”"In the name of freedom you are free / to deprive me of my freedom / in the name of reason you believe / that there is no place for my own word / in the name of strength you are weak / and no longer willing to face anything / in the name of spirit you are moved / only by what is so tangible.".
The most poignant text about the Israeli culture war that broke out here this week was written five years ago.
Avi Benayoun, the younger and talented brother of Amir Benayoun, then recorded a protest song about how freedom of expression and thought in Israel always works in favor of only one side. This song of his has been playing in my head quite a bit lately. In fact, every time a new round of fighting opens. Because long before Oded Kotler made headlines and years before anyone dreamed that Miri Regev would be a singer, Avi Benayoun asks in this song what freedom actually is, what culture is, and what spirit is in general. And it seems to me that we haven't dealt with this enough this week.
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So what are we talking about when we talk about culture?
A few years ago, I was invited to a creators' conference in Tel Aviv. It happened when the government was trying to amend the defamation law, and satirists in Israel felt threatened.
The title of the evening was ”When will the police come?“, and during it each of the participants came up on stage to speak as if they were expressing themselves freely for the last time, because soon, as we know, the police will arrest artists here.
The producer told me in a preliminary phone conversation who would be speaking: Adi Ashkenazi, Moti Kirshenbaum, Guri Alfi, Orna Banai, Merav Michaeli, Lior Shlein, Yair Nitzani, Shmuel Haspari, Eran Zarahovitz, Sharon Teicher, Guy Meroz, Yonatan Geffen, and there's no point in continuing - because you understand the principle.
In light of my concerns, the organizers repeated to me that even a religious media person like me would feel comfortable there. ”It’s a pleasant, respectful evening at the Tel Aviv Museum, you won’t be embarrassed for a moment,“ one of the industry executives who organized the evening told me. ”Come, you can talk about whatever you want and convey any message that’s important to you.“.
The second part was correct.
I did speak freely, but as for the first part – well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many foul words in all my years as I did that evening. There was brilliance and talent on stage, but most of the time, while I was already waiting for my part, I heard a very embarrassing and very low collection of both subversive and audacious musings.
If culture is supposed to take you somewhere else, higher, I felt like I was being taken lower, literally back to the sandbox in kindergarten, where children get excited when they say forbidden words.
When will a police officer come, I thought to myself, or at least the mother of those present, to tell them to wash their mouths with soap.
Now, let’s say that these artists want to come to the Jordan Valley and are also really eager to perform at the Kiryat Arba Culture Hall. Are we sure that we are interested in this culture? Because the cultural question is not just geographical (”This actor won’t perform in Ariel? We’ll show him what it’s like!“), and it is not just related to the actor’s opinion on ”the occupation.“ The question is what culture is, anyway.
The most common lie here is that there are only two cultural options: the United States or Iran. Either you are liberal, revealing, yellow, provocative, and secular-extremist like in America, or you are fanatic, totalitarian, and enforce censorship and coercion like in Tehran.
It's easiest for the old elites in Israel to make everyone think that the religious want to establish a new Iran here, and so the conclusion is that we need to escape as far away as possible, to the most Western and foreign culture. But I don't want a New York culture, nor the culture of Bushehr.
We came here after two thousand years for something else. It is called Israel. And it seems to me that many, many people desire such a culture. For three thousand years we carried this culture with pride and were considered a light to the nations, a noble people, with the book. We passed it on from generation to generation with dedication, and we managed even without the budget of the Ministry of Culture. We did not sell Big Brother formats abroad, but we were the model of a nation that engraved on its slate “Please behave accordingly.”.
So our culture is not just ”perform in the Jordan Valley!“ or ”don’t put on plays about terrorists!“ That’s clear, but that’s just the first step.
I'm not a fan of conspiracies, nor am I a fan of conspiracy theorists. People who approach me in synagogue and start explaining that the New Israel Fund actually murdered Rabin don't do that to me.
But if you look at the public agenda in Israel in recent weeks, it's impossible not to feel that something strange is happening here. As if a deliberate hand wants to constantly convey to us that the country is on the verge of anarchy, that everything is collapsing and everything is black.
Moments after an election campaign in which the traditional right won by a landslide, a campaign in favor of public transportation on Shabbat began here, with enthusiastic media encouragement.
Where did this issue suddenly emerge from? During the election campaign, not a word was said about it, so suddenly this is the most pressing problem? Then they suddenly moved on to the Ethiopian protest and launched another PR-media campaign, and we immediately descended into a polemic about civil marriage and an aggressive campaign about the structure of the family and the way to start a family, and now here we are with the artists protesting the dark censorship and their right to express themselves.
Is there some hidden interest of someone here to cause this constant unrest? The feeling that everything is collapsing? Because when you dig deep into each of these issues, you discover that it's really not as it seems. That behind the headlines, the reality is completely different.
So, what did Israeli artists actually protest about this week?
After all, no one tried to shut them up. No one told anyone not to perform, sing, dance, draw, shout, or make a noise. Don't get confused. Every time you hear one of the outraged people say "freedom of expression," you should erase those two words and write "money" in their place.
There is no censorship here. This is a discussion that is all about funding and budgeting. The state's money (that is, my taxes and yours) and the question of what culture it will fund.
But what? When the religious ask for money for their Torah institutions, it’s called ”extortion.“ When artists ask for money for their entertainment institutions, it’s called ”a struggle for Israeli culture.“ Now just try to switch the definitions. Sometimes a stubborn effort to obtain a budget to open a new yeshiva is a struggle for Israeli culture, and a demand for government funding for a theater performance with no audience is extortion.
It's easy to talk high and mighty about government budgeting, but let's talk for a moment about our own budgeting. About our pocket and our wallet, and the connection between them and Israeli culture.
I know many of the artists in the world of Jewish-Hasidic music intimately. Not all of them manage to make a living from art, and even those who do, work hard and count every shekel. I've heard from several of them about the same frustrating phenomenon: more than people approaching them after the show to compliment them and take pictures, they are approached in the days before the show and ask for tickets.
No, they don't ask to buy, they ask to receive. As if it's clear that the artist can, if he just wants to, let you in for free. As if, based on a slight and easy acquaintance, the applicant has already moved from the status of "payers" to the status of "ticket recipients." After all, he is part of the production. Sometimes it's a school friend who hasn't seen the artist in several years, but it's clear to him that he's doing him a favor by simply being there and should receive a ticket (oh, and he got married, thank God, and wants a ticket for his wife too. And for his mother-in-law too, just in case, it's her birthday and they want to celebrate together).
And there are those who don't know the artist at all, but meet him on the street and simply ask if he has a ticket. He tries to politely send them to the sales office, as the ad says, but they don't always get the hint. I understand them a little. They probably think that such a big and famous star can give away a few tickets, it doesn't cost him anything and he's a very successful man, so he's probably also very rich.
So pay attention, there's no other way to say it: Ticket sales are basically putting your hand in the artist's pocket and taking money out of there. And it seems to me that people don't approach Oded Kotler like that on the street and ask for a ticket to Habima.
Stand-up comedian Yair Orbach once tried to explain once and for all to his audience how much an artist earns, if anything, from a performance.
Here is the breakdown he came up with: It was said that a ticket cost 60 shekels, and there were 300 tickets in the hall, so he had 18,000 shekels left at the end of the evening. Renting the hall cost 4,500 shekels, VAT another 2,745 shekels, advertising the show at least 2,800 shekels and a commission for the agent – another 2,700 shekels. A ten percent commission on the tickets – 1,899 shekels, amplification at least 900 shekels and some free tickets for friends who don’t like to say no – 600 shekels. Hanging posters – 360 shekels, printing tickets – 180 shekels, and after income tax and national insurance, he was left with 99 shekels.
That's about enough to buy a ticket and a half to his own show.
Want to strengthen Jewish culture, the CDs, the books, the shows and the works? Getting upset is not enough. Come on, you herd of straw-belching beasts, open your wallets and start promoting what you believe in.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva'.'
