Time Out at 40

Dana International | Ohad Naharin | Etgar Keret | Tzipi Livni

Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret is one of the most successful contemporary writers in Israel, and his success has travelled well: his books have been translated into 16 languages so far. The sharp, hip style of his short stories has both earned him much critical acclaim, and has made his books extremely popular among Israeli teenagers. He also co-directed the film ‘Jellyfish’, with his wife Shira Geffen. The film won the Camera d’Or award for best first feature in the 2007 Cannes festival. Keret also writes for television and theatre, and has won numerous awards, including the Prime Minister’s Literature Award and the Culture Minister’s Award for Film. Why is he a hero? You would be hard pressed to find an Israeli who grew up in the 1990s and can’t remember the first time he or she read ‘Missing Kissinger’.

Who are your heroes in Tel Aviv?
Nathan Alterman and David Avidan. I’m a writer and a fan of prose, but I must admit that poetry, more than any other literary form, manages to convey that transcendental, indefinable spirit of a city. Feature continues

Who are your heroes in the world?
Tom Waits, Aki Kaurismäki, Meir Ariel and all the other artists who give you the feeling that they are doing what they love most. And also the guy who invented those soy schnitzels that you can fry in the microwave. I don’t know if I’d be able to survive without him.

What was the biggest event that happened in your professional field in the last forty years?
Since I haven’t yet managed to define my professional field, I consider that a trick question.

What was the defining event that led you to choose your profession?
I started writing during my military service, as soon as I understood that saying whatever comes to mind, in the army, is not necessarily the best way to obtain a weekend leave. Writing is much safer: most of your commanders, even if they find a page of your writing, won’t feel like reading it. Especially if it’s a short and weird story about a soldier who wraps himself from head to toe in waterproof plastic, or about a girl who decides to attach herself to the ceiling with crazy glue.

My first reader was my older brother, and he read my story while he was walking his dog. When he finished the story he stopped walking, at which point his rather aged dog finally had the time to take his morning crap. My brother asked me if I had another copy of the story, and when I said yes, he bent down and scooped up his dog’s poop with the piece of paper that had my story printed on it. At that moment, I decided I wanted to be a writer.

What’s your favourite place in Tel Aviv?
The beach. As a person who has no sense of proportion, and lives in a country with no sense of proportion, there’s nothing like a visit to the beach to set me straight. The beach is also the most democratic place in Israel. As soon as everyone takes their clothes off, the old categories of rich/poor, or soldiers/Arabs, disappear. This leaves the obsessive categorizers with only one pastime: to sort the bathers into those who have a hairy back, and those who don’t.

What has been the peak of your professional life, so far?
Completing the film ‘$9.99’, in August. Tehiya Rosenthal and I finished the script ten years ago, and during the past decade we’ve met many wise and experienced people who explained to us time and again that our script would never become a movie. My friend Gur says that there are three ways that scripts become movies: first, they coincide with the taste of production companies and funds; second, the filmmakers are really lucky; the third option is that the writers simply refuse to give up. I think that looking back over the past ten years, the script Tehiya and I wrote belongs to the last two categories, big time.

What are your hopes/dreams for the future?
I have a lot of dreams, but I never know how to articulate them, and they end up as nothing more than a sweaty brow and uncontrollable shivers that run up and down my shoulders and back.

What do you like to do on Saturday morning?
When you have a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, who wakes up at six o’clock in the morning and doesn’t really care what you like to do, that question becomes painfully theoretical.

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Dana International | Ohad Naharin | Etgar Keret | Tzipi Livni
##page: Tzipi Livni##
Dana International | Ohad Naharin | Etgar Keret | Tzipi Livni

Tzipi Livni © Time Out

Tzipi Livni
Perhaps the second woman to be Prime Minister of Israel, prior to her political career, Livni completed a law degree, served in the Mossad and worked as a lawyer in a law firm she herself founded. In the mid-’90s, she competed for the first time in the Likud primary election, and although she did not then make it into the parliament, she was appointed General Manager of Israel Government Corporations Authority. In Ariel Sharon's government, elected in 2001, she was first appointed Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and later Minister of Justice. In 2004, she was granted a Knights of Quality Government Award. In 2005, when the Kadima party was established, Livni left the Likud and joined the new party, and, after Ariel Sharon's authority was given to Ehud Olmert, she was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and stand-in Prime Minister. On September 17 2008 she was voted by her party to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as Prime Minister of Israel.

Why is she a hero? In a constantly deteriorating political environment, among groups of warmongers and belligerent men, Tzipi Livni is a sane voice in Israeli politics. In many ways, Livni represents Tel Aviv's political atmosphere: not rushing to sink into the policy of intimidation and separation reigning in the Israeli political arena; wishing to break the barricades rather than building yet more; aspiring to normalization without losing a grip on reality. As well as in Parliament and Cabinet meetings you can also see Livni at cultural events, and she attends every major jazz happening in the city. Although it might seem meaningless or trivial, the fact that one of the contenders to lead a country – as aggressive and militant as the State of Israel – is a person of culture, holds great significance. And that is without even mentioning the fact of her being a woman. Feature continues

Who are your heroes in Tel Aviv and why?
Nathan Alterman in his poems and Nahum Gutman in his drawings reflect the city of Tel Aviv in its early days before the establishment of the State of Israel. The landscape and the innocence and the enthusiasm of new creation. Even today when the city is tumultuous, a lively and vigorous metropolis, in my view Tel Aviv still preserves in it the poems and drawings of their time.

Who are your global heroes?
I have not selected single heroes by name but for their affiliation to groups that expressed exceptional courage. The first group is Righteous among the Nations (Chassidey Umot HaOlam) who in an era when their surrounding had lost its humanity and people around them were sent to die, they held on to their humanity and fought, truly risking their lives on a daily basis, for mankind and humaneness. The second group is Refuseniks in the former Soviet Union, in Israel and everywhere. Zionists who exchanged their freedom for the right to establish their own state and to live in that state and who held on to the dream – the return of the people of Israel to Zion.

In your opinion, what was the most significant event in your field in the last 40 years?
The most significant events in my field over the last forty years have been the two peace treaties with Egypt and with Jordan. The signing of these treaties, after decades of animosity and war, broke the circle of hostility which had been surrounding the State of Israel and best demonstrated how a leadership is able to render the longing of a people for true peace.

What event in your life has led you to choose your field of work?
The progression towards The Oslo Accords – the negotiation process between Israel and the Palestinians in the ’90s. As an ordinary citizen at that time, I believed it was right to start a peace negotiation process with our Palestinian neighbours, but I couldn't agree with the way this process was being directed. Public discourse at that time was divided to those who supported the process – therefore perceived as peace promoters and those who were against it – therefore perceived as peace opposers. But I felt this dichotomy did not adequately represent myself or many of my friends. At that point in my life I decided that I was destined to public work and that my ambition would be to promote the peace process – in the right way and through appropriate means. Nowadays, when I am the head of the Israeli team for the negotiations, I act according to the same belief and still choose to follow the same criteria today.

What is your favourite place in Tel Aviv?
The beach, where I used to go to as a child and later with my own children. I still go there as much as I can. Something there characterizes the city itself, the mentality and this country which I love so much.

If you weren't living in Tel Aviv, where would you choose to live?
If I wasn't living in Tel Aviv I would like to live in a place where the desert is on one side and the sea on the other.

What was the peak moment of your career so far?
Receiving President Bush's letter to the State of Israel, in the days prior to the implementation of the Disengagement Plan. The American president had asserted that Israel has the right to maintain the large Jewish settlement blocks in its territory and that the solution for the Palestinian refugees is in establishing an independent Palestinian State and not a solution within the State of Israel. This letter represented the peak of a several months long process during which I was sent on behalf of Prime Minister Sharon, away from the public eye, to persuade the American government leadership of the principle preventing the entry of Palestinian refugees to Israel and the significance of maintaining maximum number of Jews in their homes in Judea and Samaria.

At that time I was Minister of Immigrant Absorption in Sahron's government and I asked him to let me act to anchor these matters – although it wasn't customaryly the work of the Minister of Immigration Absorption. I have linked my support for the difficult Disengagement process with that of securing Israeli strategic assets and through intensive and determined action we were able to persuade the American government that accepting these principals is by no means an expression of supporting Israel nor of opposing the Palestinian issue, but rather anchoring the right thing. Later on, these principals anchored in Bush's letter were also approved by both U.S. legislative bodies and even today serve as central principals in the Peace negotiations.

What are your hopes for the future, what is your dream?
“My hopes for the future are linked to the reasons that drove me to enter this line of work – to make the changes in which I believe for the benefit of the state and the people who live here, regarding both the domestic relations within Israeli society and our relations with our neighbors. The ambition is to make a change and the dream is to retire when I feel that I have completely done everything within my power and left Israel a better place.”

What do yo like to do on Saturday mornings?
“On Saturday mornings I love going to my favorite place in Tel Aviv – the beach. Whenever possible, my husband and I conclude the week with family and friends whom we meet on the beach.”

What is the last cultural piece that overwhelmed you?
“The last cultural piece that I loved in particular was Vardi Cahana's photography exhibition – One Family. The exhibition showed the story of one extended family which represents the Israeli-Jewish story. The documentation begins with a photograph of three sisters with consecutive serial numbers from Auschwitz tattooed on their arms and continues with photographs of three generations of offspring and family members in Israel and abroad. The various photographs illustrate the State of Israel including its political, social, geographical and ideological aspects – from the Kibbutz to the settlement in Samaria, from Tel Aviv to Bnei-Brak, representing the different faces of the Israeli.”

What is the best food you can cook?
“The food I know best to cook is all kinds of pasta. As a vegetarian I love pasta - and as with anything else – when you love something you do it best.”

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Dana International | Ohad Naharin | Etgar Keret | Tzipi Livni