Leon's Jerusalem No News Bulletin.(13)

Sat 18th Mar 06

Dear friends and family,

There are many things going on in Israel. The variety is quite staggering, no one can keep up with all these things. There's a jazz concert tonight in Givatayim, a symphony concert at the Jerusalem theatre, Johannes Passion will be performed on Monday at the Jerusalem theater.

These cultural events are great but what percentage of the population actually participate in them?

I don't think it's above 10%. The rest of the population watch TV. The thing that keeps them gripped and glued there are reality shows, soap operas and the news, if something dramatic or tragic is being shot on the spot, live as they say.

Judging by the popular culture one can conclude something about the way people live in Israel, and I suspect elsewhere. They are dreaming of becoming the famous people they see in soap operas, fearing the pain they see in the news dramas, grateful that the terrible thing they're looking at isn't happening to them.

Instead of getting happiness from refining their taste, doing good for themselves and others, they are getting it from fantasies of beauty and riches, on the one hand, and relief at not being in the terrible situation of suffering they see in the news or in some melodramatic movie.

The people who appear in the media seem to be happy because they are wealthy, talented and so successful.

They seem to lead exciting lives. While the people we don't see on the media seem to be unsuccessful and unhappy.

The reality is that most people don't ever appear in the news or aren't famous for their beauty or don't jet around the world to exotic places or don't live in luxurious mansions.

Most people are quite happy being quietly beautiful in their own way, working hard and doing a lot of unpublicized good for themselves and their families. Nobody knows about these people.

The media does such a good job of highlighting the importance of showing our beauty and our wealth that there are many people in modern society who are jealous of anyone who appears in real life to have the things they see in the media.

The efficiency of the modern media makes it easy with to be misguided. Sadly these misguided people, instead of taking notice of the goodness and beauty in their unpublicized lives see only the glory in being famous.

The thing that brings about the most happiness in these people is when someone who is successful falls from glory. They rejoice when the rich get poor, the beautiful become ugly and the healthy get ill.

Sometimes they don't wait for bad things to happen to successful people, they fantasize about the downfall of some successful person. Sometimes it brings them

This trend lies at the base of many ills in our society. It goes by many names such as class conflict, anti-Semitism, racism, vandalism, rebellion of youth and even politics.

Unfortunately there have been leaders of nations who have exploited this negative social characteristic. They've risen to power by promising the downfall of the rich and vengeance to enemies. The result of people being elected on this basis has been disastrous for their country and the world as a whole.

The ranting and raving of politicians in Israel in the present political campaign is an example of this phenomenon. It appears that the leader of each party is trying to gain votes by promising the downfall of his opponents rather than presenting his own wisdom and ability to lead.

I intend voting for a political leader who tells me what he's going to do about encouraging people to find happiness in getting an education and working hard to achieve success, not in dreams of sudden wealth and fantasies of vengeance.

After planning a visit to the Israel Museum for a long time I finally got round to it on Wednesday, Purim. I met crowds of kids and their parents, dressed in fancy dress. There was a long line at the ticket office but only people over the age of 17 paid. The museum has a policy of free entrance for under 17 on Thursdays. I suppose this applied to Purim also.

My main interest was to see the Boris Schatz exhibit. He was the founder of the Bezalel Art School in 1913 and of the Bezalel Museum of Art, which later became the Israel Museum.

This exhibit reminded me of the great idealism of the early pioneers of Israel. They saw themselves as the rebirth of the Biblical Jew. They desperately wanted to shed their diaspora characteristics which they had accumulated over the last 2000 years. I believe that we are still in that process. The problem is, however that we don't really know the Biblical Jew.

Boris Schatz tried to portray him for us and for this reason Bible was the main emphasis of his work and the work of his school.

I remember seeing many of the works from there when I was a child in South Africa. I remember that someone had brought a cuckoo clock decorated with scenes of Biblical places, as a souvenir from a visit to the Holy Land in the 1950's. As a child I received a silver pen with engravings of Biblical places made by Bezalel art school students.

One of the exhibits I liked most was in fact not a painting but a conversation recalled in 1965, by Nahum Gutman, the artist.

"I saw before me Prof. Schatz's hand indicating, in its sweeping gesture, the valley and the hill, lying at our feet. His finger roamed along the wide valley contours and he spoke: 'you see, Bezalel Museum will spread out over this entire valley and hill. A high stone wall, like the wall of Jerusalem's old city, shall enfold all the buildings. These shall be tall, arched, and luminous. In this way we'll create two points of balance, on the one, hand old Jerusalem, shut within its walls on the other its counterweight, similarly enclosed within a stone wall, lustrous, sky high, with many arches and vaults, the renewed Jerusalem, containing within it our artistic treasures, which we have collected and brought here from our long years of exile, expressing what we have suffered and what we ask of the future.'

I blink my eyes and there in front of me are the same valley and hill. Now sporting the buildings of the Israel Museum."

Wishing you a great no news day. Leon Gork.

Reply to: legork@netvision.net.il

Leon Gork. Israeli Tour Guide.

PO BOX 49091

Jerusalem 91491

Israel.

Tel/fax 02 5810732

Mobile phone 052 3801867

http://www.geocities.com/leongork

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