Jeans or Karmi
I was sorely tempted to write about the planned Prime Minister headquarters, with its scandalous cost of 650 million NIS - a mind-boggling sum that could cover the building of 3 modern hospitals, 30 factories each supplying 300 work places, 90 day-care centers for the elderly, 100 schools, and 700 apartments for the homeless. But Bibi had announced that his first action, if elected, would be to cancel this scandal - and he was elected! How would humorist Shalom Aleichem say: a dream about hot latkes is still a dream - not latkes!
Another significant structure which has preoccupied me in this issue is the Knesset, not afar from there. I am not sure how many of you are familiar with what’s been happening recently behind the representational building of 1966, but in the last three years it has doubled its area, with commendable public restraint. And so we went - Itzik the photographer and I - to photograph the new complex from every possible angle as well as the impossible, since a photographing tour of the home of democracy is a privilege reserved for the few, and even that - under strict conditions you have to swear to in writing before leaving the new entrance pavilion, where except for an ultrasound of your gall bladder you get everything else done to you.
Prior to the exciting event I washed, combed my hair, and donned my most festive white shirt and the jeans I’d gotten for my birthday - 490 shekels at the-end-of-the-economy sale. An hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, another hour looking for parking + a school day trip on the government domain shuttle - and we’re in the new Polombo pavilion, where on the other side eagerly awaits us Nachum the architect, who had prepared the tour a week in advance equipping us with all the necessary papers.
All fine and dandy, says the guardsman at the gate of the “camp”, but you can’t enter the Knesset in jeans! I was a bit ashamed of my ignorance, as well as my attire, but architect Nachum apologized saying he had forgotten to advise us regarding this hindering regulation, and seriously suggested we hurry into town to get some non-jeans trousers. As we didn’t have 49 shekels in our pockets, and it didn’t seem logical to let this nonsense ship us back to the reality of Tel Aviv, I uttered toward the shrine, “In the name of Itzik (the Speaker and instigator of the regulation), don’t you remember how we’d go to the market to buy fake jeans dreaming they’d look like real American ones?”
”Behave yourself”, said the policeman. “You may be the editor of an architecture journal, but the Knesset is a respectable place.” Between me and the photographer, I pondered what he meant by ‘respectable’, as we’re talking about an abstract term connected implicitly to moral behavior - family honor, modesty, humility and loyalty. How is all this connected to the slaughtered morality that daily festers there? And, if you think of the opposite of respectful you get dirty, neglected, shabby, revealing, maybe even in bad taste - what does this have to do with my washed and carefully ironed jeans?
Respect is usually associated with awe, and awe with essence - not appearance. The only law that deals with respect is the “Law of Man’s Honor and Freedom”, whose important issues are equality, freedom of expression and the right to protest. Does the Knesset represent the people residing in Zion, or the prone people of the Second Aliyah? 98% of us wear jeans even to weddings, and no one thinks we are less respectful than those who let loose disrespectfully at their colleagues - at the Knesset podium, the committees, the party conventions, and where not!
Some democracy, I thought. I had visited the Reichstag, I had even gone to the Guggenheim in New-York, and no-one had asked me to take off my respect at the entrance. Aren't we lucky - dictatorship is already at the door!
For proper disclosure, as it is customarily said in improper places: the Knesset chambers allowed us in this time under the clause that allows tourists in jeans to enter, so long as Israelis don’t follow the disrespectful Gentiles’ pervert habits.
P.S. The new Knesset Speaker has rescinded the intelligent regulation for the time being, but we’ve still decided to publish the incident so that the next Speaker doesn’t force us to sing the national anthem at the entrance to the Knesset.
dr. ami ran
I was sorely tempted to write about the planned Prime Minister headquarters, with its scandalous cost of 650 million NIS - a mind-boggling sum that could cover the building of 3 modern hospitals, 30 factories each supplying 300 work places, 90 day-care centers for the elderly, 100 schools, and 700 apartments for the homeless. But Bibi had announced that his first action, if elected, would be to cancel this scandal - and he was elected! How would humorist Shalom Aleichem say: a dream about hot latkes is still a dream - not latkes!
Another significant structure which has preoccupied me in this issue is the Knesset, not afar from there. I am not sure how many of you are familiar with what’s been happening recently behind the representational building of 1966, but in the last three years it has doubled its area, with commendable public restraint. And so we went - Itzik the photographer and I - to photograph the new complex from every possible angle as well as the impossible, since a photographing tour of the home of democracy is a privilege reserved for the few, and even that - under strict conditions you have to swear to in writing before leaving the new entrance pavilion, where except for an ultrasound of your gall bladder you get everything else done to you.
Prior to the exciting event I washed, combed my hair, and donned my most festive white shirt and the jeans I’d gotten for my birthday - 490 shekels at the-end-of-the-economy sale. An hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, another hour looking for parking + a school day trip on the government domain shuttle - and we’re in the new Polombo pavilion, where on the other side eagerly awaits us Nachum the architect, who had prepared the tour a week in advance equipping us with all the necessary papers.
All fine and dandy, says the guardsman at the gate of the “camp”, but you can’t enter the Knesset in jeans! I was a bit ashamed of my ignorance, as well as my attire, but architect Nachum apologized saying he had forgotten to advise us regarding this hindering regulation, and seriously suggested we hurry into town to get some non-jeans trousers. As we didn’t have 49 shekels in our pockets, and it didn’t seem logical to let this nonsense ship us back to the reality of Tel Aviv, I uttered toward the shrine, “In the name of Itzik (the Speaker and instigator of the regulation), don’t you remember how we’d go to the market to buy fake jeans dreaming they’d look like real American ones?”
”Behave yourself”, said the policeman. “You may be the editor of an architecture journal, but the Knesset is a respectable place.” Between me and the photographer, I pondered what he meant by ‘respectable’, as we’re talking about an abstract term connected implicitly to moral behavior - family honor, modesty, humility and loyalty. How is all this connected to the slaughtered morality that daily festers there? And, if you think of the opposite of respectful you get dirty, neglected, shabby, revealing, maybe even in bad taste - what does this have to do with my washed and carefully ironed jeans?
Respect is usually associated with awe, and awe with essence - not appearance. The only law that deals with respect is the “Law of Man’s Honor and Freedom”, whose important issues are equality, freedom of expression and the right to protest. Does the Knesset represent the people residing in Zion, or the prone people of the Second Aliyah? 98% of us wear jeans even to weddings, and no one thinks we are less respectful than those who let loose disrespectfully at their colleagues - at the Knesset podium, the committees, the party conventions, and where not!
Some democracy, I thought. I had visited the Reichstag, I had even gone to the Guggenheim in New-York, and no-one had asked me to take off my respect at the entrance. Aren't we lucky - dictatorship is already at the door!
For proper disclosure, as it is customarily said in improper places: the Knesset chambers allowed us in this time under the clause that allows tourists in jeans to enter, so long as Israelis don’t follow the disrespectful Gentiles’ pervert habits.
P.S. The new Knesset Speaker has rescinded the intelligent regulation for the time being, but we’ve still decided to publish the incident so that the next Speaker doesn’t force us to sing the national anthem at the entrance to the Knesset.
dr. ami ran
חזרה לגליון 77 back to issue 77
