Razia's show - Dinner & Politics

June 14

Diana Shoeff from the Center for Contemporary Art invited us to attend a rehearsal for a play written and performed by Razia Yzreeli, an old friend of Sammy’s from when he lived here 30 years ago! She is an accomplished actress and she has been performing a piece she wrote called THE DENTIST which is going to be presented at the Endinburgh Fesitval in August. After performing it in Hebrew for the past 3 years, she is now in the process of learning to do it in english which is not easy for her as she is the sole performer (75 minutes). The play tells the story of the psychological and emotional wounds of a family that suffered for years because of a horrifying secret….the father in the story was part of a special unit at Auschwitz that was given the task of extracting the gold fillings from the mouths of corpses after the jews were gassed and before they were burned. 16 months of this service, millions of corpses, tons of gold extracted. All this was done so he might actually survive The Holocaust. He did in fact survive physically, but he was so scarred and traumatized by the experience (of course) that he could never lead a normal life. It is a morally scandalous story here in Israel among so many survivors and it was wrenching to hear it told with such emotion by Razia, a gifted and passionate story-teller.

After the performance, we went to have an delicious dinner at a charming, very bohemian restaurant in Jaffa with Diana and Razia and some of their friends – including a couple who turned out to be neighbors of ours in Brooklyn! - and as is often the case in Israel, there was much heated debate about the political situation here. Diana has been involved with the far-left movement here since the late 60’s. She has many informed opinions about the Zionist mythology and the brainwashing that she resents deeply. It has been fascinating to have dinner one night with Sammy’s Right-leaning family (father, nephews) who all believe profoundly in the mission of Zionism and then the next night to sit with Diana and her friends from the art/activist community here who are passionate in their opposition to the established rhetoric. Last night she said that she believes that it is the secret dream of the Zionist establishment that the Palestinians will one day become exhausted from the on-going conflict and surrender and disappear, and it is the same not-so-secret dream that the Palestinian authorities have about the jews, that they will just go away one day. It is an awful game of willpower, to see who blinks first, with many innocent lives lost along the way.