A highlight from The Unity is the Thing We Seek Edition


Promised cast brought to you on t. v. One the voice of the city that this week announced that it is taking ownership of the national theatre habima and in so doing taking on one hundred million shekels in debt that habima has run up over the past years and in doing all this bringing to a happy conclusion a crisis that we first became aware of a year and a half ago in november twenty nineteen when a man named core case safron sued demanding that the company liquidated its assets and use the proceeds to pay the four million. It owed him for telemarketing services provided to habima by his company. Power dialing at the time the press made saffron out to be a grinch like figure shutting down the world's oldest hebrew theatre for something as unexhausted money filthy lucre. But the fact is you have to do a lot of power dialing. Run up a tab of four million shekels and it's like the old saying goes don't the cold call if you ain't got the windfall. It's the saying. I've heard a lot of people say that anyway. During the hearing it came out that the national theatre was much worse debt than anyone knew so much that that it was like an iceberg and the four million telemarketing chuckles. Were only the small little point. You see above the waterline. Which debt of course only got lots worse during the pandemic and of course the national government has an approved a budget since march twenty eighteen. Meaning that it would be complicated. And maybe even impossible for the treasury and ministry of culture in jerusalem to bail out the theater even if they were of a mind to do it and finally tel aviv mayor room the stepped up and negotiated a deal whereby the theater would become a municipal corporation like the art museum and the land of israel museum in the cinematheque and the camera theater. The director general of habima. A man named noam semel who was hired just over a year ago to steer the national theatre through its financial crisis said quote the tel aviv. Municipality is the mother and father that the bima has never had and quote now one oddity of the arrangement is that tel aviv is now the mother and father both to the national theatre habima and at the same time to its municipal theatre the camry and you know how jealous theater companies can get. We have a cat and dog and if you pet one without petting the other than it leads to meowing barking. And it's going to be just like that. But i digress. The bima theater was founded as a hebrew language theatre in eastern europe. I in biala stock in one thousand nine and then it was reestablished in moscow in nineteen seventeen the order of establishment by the way was signed by a middle level manager named joseph stalin. Who sounds like a nice guy. I wonder what happened him. And the company had its first huge hit when it staged in one thousand nine hundred translated from the version of the dick by the pen. Name of shlomi zahn ville rappaport in nineteen twenty eight. The company came to palestine and set up shop at number eighty rotschild boulevard in tel aviv. Supported by a group of friends of the hubby theater in berlin. The theater companies still made frequent trips to europe to perform most often to paris. Though the archives hold the text of a telegram addressed to propaganda minister of the right dr yosef gearbox asking for permission to perform in the one theater in berlin that still let jewish please go on gerbils agreed and the company made its way by train from paris to germany. Though when they got their president of the reichstag hermann goering forbade them to leave the train and they went back to paris. Never having gotten off not long. After we moved to tel aviv. Susan and i then poor students went for a splurge to the coffee shop of the bima in the late. Nineteen eighty s or early nineteen nineties and every item on the menu had been given a name associated with one of the productions of the great hebrew theatre over the course of its by then already long history. I remember that along with my coffee. I ordered something called not hanadova or as the english translation on the menu. Read my fair cake for thirty years. I have hoped that the day would come when at a party. I would meet the author of that menu and i have not given up on that hope and arguably nothing captures the joyously paternalistic. We got this spirit of the city. We love so well via feel better than with the stroke of a pen. Taking corporate ownership of one of the greatest jewish cultural endeavors of the twentieth century becoming both mother and father of the most storied hebrew theatre in the history of the world with us in the studio is a man who was the assistant to the great actor director gdynia bestseller in the camry theatre's production of the goal. I see what i said. Habima does the dick so naturally. The camera does the golam. It's gonna get out of hand just like the cat and the dog. Obviously the man. I'm talking about is don don was also beyers assistant for the american premiere of yoshua. Sobils play nephew d about the tortured. Jewish philosopher otto vining gear. Who killed himself when he was just twenty three when not staging such upbeat plays. Don fetterman is the director of the riott funded israel and the director of the center for educational innovation. He's also the genius behind and in front of and on the side of a new series of podcast theater productions of autobiographical monologues called futterman. One man show which a couple of weeks back put out its spectacular newest monologue. I never compete with my brother in two parts. Don the same city tel aviv. That is now running a massive ad campaign to get people to clean up after their dogs with the slogan. Don't shit pick it up taking ownership of the most delicate and precious gem of hebrew theatre. Did you ever think you would live the day. Well just shows that. The tel aviv municipality is living. It's a message. Because i said we are not going to be shits. We are going to be mother and father of the heartbeat of the city which is always the theater now. I want to say here that most of the debt that have been as a crude is owed to me on the air. I am publicly forgiving. That debt And i know.

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