Uncategorized
A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
—
The post A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3
Hundreds of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square Sunday morning ahead of a bike rally targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. There were about 300 anti-Zionist protesters and about 200 pro-Israel counterprotesters, police estimated. Rally organizers said the timing — just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish shops and homes — was coincidental.
Three people were arrested Sunday, according to police. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said a few hours after the crowd had dispersed, “In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.”
The post Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3 appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel’s President Herzog tasks Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday formally tasked Gadi Eisenkot with forming the next government, nearly two weeks after the country held a national election and days after a majority of parliamentary factions said they would recommend Eisenkot as the next prime minister.
“Yashar Leader Gadi Eisenkot, I expect you to do everything in your power to establish a government that will serve the entire people, those who supported it and those who did not, and that will be a responsible and decent address for all sectors, faiths, ways of life, and worldviews,” Herzog said in a televised ceremony held at his residence in Jerusalem.
Eisenkot has up to six weeks to assemble a coalition, a step that typically includes at least 61 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. If he fails to do so within that time, then the president can give another Knesset member the opportunity to form a government.
In his speech on Sunday, Eisenkot said that Israeli democracy was “at one of its most vulnerable moments.”
“The campaign to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy, together with the growing distrust in state institutions, fueled daily, has brought us to an extremely dangerous point,” he said, adding that continuing on this path Israel would reach the “point of no return.”
“The formal consultations held here, at the President’s Residence, have revealed a clear picture: an absolute majority of Knesset members, representing the Israeli public, support change and support me as prime minister,” he said.
Some 67 members of the Knesset recommended Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff, for prime minister during those consultations. Meanwhile, 46 members of Knesset recommended incumbent Prime Minister and Likud Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. One faction, United Torah Judaism, with seven members of Knesset, refrained from recommending any candidate.
The consultations, Herzog said, “brought to the surface the disputes, the painful points, and of course, the multitude of voices within Israeli society and politics.”
He added that the differences “reminded us all that every citizen of Israel has an equal voice, from every side, every view, every way of life, and every faith.”
Eisenkot said he would work to bridge those divisions and attempt to form a national emergency government, even if it required “creative and unconventional political initiatives.”
For his part, Netanyahu has urged Eisenkot to join him in an emergency national unity government that will keep Israel strong against ongoing threats.
Eisenkot has responded that the “national emergency government” he will form will comprise the “four Zionist parties” of the change bloc – his own Yashar Party, B’Yachad headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party and the Democrats under Yair Golan.
He also said he would welcome “parties and Knesset members who support Yashar’s four principles” to join the coalition.
At the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, Eisenkot said he would be sending out formal invitations as soon as possible “to every Knesset faction, calling on all their members, both as parties and as individuals, to take part in forming the government and bringing it to its swearing-in.”
“The rule is simple,” he added. “If you are prepared to sign on to the four principles I have set out, you are potential partners in a national emergency government under my leadership.”
Throughout his campaign, and particularly since the Oct. 27 election, Eisenkot has emphasized these four principles as the basis for forming the next government.
1) Recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Eisenkot wants to define his coalition as a government that is committed to Israel’s Jewish national identity and to democracy, not simply an alliance united by opposition to Netanyahu.
Any party wanting to join must accept Israel’s identity as the national home of the Jewish people first. The requirement has historically been contentious for Israel’s two Arab parties, who represent 19 Knesset members.
Parties must also accept the country’s democratic institutions, which uphold equality and rights for all citizens and prioritize the rule of law.
This means parties, such as the far-right and the ultra-Orthodox, that, as members of the outgoing government, have been pushing to overhaul the country’s judiciary – a key institution in Israel’s system of democratic checks and balances – might think twice about joining.
2) Acceptance of the values of the Declaration of Independence.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed and signed on May 14, 1948, is a foundational document that has helped shape the country’s constitutional principles, although Israel does not have a single, formal written constitution.
In it, the signatories laid out their vision for Israel, including the historical ties the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and its place as a safe haven for Jews around the world who are in trouble.
For Eisenkot, the emphasis appears to be on one particular section that declares: “The State of Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
By embracing the Declaration of Independence, Eisenkot is recognizing the place of Israel’s minority groups, highlighting their “full and equal citizenship.” A point mentioned twice in the declaration.
The declaration also reaffirms that Israel is a country seeking peace, rather than endless conflict, at a time when Netanyahu has recently been criticized over his handling of the country’s wars on multiple fronts.
3) Mandatory service for all — military, national, and civilian, to strengthen the IDF and expand its ranks.
Including this condition for joining the government is a direct message to the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is considering supporting Eisenkot’s coalition.
United Torah Judaism, which has been aligned closely with Netanyahu’s bloc for at least the past two decades, on Thursday refused to recommend the prime minister as Israel’s next leader. Instead, the party, which holds seven seats, abstained from recommending any candidate.
Both UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, have resisted efforts that would include ultra-Orthodox young men studying in yeshiva under a universal draft law requiring all eligible Israelis to perform military service.
Previous exemption laws have expired, and Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s blanket exemption of yeshiva students from military service has no legal basis and violates principles of equality before the law.
By including this condition, Eisenkot is telling the ultra-Orthodox – and even the Arab community, most of whose members are also exempt from mandatory military service – that everyone in Israel must do their part, whether through military service or some type of national or community service.
This stipulation could either keep the ultra-Orthodox out of the government, even though Eisenkot’s partners have expressed willingness to allow their participation. Or it could force them to be more flexible on an issue that until now they have appeared unrelenting.
4) Recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization and commitment to dismantling its military and governing power.
Leaders of the two Arab parties, the Islamist Ra’am Party and the more nationalist Joint List, have refused to make this statement out loud.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 attack, has said he does have a clear position on this but refuses to state it publicly for several reasons ranging from concerns about his personal safety to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is also affiliated. He has also questioned why Arab politicians are required to pass loyalty tests that are not applied equally to Jewish politicians.
When President Herzog pressed him on the matter last week, Abbas said: “I have an unequivocal answer, but leave me space to be a bridge. To also influence the other side.” He argued that maintaining channels of communication with Palestinians requires him not to adopt language that would immediately alienate them.
For the Joint List, the continued refusal to call Hamas a terror group appears to reflect the view that Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian political movement. Some of its members argue that labeling it a terrorist organization risks delegitimizing Palestinian political aspirations as a whole.
Members of the 11-member faction have condemned the Oct. 7 massacre, but are unlikely to accept this particular condition because it could be used to justify Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Its leaders also want to preserve their credibility among Palestinian voters, many of whom see the conflict through the lens of occupation and Palestinian national rights.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel’s President Herzog tasks Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Boy George’s Tel Aviv concert was not perfect. For the crowd, that was beside the point
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Sound problems, guitar trouble and an admission of forgotten lyrics punctuated Boy George’s second Tel Aviv show Saturday night. But the British pop star, irreverent, occasionally exasperated and frequently hilarious, could hardly have asked for a more forgiving audience.
At 65, the Culture Club frontman is no longer the chart-topping phenomenon of the 1980s. Although plenty of those who filled Menora Mivtachim Arena were old enough to remember his heyday firsthand, his appeal went well beyond nostalgia.
At a time when international stars have largely stayed away from Israel, George has become one of the country’s most outspoken supporters, enduring considerable backlash from within the music industry for his refusal to remain silent over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“Silence is not a f—ing option,” he said to thunderous applause.
Saturday’s concert, the second of two nearly sold-out performances following Wednesday’s show at the same venue, was dedicated to survivors of the Nova music festival massacre and bereaved families, with 1,500 tickets donated to members of the community. Israeli DJ and producer Ofer Nissim joined George onstage in the second half, bringing a dance-club element to an evening that mixed Culture Club classics, covers and newer material.
His habit of mocking himself and mimicking others repeatedly drove the crowd to laughter, turning interruptions that might have derailed a slicker performance into part of the entertainment.
The banter ranged from wisecracks about technical glitches to personal reflections on the hostility he has encountered over his support for Israel. When a guitar failed to produce any sound, he appeared mildly irritated, telling the crew, “You have to plug things in, you know.”
“This is a weird moment,” he added, before smiling and continuing, “but this whole night has been a weird moment.”
Introducing his cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” he explained that he had attempted it on Wednesday but forgotten the lyrics. “Luckily, this time I have autocue,” he said, breaking into his trademark laugh.
As for his detractors around the world, he made clear that he had little interest in winning them over.
“I’m 65. It’s too late to hate me, I don’t give a s–t,” he told the audience.
The one person’s opinion that mattered to him, he said, was his late mother’s. Recalling an Irishman who had suggested that his Irish mother would be ashamed of his support for Israel, given Ireland’s strong sympathy for the Palestinian cause, George was defiant.
“I can tell you categorically my mother will be more proud of me than she’s ever been,” he said.
In another characteristically unpredictable diversion, George dedicated his solo release “Clouds” to Philip Sallon, a longtime Jewish friend and influential figure in London’s club scene who helped introduce him to Jewish traditions when he was young.
The two have since fallen out. “He hates my guts right now,” George said, asking anyone who knew Sallon to tell him that he had sung the song for him in Israel as an act of forgiveness, “as a mitzvah.”
But the evening’s most emotional moments belonged to “We Will Dance Again,” the song George released in July about the Nova attack. Its lyrics explicitly reference the atrocities committed on Oct. 7, criticize fellow musicians for their silence and challenge accusations of genocide against Israel.
George’s eight-day visit included a meeting with President Isaac Herzog and a trip to the Nova massacre site near Kibbutz Re’im, where Hamas terrorists murdered more than 360 festivalgoers on Oct. 7, 2023.
Having visited Israel many times before, he told the audience that this trip had affected him differently. He also appeared uneasy about the gratitude being lavished on him.
“It’s awkward for me as an outsider to be in the midst of this amazing recovery and sadness,” he said.
Survivors of the Nova massacre and relatives of those murdered joined George onstage carrying Israeli flags for “We Will Dance Again.”
George, having changed into a colorful, geometric-print suit and rhinestone-studded black hat, performed the reggae-inflected song about one of the most traumatic events in Israeli history while embracing the survivors and bereaved relatives beside him.
At one point, he seemed close to tears. “I’m going to cry,” he said.
But even the solemnity didn’t last long. When George invited one of the bereaved women to address the crowd, she demurred because she didn’t speak English.
“I’ve never met a Jewish person who doesn’t have anything to say,” he joked, drawing laughter and applause from the crowd.
In the audience, people swayed to lyrics that included an explicit reference to girls raped against trees. Kay, a singer from Tel Aviv, remained seated, tears in her eyes.
“I can’t dance to that,” she said.
Yet she was deeply moved by George and the atmosphere surrounding the performance, and was untroubled by its hiccups.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be human, and that’s what connects us,” she said.
Tammy, a 60-year-old dance instructor who regularly plays Culture Club songs in her classes, hadn’t initially intended to attend. But after seeing footage of George’s Wednesday performance, she changed her mind.
“I saw the clips on social media and was jealous of people who went,” she said.
Lavie, a 24-year-old Israeli-born performer who divides his time between New York and Los Angeles, had never heard of Boy George before the singer began making headlines in Israel. He started studying his music ahead of the concert, hoping to learn from the veteran entertainer’s stagecraft.
“I learned a lot,” he said toward the end of the performance. “What impressed me most was how he handled all the glitches with grace and humor.”
Not everyone was quite so impressed.
Daniel, a Jaffa resident originally from Los Angeles, was scathing about the musical performance and even more critical of the audience’s reaction.
“Everyone was off-key, and it was just awful,” he said. “But what bothered me most was the crowd’s desperate need for approval.”
“We need a national therapy session to counter our neediness,” he added.
George saved “Karma Chameleon,” the 1983 hit that made him a household name around the world, for the finale. By then, the show had stretched to roughly two and a half hours, but thousands of people were still on their feet.
George contrasted the atmosphere in Israel with London, which he described as “full of anxiety and tension.”
“It feels so relaxed here,” he said. “I don’t want to go home.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George’s Tel Aviv concert was not perfect. For the crowd, that was beside the point appeared first on The Forward.
