Ultra-Orthodox Bnei Brak Meets Unorthodox Aviv Geffen
By David E. Kaplan
Addressing the plight to the entertainment industry caused by Corona, Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher (“The Other Story,” “Past Life”) asserts:
“Culture is not a luxury, but a global strategic asset.”
How true it has been revealed during these months of Covid-19. People may have been physically ‘confined’ but not their minds – nor their senses. And this is partly thanks to our entertaining artists who have been finding ways to entertain us in our living rooms; as if we were sitting amongst a live audience in an auditorium, open air park or amphitheatre.
Aviv Geffen in an acoustic performance – Shuni Amphitheater – 07 April 2020
For some, it has also brought new understanding on issues of what is important in life and understanding the “other”!
In a touching and at times emotional interview with Dana Weiss on Israel’s Channel 12, Israeli rock musician, singer, songwriter, producer, keyboardist, guitarist and proudly secular, Aviv Geffen, laid himself bare before the Israeli public.
To the question as what lessons Corona taught him, the artist responded with new-found humility that “I was a pig! I always went for the label or brand, whether to buy the tomato from Spain or the Louis Vuitton bag; it was disgusting, and then came the Corona and said, “Friends here I am, good night and goodbye”.”
“So that’s it; you are ready to discard all that was so important to you?” asks a surprised Dana.
“Yes,” answers Aviv. “I have outside a luxury car that I stupidly bought; I’ll also sell it because it completely embarrasses me now”.
“What, suddenly everything was foolish, and your life is all about vanity?”
“The brands yes; I think the world has positively opened its eyes.”
For Geffen, yesterdays prized possessions are today irrelevant. This has been the first lesson of Corona. More were to be revealed.
Geffen then relates about performing ALONE at the old amphitheatre in Shuni near Binyamina. Yes, it was a LIVE performance but there was no audience, at least not in front of him. His audience were all at home watching on TV. They could see him; he could not see them!
“I had not prepared what I would say,” he told Weiss, and then the thought came to him about what was most dominating the news – the ultra-religious community in Israel; how they were suffering more than most with Corona. How they were experiencing the most cases diagnosed and the most deaths and then being blamed because of their beliefs. As if they deserved it!
The media was full of it; being battered by the disease and then by the media. The worse hit of the ultra-orthodox communities were the citizens of Bnei Brak who had been “fenced off” like in a “ghetto” with roadblocks at all entrance points.
Suffering And Stigmatised
These were the thoughts that percolated in the rock musician’s mind between performing his numbers when he appealed, to let them be; to leave them alone. Suffering enough, they did not need to be subjected to public ridicule and rebuke.
Explaining to interviewer Dana Weiss:
“I said, “leave Bnei Brak alone. They are not guilty; they believe in God; I believe in Google.”
Laying bare the cultural chasm, Geffen might have thought that was the end of the matter until he finished the show. Suddenly:
“I leave the stage and I see on my telephone, without exaggeration, 420 messages. I start opening them, scrolling, and learn that someone had given my number to all of Bnei Brak. And I cried. I could not leave the empty amphitheatre. The love, the division in the nation, suddenly everything came together. The love I received came from people I had denigrated since I was nineteen and now responded with love and tears. ‘Thank you so much Aviv for thinking of us,’ I read.” I was sitting on the stairs, the amphitheatre was empty, and I was reading the messages and crying. At four in the morning, the theatre staff got me up and told me: ‘Go home.'”
Relating this in the studio, Aviv again breaks into tears, soliciting from the interviewer:
“Wait a minute; you cried why? Because you feel guilty of what you once thought of this community or about the sudden love you discovered from them? Do you really know why you cried and why you are crying again?”
Aviv does not hide the fact that artists by nature are egoists. They feed off the audience; they need that reassurance, that affirmation. However, all this is denied by Corona because there is no real audience only a virtual one. “And then suddenly, I receive these hundreds of messages from Bnei Brak” that were genuinely moved by his words and the song Kotzim (‘Thorns’) that he had dedicated to the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel. (See the words in English at the end of the article).
Trying to make sense of it all to the bewildered interviewer, Geffen continues:
“I cried because of all those years we learned how to hate the other – the religious and the secular. ‘He’s religious, he’s secular.’ I, too, was a soldier in this game. Suddenly I saw the other. You ask: So how did the corona change me? Just like this: I learned to respect. A flame of love, simply amazing, was lit. I cannot even describe it in words, only in tears.”
Still not completely satisfied with this answer, Dana Weiss persists in her enquiry:
“So what! Are you thinking that your attitude back then about the ultra-Orthodox was a crime or a sin? Is this what brought on the tears?”
Geffen answers emphatically and an admission:
“No, not at all. It was because for the first time I saw them.”
Hope For The Future
Aviv Geffen’s next appearance would again be before a live audience but this time not in front of their TV’s but on Tel Aviv beachfront at the Charles Clore Park. The concert on the 21st May was the biggest gathering since the Corona virus struck Israel.
Most appropriate for Corona, Geffen broke into “The Hope Song” an iconic hit he wrote following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that is often compared as Israeli version of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
Let’s go dream,
Without race and nationality.
Let’s try.
Until it’s good,
Until it is.
We’ll bury the guns,
And not the children.
Let’s try.
Until it’s good,
Until it is.
Let’s go dream,
Without race and nationality.
Let’s try.
Until it’s good,
Until it is.
We’ll bury the guns,
And not the children.
Let’s try.
Until it’s good,
Until it is.
We will conquer peace,
And not the territories.
Let’s try.
Until it’s good,
Until it is.
To eternal freedom,
To my children.
Let’s try.
Until it’s good,
Until it is …
Until it is …
(The Hope song- Aviv Geffen & Shahin Najafi – 06:30min)
Geffen’s peace hymn was all the more powerful and poignant; when partnering him on-stage before an audience of 6000 was exiled Iranian artist Shahin Najafi. What is more, they sang in Farsi – the language of Israel’s archenemy Iran – and in Hebrew.
The pair showed that despite the bitter enmity between their countries, ordinary people can find common ground.
From the ultra-Orthodox to Iran, Corona was providing a platform for revealing “common ground” and giving credence to Avi Nesher’s astute assertion that:
“Culture is not a luxury, but a global strategic asset”
Thorns -קוצים (Kotzim)
(English translation)
Thorns are all that is left of me
The flowers you have given me have died by now
Ways I have walked in
I am now retracing my steps
After not finding that which I have searched for
Everyone can dream
Paper boats in water
I just wanted to sail as far as I could
I am a man from nowhere
Just searching for a reason to breathe
Look, I have built us a house
When he was born I gave all that I didn’t have
Thorns, forcefully reminding
Not granting me forgiveness
Cutting through us and not letting go
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/kotzim-thorns.html-0
