‘exterminated’ like vermin in the framework of a mechanized industry of dehumanization and murder motivated by racial hatred. In 1948, as a result of a war instigated by their own leaders, Palestinians were herded into refugee camps by their own people, and are today being kept there, again by their own leaders, through a combination of the political heartlessness and Machiavellian machinations of those leaders, with the connivance of the UN through the workings of UNWRA, which perpetuates and even augments the problem, ensuring that the second, third and even the fourth generation of Palestinian retains a permanent status as refugees.

 

I think of the generation of my parents. Like many other Jews who managed to escape from Germany in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, they arrived in England as refugees, were not given any hand-outs or benefits or accorded any special status. They were glad to have escaped the inferno of Continental Europe and relieved simply to be alive. They were thrown in at the deep end of the struggle to survive and had to either sink or swim, and on the whole they seem to have swum pretty well, though not without being scarred or at least marked for life by their experiences. There are any number of refugee success stories that are almost beyond belief, but the main point is that they made lives for themselves, built homes and families and did what they could to contribute to the wider society.

 

Now just take a look at Israel. The State that was forged by force of arms in 1948, when a population of less than half a million managed to fend off the concerted attacks of half a dozen Arab armies. In the course of the subsequent decade it took in over a million penniless refugees who had been stripped of their possessions and kicked out of their homes by those self-same Arab countries. And let’s not forget the thousands of equally penniless Holocaust survivors who finally found a haven in Israel. In the sixty-three years of its existence Israel has fed, clothed and housed all those Jewish refugees, provided them with education and employment, and gone on to become a democracy with a stable and successful economy that is the envy of many much longer-established countries.

 

Where are the Palestinians in all this? One may well feel sorry for them, they are indeed victims, but they are the victims of their own corrupt, selfish, unfeeling and uncaring leaders. However, to allow them to take the floor at a conference on genocide and dominate a discussion on injustices that have been done in the name of race hatred is a travesty. It is an insult to the memory of our relatives who were beaten, robbed, dehumanized, shot, burned, gassed and pulverized in the most blatant display of evil ever witnessed on this planet.

 

I find it offensive in the extreme to include the narrative of the Palestinians in the same category as that of the second generation of Holocaust survivors. In fact, I would go so far as to say that any forum that gives equal consideration to the Holocaust and the plight of the Palestinian refugees constitutes another step on the road to Holocaust denial.

 

A Strange Juxtaposition (first appeared in AJR Journal, March 2012)

I finished reading Howard Jacobson’s book, The Finkler Question, and was still pondering its manifold messages in the evening as I attended a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. This was given in Jerusalem by an amateur troupe composed mainly of immigrants from English-speaking countries..

Friends had tried to deter me from reading the book, saying that it was boring, difficult to get into, etc. I grant that the beginning is somewhat slow, and the idea of an eighty-year-old man learning to play Schubert’s Impromptu no.3 is utterly ludicrous. I say this as someone who has been struggling for years to master Impromptu no.1, so you can take my word for it.

But I found that as I persevered with the book, which is undeniably well-written, it became increasingly gripping. The characters came alive for me and I felt that they were real people. What surprised me most, however, was the book’s principal theme, which is essentially the question of Jewish identity in England today, and what it means to be a Jew in the diaspora. In addition, the book tackles the thorny subject of the attitude of both Jews and non-Jews to Israel and Zionism.

Jacobson ventures to poke fun at all those well-meaning and misguided Jews (I’m happy to see that he seems to agree with me on that point) who seek to distance themselves from the Israel of today. Jacobson uses not-so-gentle irony to put those individuals – many of them household names – firmly in their place, showing them up for the hypocrites they are. And he despatches the Holocaust-deniers and belittlers in short order, to boot.

But to get back to H.M.S. Pinafore, which targets jingoistic British nationalism as well as the class system and Victorian mores in general. The performance I went to was attended by H.E. the British Ambassador to Israel, which gave the atmosphere that evening an extra fillip. There we were, a theatre full to bursting with mainly expatriate Jews from the UK, America, South Africa, Australia, and sundry outposts of the English-speaking world, all of whom had chosen to live elsewhere, but apparently still harbouring a yearning for the culture of our past.

In his book Jacobson seems to be seeking to underline that sense of ‘otherness’ that a Jew cannot avoid feeling, no matter where he or she happens to be living. By extension, this also appears to be the role that Israel is destined to play within the community of nations. Israel cannot, and perhaps never will, be accepted as a ‘normal’ country because it is judged by different standards, just as diaspora Jews, no matter how successful, can never feel that they are fully accepted by their adopted country, because of some innate ‘otherness’ that all Jews share – at least according to Jacobson.

The device of viewing the essence of being Jewish through the eyes of a Gentile who is a ‘wannabee’ Jew is elegant and entertaining, and gives rise to some really funny passages in the book. The reader is almost convinced that such a situation could actually arise, and that someone who is not Jewish by birth would seek to enter that supposedly clannish, esoteric world in order to become part of what might be interpreted as an anthropologically exotic tribe.

Reality prevails finally, however, and at the close of the book the characters are dispatched to their various ends. And that, I suppose, is the ultimate message of the book. Meanwhile, here in Jerusalem, the Jewish audience at Pinafore – possibly even with the participation of the ambassador – joined enthusiastically in the encore, which was a rousing chorus of ‘For he is an Englishman!’

Going to the Mall (this article first appeared in AJR Journal, February 2012)

Despite rumors to the contrary, Israel is a normal country at least as far as retail therapy is concerned. Shopping malls are popping up with ever-increasing frequency wherever one looks. They incorporate many advantages for both vendors and shoppers, and the ambience in them varies from quiet elegance to rowdy bombardment by broadcast announcements, together with rampant crowds and over-assertive salespersons.

Sayed Kashua, an Israeli Arab originally from the village of Tira in Galilee and now a resident of Jerusalem, writes a weekly column in the Hebrew-language newspaper, Ha’aretz. In it he depicts life as an Arab, writer and devoted family man in Israel today. Deploying a wry sense of humour, he presents his view of the behavior of the Israeli person-in-the-street, not to mention the Israeli authorities.

One of Kashua’s columns in November described what happened when his wife told him to buy clothes for their young son for the Muslim Festival of the Sacrifice (Eid el-Adha) which celebrates Abraham’s non-sacrifice of Isaac (why don’t Jews celebrate it, I wonder). Following his wife’s instructions, Mr. Kashua dutifully betook himself to Jerusalem’s main shopping mall in Malha, purportedly the largest in the Middle East. His first shock came when he espied the long lines of cars waiting to pass through the vehicle security check, followed by the inevitable difficulty of finding parking. Later on there were long lines of eager customers, both Jews and Arabs, waiting to go through the personal security check, where ladies’ handbags are inspected. Once inside the mall there was an unusually large crowd of people, with equivalent queues at the tills. In his column Mr. Kashua added a few complaints about remarks made by passing Israelis, sour looks on the faces of shop assistants and the lack of any entertainment for the children or joyful festive spirit. But he added on a happy note that he was gratified by the fact that at least for that brief period the Malha Mall was Arab.

As luck would have it, I also paid one of my rare visits to that self-same mall that week. I, too, had to park my car a long way away and walk uphill in order to get to the entrance. I, too, was surprised to see the crowds of people, and it was instantly evident to me that these were not the usual crowds. The heads of Arab women who observe the Muslim religious proprieties, including many of those who were there that day, are tightly covered with headscarves. Thus, many Arab families seemed to be intent on making their purchases that day and enjoying the experience to the best of their ability.

Unlike Mr. Kashua, I did see entertainers, using inordinately loud amplifiers and surrounded by a throng of well-behaved children at their feet. Parents, both Jews and Arabs, stood at the sides, enjoying the performance. The atmosphere was decidedly festive, and to my surprise and relief I didn’t see a single instance of ungracious or unpleasant behavior.

As I made my way through the crowds I felt that this was more than just another day at the mall. This was a day on which Arabs and Jews were living alongside one another in harmony, just as they do on the buses and Jerusalem’s recently inaugurated light railway, just as they do in Jerusalem’s modern French Hill neighbourhood, where many Arab professionals live alongside middle-class Jews, and just as they do in the hospitals and health clinics, where staff and patients are drawn from both communities. But of course, those non-events are never going to make the headlines of any newspaper.

Musical Cats (first appeared in AJR Journal, January 2012)

 (first appeared under ‘Letter from Israel’ in the AJR Journal, January 2012)

A ginger cat scampered along the gangway in front of the stage at the special concert given in the Jerusalem Theatre by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra last Independence Day. The young soloist who was playing Rachmaninoff’s very demanding third piano concerto didn’t seem to notice, though the audience did. One of the young lady ushers stood up as if to apprehend the offender, who of course took not the slightest bit of notice. Wisely, the young lady then sat down again, as she would only have made matters worse by trying to catch the creature.

 

The cat climbed the five steps at the side of the stage, and the orchestra played on. The cat then had second thoughts, scampered back the way it had come and disappeared through a hole in a side wall. The orchestra didn’t miss a beat.

 

This reminded me of a similar incident I had witnessed a few years earlier. We were at a concert given by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv’s Mann Auditorium. We had bought tickets because the concert included a performance of Mahler’s 6th symphony (a rare treat), not realising that the occasion would be graced by various dignitaries, including the mayor of Tel Aviv, the speaker of the Knesset and visitors from the US Congress, including the then Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. The mayor of Tel Aviv was in the middle of addressing the audience when a tabby cat wandered in and began climbing a wooden balustrade or bannister dividing the seats at the side of the auditorium from those at the centre. I should have mentioned earlier that because of the presence of the foreign dignitaries the event was being televised.

 

The poor cat, frightened out of its wits, started to ascend the banister, passing right by where we were sitting. Everyone turned to look, and a titter went around the auditorium. When an intrepid member of the audience tried to stop its progress the animal turned tail, scurried back down the wooden railing and dashed out of the side door to the street.

 

The Mann Auditorium, which was inaugurated in 1957, was considered at the time to be an architectural gem and one of the most sophisticated cultural facilities in the world. The hall, which was built primarily as a home for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, is notable for its size and good acoustics. Since its establishment many top musicians have played there, as have many renowned orchestras from all over the world. It is currently undergoing extensive renovation, but that’s another story.

 

Its internal structure is somewhat strange, however. One can enter from the side, between the box office and the artists’ entrance, where there is virtually nothing separating the street from the auditorium. Tel Aviv, like many of Israel’s cities, abounds in stray cats, which are useful for keeping down vermin. Hence the proximity of the street to the auditorium appears to allow for the possibility that uninvited guests might find their way in. There are, of course, attendants at the doors who check tickets, but a cat (and, I imagine, even a stray mouse) could easily sneak in unnoticed.

 

And that, it seems, is what happened at the gala concert. We were amused by the incident, and relieved that it had occurred ‘only’ during the speeches and not while the music was being played. The cat (and we) gained international renown and we had our fifteen seconds of fame when the international news services picked up the footage from Israel television and we found ourselves featuring alongside the cat on CNN, Sky, and the BBC news services. At last, some positive news coverage of Israel!