Another Cohen in Israel

September 24, 2009 - 9:34 AM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Music, Pop Culture 

Leonard Cohen and his band onstage in Ramat Gan Wednesday at a sound check (Reuters)

Leonard Cohen and his band onstage in Ramat Gan Wednesday at a sound check (Reuters)

After all the months (years?) of speculation, rumors, false starts, boycott calls and health scares, Leonard Cohen will finally be performing on Thursday night before 50,000 fans in Ramat Gan Stadium.

It was almost as if someone – or something – didn’t want this show to take place. As Ethan Bronner wrote in The New York Times, “Leonard Cohen’s path to his sold-out concert here Thursday night has been strewn with obstacles. Those seeking to ostracize Israel through an international boycott demanded that he call it off. When he offered instead a matching concert in the West Bank, Palestinians said no thanks. Amnesty International agreed to help him distribute the concert’s proceeds to peace groups; Amnesty International withdrew. Then last Friday, three days before turning 75, Mr. Cohen collapsed onstage in Valencia, Spain, in the middle of his classic “Bird on a Wire” and was rushed to the hospital.”

Thankfully, Cohen has recovered, performed in Barcelona on Monday, and arrived in Israel on Tuesday looking dapper as ever. He’s “in great shape,” Cohen’s manager Robert Kory told The Times. And indeed, last night, Cohen was seen onstage at the stadium testing out the sound system and getting his bearings for the show, which is being billed as “A Concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace.”

Cohen is giving the expected profits of $1.5 million to $2 million to a new charity he has created of the same name, run by a board of Israelis and Palestinians, which will distribute money to groups focused on coexistence here – particularly organizations composed of people who have paid a great personal price because of the dispute and yet are working for peace, like the Parents Circle — Families Forum, made up of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost close family members to the conflict.

Why has the Cohen concert, which sold out in record time, generated so much controversy and coverage? My colleague Ben Jacobson, one of the country’s foremost Cohen fans and scholars, had some interesting insights in a recent essay in The Jerusalem Post.

Why is everyone so up in arms over a folk singer from the ’60s entertaining some civilians with large wallets? Perhaps Cohen’s appearance in Israel was taken to be a potentially partisan threat because of the perception that he is “one of ours,” having grown up in the upscale Montreal neighborhood of Westmount, where he attended Herzliah High School and Camp Mishmar in his teens and played in the Hillel Band at McGill University.

But Cohen’s world view is hardly oriented towards taking sides in any given conflict – it is, rather, strictly a vehicle for expressing his artistic ideas. Cohen’s oft-uniformed “Field Commander Cohen” persona, which has informed several works and inspired the title of a 1979 concert tour, grew out of his posturing as a guerrilla of verse, a rogue revolutionary who champions the cause of the underdog.

“Field Commander Cohen” only came into his own in the fall of 1973, when Cohen, facing crises in his career and family life, dropped everything to participate in the Yom Kippur War. Arriving in Tel Aviv from his habitual haven in Hydra, he announced to the press that he had come “to make my atonement” – and to entertain the troops.

He also noted that while he had once advocated an unconditional return to the 1967 borders, recent events had inspired a change of heart. Cohen joined a group of local musicians that included Ilana Rovina and Matti Caspi on an informal performance tour of bases close to the front in Sinai, at one point even pocketing a firearm so that he could feel like he was ready to participate in the battles.

In his unpublished memoir, The Final Revision of My Life in Art, Cohen reflected on having shared a bottle of cognac with General Ariel Sharon at a makeshift desert wilderness fort. “I want his job,” he wrote of the 1973 meeting, in a sentiment more significant for its self-conscious romanticism of military strength than for its political alignment. After all, the trip to Israel was possibly more about personal redemption for the artist than anything else. In Cohen’s mind, Israel was “a place where you may begin again,” he would write.

To this end, he was determined to perform a pilgrimage from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on foot before his return to Hydra; he ended up wandering back to the cafes of Dizengoff Square after a few hours, of course.

Later, he would be known for having played impromptu sets for IDF troops during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Eleven years later, Cohen’s public Middle Eastern anti-politics surfaced once again, this time in the context of his compilation of personal psalm-like essays, The Book of Mercy. The work includes several references to the nation of “Ishmael,” and in one passage, Cohen tears down all of the region’s constructs of alignment: “Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation – none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy… Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless.”

For the perpetual Canadian-American-Jewish-Zen-Greek exile, traditional trappings of nationalism and alignments are to be scoffed at and simply employed as tools for conveying one’s own artistic statements.

As Cohen wrote in “Democracy,” a 1993 song, which, based on recent set-lists, he’s likely to perform on Thursday, “I love the country but I can’t stand the scene / And I’m neither left or right / I’m just staying home tonight / getting lost in that hopeless little screen.”

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Meet Israel’s newest cabinet minister

June 10, 2009 - 11:09 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles 

Sasson Gabai (center) plays Ruby Polishuk.

Sasson Gabai (center) plays Ruby Polishuk.

Ruby Polishuk is an Israeli cabinet minister who has no idea what he’s doing. Luckily he’s fictional.

Polishuk is the main character in the series of the same name which Channel 2 started airing a couple weeks ago every Sunday and Monday evenings. Modeled in part after the British political satire The Thick of It, Polishuk is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, but always entertaining series poking fun at Israeli society and the upper echelon who, through sheer luck or political expediency, end up in the corridors of power.

The series stars Sasson Gabai, who shined in the film The Band’s Visit, as the bumbling Polishuk, who rises from well-meaning, but largely incompetent back bench MK for the fictitious National Liberal Center party to his ministerial appointment following the arrest of the current minister on suspicions of pedophilia.

Polishuk’s handlers – party leader Humi Schalit, played like a Tommy Lapid tribute by journalist Amnon Dankner, and Schalit’s A-type, foul-mouthed media advisor Kozo Avital, played by Guy Loel – are solely concerned with keeping the new minister out of the spotlight and quiet in his corner as minister of advancement in society. And they woefully fail, as Polishuk becomes a laughing stock/everyman hero.

The rapid banter and earthy language are true to the nature of Israeli culture, said the show’s creator, writer and director Shmuel Hasfari.

“I talked to people who surround the ministers and MKs – like drivers and secretaries and aides. On a show like this, the dialogue, besides being ‘harif’, has to be precise and to the point. There’s no time for nonsense. So, if you took a full day in a minister’s life and reduced it to five minutes of highlights, I think it’s pretty accurately reflected in our show,” Hasfari told me.

How plausible is the show? Way too much, says Hasfari, who in an illustrious theater career has become known as an outspoken supporter of left-wing causes. However, Polishuk clearly plays no favorites in skewering both the left and right sides of the Israeli political system.

“It certainly frightens me that there are likely several Polishuks in the Knesset,” said Hasfari. “It’s all part of the problem of our electoral system here. All you need is a strong, charismatic leader like Ariel Sharon, or Rafael Eitan or Lapid, and you can bring in another 10 or 12 MKs on your coattails, who are totally unknown. Does anyone really know who the Shas MKs are? Out of the 120 MKs, there are probably 50 Polishuks, but probably not as nice as him.”

After Polishuk, I’ll never watch the Knesset channel in the same way.

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Memories of the Mob

November 18, 2008 - 11:58 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General 

Ze'evLooks like a couple of the big mob families are “going to the mattresses” after underworld figure Ya’acov Alperon was assassinated on a Tel Aviv corner just two days ago. Organized crime here runs rampant and there have been numerous innocent citizens caught in the crosshair of attempted assassinations.

I remember back in 2003 or 2004, the wife and I went to Tel Aviv to meet some friends visiting from New York for dinner. After a kick ass meal of grilled meat and 3,000 salads in Jaffa we went to Brasserie M&R at Rabin Square for some coffee and dessert. Shortly after we arrived I noticed about four or five security guards standing in front of the restaurant and one stayed in front of the two Mercedes illegally parked out front. Someone sitting with us (a spokesman for a MK) said that there is no way that it is a government minister because the only person in the government who has that much security is Ariel Sharon. Curiosity set in and after a short discussion we concluded it must be a mob boss. Turns out we were correct.

Now I don’t know much about security, but I do know if I was a mob boss and have had several attempted hits on my life I would take one of my security guards with me to the bathroom. My friend and I happened to go at the same time and as I opened the door as the now jailed Ze’ev Rosenstein was on his way out. I held the door for him (as I would do for anyone) and he actually said thank you. I was going to offer my drug smuggling services but why would he bother with me when he has former government ministers to do that for him? Anyway, we could have TOTALLY taken him out – easily. I wouldn’t have made it out alive and even if I did I would be on the run for the rest of my life but its fun to fantasize about. There have been many attempts on his life and innocent bystanders have been killed and severely wounded in failed assassination attempts. The irony wasn’t lost on me that we were sitting outside at a cafe in the middle of Tel Aviv and didn’t think twice about a potential suicide bombing but were suddenly worried about being caught in the crossfire of a mob hit.

My visiting friend (who is no stranger to Israel) was dumbfounded by the fact that his reputed mobster was wearing shorts, a really ugly shirt and crappy sandals. I don’t know if he was expecting him to be wearing an Armani suit or something but this is Israel. It’s as casual as it gets – even for mobsters.

Afterward, on the drive home, I wondered why my friend was looking at his feet.

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