A Memorable Event

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Beethoven, Heichal Hatarbut, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Itzhak Perlman, Mahler, Noam Sheriff, Ron Huldai, Tel Aviv, Zubin Mehta

Going to gala concerts isn’t really our thing, but when the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra announced that in honor of its return to the refurbished Heichal Hatarbut (Palace of Culture), its home in Tel Aviv, it would be performing Mahler’s fifth symphony, along with Beethoven’s violin concerto (with Itzhak Perlman as soloist) and a piece by Israeli composer, Noam Sheriff, Yigal and I couldn’t resist the temptation. As it happens, we are both inordinately fond of Mahler, and we’re not averse to Beethoven, either.

The main object of the three-year renovation of the building, both the interior and the exterior, was to improve the acoustics. As Tel-Aviv Mayor, Ron Huldai said in his opening address: “One day Maestro Mehta came to my office and said: ‘The Accoustica is Balagan, the Heichal needs Shiputz,’” (the acoustics are lousy, the hall needs renovation).

The tickets were pricey, even though we took the cheapest, and the evening threatened to be a long one, as the concert was held on Saturday night and only started at 9 p.m. We were also warned by email to come as early as possible, as the concert was scheduled to be broadcast live on Israel radio as well as on the Mezzo television channel. We anyway generally try to get to concerts in Tel Aviv early, as otherwise we have trouble parking.

Everything worked according to plan, and in fact we were at the hall before the doors were opened, so that we couldn’t even pick our tickets up from the booking office. Never mind, that gave us time to stroll along the wide Ben Yehuda Boulevard and even get a bite to eat at one of the restaurants there.

Making our leisurely way back to Heichal Hatarbut we encountered a veritable happening taking place on the enormous plaza in front of the building. In the balmy Mediterranean air, large numbers of children – not teenagers – some on bicycles, some on roller-blades, two-wheelers, or other forms of wheeled transport, were whizzing about, some watched over by parents, others seemingly alone and unsupervised. One young man of perhaps eight or nine came crashing down as he passed us, but got up with a smile and continued on his speedy way.

Eventually we made it to the interior of the building, and immediately found ourselves in a very different world. Men in suits, some even with ties, one or two even sporting a bow-tie, were gathering, greeting one another, sipping coffee or tea at tables, and generally enjoying the ambience of the place. They were accompanied – and even outnumbered – by women who were all dressed in their Tel Aviv best. Some were wearing elegant evening gowns, with jewellery to match, others in stylish suits or dresses – with many versions of the ‘little black dress’ on display. This was obviously ‘the scene’ for the culturati of Tel Aviv, and I felt a little bit awkward in my ‘little black trousers’ and Marks and Spencer’s jacket. Luckily for me, none of the other ladies present had stooped to M&S wear. There were plenty of familiar faces to be spotted — politicians, economists, industrialists, TV presenters, whose names I could recall only the next day.

And the music? It was divine. Perlman fiddled away for dear life, and gained a standing ovation. When he returned to the stage to take yet another bow he was astride his motorized buggy, and sped along the proscenium at top speed with Maestro Mehta running behind him, raising cheers and laughter from the adoring audience.

 Actually, those two associates in music-making had managed to raise a laugh even before they began playing the Beethoven, as Mehta carried Perlman’s violin (a Stradivarius, I believe) onto the stage, walking behind him, because of Perlman’s disability (he had polio as a child). Once Perlman was seated, ready to play, he looked up at Mehta, Mehta looked down at him, and there was an expectant hush. Then Perlman made a gesture, as if saying ‘Nu, already,’ Mehta handed him the instrument and the music began.

And of course, Mahler’s fifth symphony thrilled us from its first golden trumpet tones to its final chord, with all the rich sounds produced by the orchestra in between, and especially the moving Adagietto, in which strings and harp combine in the touching love-song that Mahler wrote for his wife, Alma.

The concert ended and we wended our way home along Highway 1 towards Jerusalem, the music still ringing in our ears, our minds still in a state of bliss. As I fell into bed I was still hearing the music in my head.

A Joint Palestinian-Israeli Play

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Bonna Haberman, Jerusalem YMCA, Ytheater

 

I was sitting on the patio of Jerusalem’s YMCA building enjoying a cup of coffee and a croissant one morning, waiting for my French class to begin, when someone with a friendly smile (who I later learned was the author-director of the play, Bonna Haberman) approached me and thrust a brochure into my hand. This was an advertisement for a play to be given that evening featuring Israeli and Palestinian actors. The play, written mainly by its participants, represented the culmination of two years of work on the project, and supposedly tackled the issue of Palestinian-Israeli relations in a new way.

It seemed a worthy cause, and since we were not busy that evening my husband and I decided to attend. When we got to the YMCA we found a handful of people, all of them Israelis as far as we could make out, waiting outside the hall for the doors to open, which they did eventually somewhat belatedly, to the complaints of some of the people who had been standing there for quite a long time.

 The YMCA auditorium has room for an audience of around 600, so it was not difficult for the 30 or so people who had turned up to find good seats. The stage was already adorned with assorted plastic bottles, old newspapers and other debris, confirming what we could learn from our programme (in Hebrew, English and Arabic), namely, that the play was set on a garbage dump. Two actors, a man and a woman, on separate sides of the stage, were busy forming little figures from the debris or wrapping bottles in plastic film, both concentrating in silence on what they were doing. The sound of traffic, garbage-collections, and helicopters could be heard. At one stage the couple began to speak to one another, he in Arabic, she in Hebrew, and they seemed to understand one another. So far, so very metaphorical.

A woman dressed in outrageously fashionable clothes then appeared on stage, her stance, actions and speech all serving as a caricature of the nasty Israeli. After launching into an animated monologue (in Hebrew) about the real-estate potential of the site, she offers money to the man, which he apparently accepts. She disappears, and the two characters begin to quarrel, the woman speaking Hebrew, the man Arabic; In addition, at one point a grandmotherly figure appears and adds her contribution (in Arabic speech and song) to the dialogue. The Hebrew-speaking girl then gets into the trash-can that dominates the stage and proceeds to offer paper sandwiches and rats-tail soup to the others, hence the play’s title ‘Take-Away.’

 

Anyone like myself who doesn’t understand both languages lost out on a large part of the dialogue, but at one point it was clear that the man and woman undress and make love offstage (behind a back-lit screen), then come back and quarrel some more. Finally, the two begin to fight physically. This was actually the best part of the play in theatrical terms, as it involved some beautiful balletic and athletic movements, without the intrusive sound-effects that constituted the backdrop to the first scene. At the end, however, the stage is left in a sorry state, with both sides dead or injured and garbage strewn all over the place.

At this point a young man with a guitar came along and sang a sad song in Hebrew and Arabic about the futility of a situation in which people are in conflict with one another instead of cooperating. The play was a production of a project known as the ytheater, in which both Palestinian and Israeli actors participate, and which is supported by various august bodies in Israel.

We found the whole event very noble and worthy, but as we filed out we also felt that it was somewhat naïve and over-simplified. True, it’s important to try and get the message across, but it’s a pity that there were so few Palestinians in the audience.

A Precious Gift

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Abu Ghosh music festival, E.N.T. doctor, hearing

 

It’s something that happens to me about once a year or so. The specialist says it’s nothing to do with cleaning my ears or not, it’s just that some people’s ears have a tendency to produce more wax than others. I even seem to remember my late father suffering from a similar problem in his advanced old age. But when it happens it’s pretty horrible.

We were staying in Zikhron Ya’akov, looking after our three grandsons there while our daughter and son-in-law were abroad for a week, taking a well-earned holiday. Towards the end of our stay I noticed that I was not hearing out of one of my ears. How did I know? Because suddenly all sound seemed to be coming from my right-hand side, even though the source of the sound may have been somewhere to my left.

That’s alright, I thought. At least I’ve still got my other ear. But past experience has taught me that if one ear goes, the other one is sure to follow suit. And in due course, after a day or two, it did.

Suddenly I had to keep asking my grandsons to repeat what they had said. As everyone knows, teenage boys mumble and have an aversion to opening their mouths when they speak, but this was ridiculous. It was only when I saw one of them mouthing the word ‘breakfast’ at me that I realized something was seriously wrong.

Soon everyone around me knew that I could hardly hear anything. People complained about my having the radio or TV blaring when I could barely distinguish what anyone was saying.

The worst thing was that when we got back home we had tickets to take our two granddaughters to a concert. This one was in the framework of the Abu Ghosh choral music festival that is held on various occasions during the year at the picturesque village near our home.

We went to the concert, but the choir was barely audible to me. And when the conductor turned round to make an announcement about a change in the programme I did not catch a single word.

After the concert was over and we returned our two young ladies to their home I decided that I could not go on like that. I had made an appointment to see an Ear-Nose-Throat specialist the following week, but I could not bear the thought of carrying on for several days. So Yigal made some phonecalls (I being unable to communicate with anyone by phone), and we decided to try and have my ears attended to the following morning.

At 8 a.m. the next day we presented ourselves at the E.N.T. clinic in town where Yigal, acting as my interpreter, said that this was a case of First Aid. Be advised, those are the code words that will make any medical provider deal with you immediately.

And so it was. The nurse sent us to the doctor. The doctor did his stuff. It wasn’t pleasant, but it did the trick. Suddenly I could hear again. There were birds singing in the trees, I could hear what people were saying to me, and I didn’t have to have the radio turned up to full volume any more. What bliss!

Such a little thing, hearing, but so vital for the quality of life, for communicating with our fellow-beings and especially for someone like me who needs to hear music at all times.

And above all, I kept thinking, poor, poor Beethoven. What he must have suffered!

Ho, Jerusalem!

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', ' 'Life of Brian, ' Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion, Church of St. Peter in Gallicanto, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Handel's 'Messiah, Via Dolorosa, Western Wall

 Although I was not in Jerusalem for Jerusalem Day this year, having been called away to fulfill grandparental duties, it was very much in my thoughts. I still have a very clear memory of those six days in June, just 46 years ago, when I was only dimly able to perceive the historic events that were happening all around me. This was partly because my knowledge of Hebrew at the time was minimal, and also because I was cut off from the wider world due to the bombardment of Jerusalem by enemy forces and the battle that was being waged for control of the city.

Of course, in the first few years of my stay in Jerusalem, between 1964 and 1967, the Old City was inaccessible to Israelis. I remember being taken by kind cousins to climb onto high points in west Jerusalem, such as the YMCA tower, to peer out towards the crowded buildings beyond no-man’s land which seemed to hover in the still afternoon air like a fata morgana, so near and yet so unattainable.

During those six days of fighting in 1967 the information coming over the radio waves was intermittent and incomplete, and what little Hebrew I knew caused me to confuse terms such as ‘Sha’ar Shekhem’ (Hebrew for one of the gates around the Old City of Jerusalem) and ‘Sha’ar Em Sheikh’ (the southernmost point of the Sinai Peninsula). Later on my error was pointed out to me, and the geographical realities began to impinge on my consciousness.

Soon after the ‘liberation’ of the Old City, as it was then termed, I walked along dusty paths to the Western Wall, before the area in front of it had been paved, and was mightily unimpressed by it despite its historic significance. Since then I have visited the Old City on various occasions, taken tourists to its colourful markets, attended the swearing-in ceremonies marking the start of my children’s and grandchildren’s military service, and even occasionally searched there for suitable gifts to take on trips abroad.

But to my shame, I knew very little about Christian Jerusalem. After all, Jerusalem as a city and as a concept figures very prominently in that religion which, when all is said and done, has a pretty extensive following worldwide. I’m not sure whether this was because I have never had occasion to accompany non-Jewish guests to their holy sites, or because I recoiled from venturing into unknown territory, but in recent years I had begun to feel that this was a lacuna in my education. Having grown up in an ostensibly Christian country, and attended a grammar school where we diligently read ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and Lamb’s essay on ‘The Delights of Crackling,’ and similar high-minded texts, and where the Christian ethos still pervades much of its culture, I was not a complete stranger to the tenets of that religion.

It seems to me, though, that one can learn more or less all one needs to know about Christianity from listening to Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and Bach’s ‘Saint Matthew Passion.’ For really serious students I recommend watching the Monty Python film, ‘The Life of Brian,’ which is based on thorough research.

All the same, it was with alacrity that I jumped at the opportunity kindly offered by the Israel Museum to its volunteers to participate in a ‘mini-course’ on Christianity in Jerusalem. This consisted of an introductory lecture and three extensive tours of churches and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem on three successive weeks. And so at last I have visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, first built by Constantine in the fourth century C.E. and since then embellished and rebuilt by various hands, leading to a current tense status quo between various Christian sects. I have walked along the Via Dolorosa, learned about the Italian architect, Berlucci, who designed many of the churches that were built in the nineteenth century, when the European powers vied for hegemony over holy sites in the city, and have trudged up the steep hill on which the church of Saint Peter in Gallicanto stands, commemorating Peter’s denial of Christ three times before cock-crow, in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy.

Walking through the narrow streets of the Old City one is constantly obliged to manoeuvre one’s way through groups of pilgrims from all four corners of the earth who have come to pay homage at the sites which they regard as sacred. It is a sobering experience to hear their myriad different languages, observe the vast variations in dress and custom, and note the reverence in which they hold the city which was sacred to the Jews long before the Christian religion came into being. It is also exhilarating to observe the harmony which seems to prevail between the various groups, as well as between the Jews, Arabs, and other faiths which rub elbows along those narrow streets. Let’s hope that this is not just another fata morgana.

A Sad Story

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Israel Museum, locker, purse. identity card, security cameras, shoulder bag

Like many women, I have always carried a handbag, or rather, shoulderbag with me. Over the years many bags have come and gone, but they have always tended to be large, capacious, and filled to the brim with all manner of items. I call it my life-support system, and would be completely lost without it.

When my children were small it contained baby and child essentials (rusks, pacifiers, baby toys, etc.), but these are now no longer to be found in my possession. Instead my bag contains the things I need to take me through the various stations of my day (the allusion to the stations of the cross is not coincidental).

By now, I have brought the art of changing bags from the dark one I carry in the winter to match my winter shoes or boots to the light-coloured one I use in the summer to a very high level of sophistication and efficiency.

Admittedly, the bag has become very heavy over the years. It contains my purse, in which I keep my cash (notes and coins), credit cards, driving licence, Sick Fund card, and a great many other plastic cards which accord me membership of the loyalty clubs of most of the shops in my local mall. But that’s far from everything that’s to be found in my bag.

If I ever have to wait anywhere I must have reading matter on me. So I always have a book or even two in my bag. In Israel everyone is required by law to carry an identity card, with one’s name, address and photograph, and this was of course in my bag. In addition, I have printed lists of phone numbers and addresses (dating back to pre-mobile phone days). Furthermore, no bag of mine would be complete without some little health-food snack, basic make-up essentials, tissues, pens, notepads, my diary, my keys, first aid items and all kinds of other little objects that ‘are sure come in useful.’ No wonder my husband complains when I ask him to hold it for a moment.

So you can imagine how devastated I was earlier this week, when I came to collect my bag from the locker at the Israel Museum where I had placed it while I did my stint of volunteering at the Information desk, to find that the locker had been broken into and my bag was gone.

My first reaction was to go to the nearest security guard, of which the Museum has many, and seek his help. The guard sent me to another young man, and after a while I found myself looking at footage from one of the many security cameras placed throughout the Museum. Sadly, however, while there is a security camera just outside the locker room, there is none inside it, so that it was very difficult to detect just who had invaded my locker and when.

The next step was to cancel all my credit cards, and poor Yigal spent over an hour on the phone to the various banks to achieve this, sacrificing his tennis game in the process. My youngest son, Eitan, who had swung by the Museum to give me a lift home on his way back from work, stayed with me throughout the footage viewing event, but this turned out to be inconclusive. In the evening he took me to the local police-station to lodge a complaint, while Yigal stayed home to supervise the changing of the lock on our front door. Without the support of my family I would have been totally lost.

The next day Yigal and I rose early to embark on the via dolorosa of the various offices and ministries in an attempt to establish my identity and reinstate me in the ranks of persons entitled to drive a vehicle. All things considered, the process went relatively smoothly and quickly, clerks were cooperative and pleasant, and I even got to ride Jerusalem’s famed Light Railway. For achieving this my sainted husband can take full and complete credit, and now I’m even more in his debt than I was before (and I certainly was).

Sadly neither the bag, which was brand new, nor any of its contents have been found to date. The incident has made me rethink my entire bag philosophy, and it will be a long time before I venture out into the world again with a capacious bag stuffed with sundry objects. I will also avoid those flimsy lockers at the Israel Museum like the plague!

                                                                    Dorothea Shefer-Vanson