אדריכלות ישראלית

2017

מאי

109

אדריכלות ישראלית

ראיון עם אדריכל אסף לרמן

Almost half the Israelis went abroad this year, ten times more than in 2012. Does this

say something about abroad, or rather about the sense of suffocation here? During the

holiday, The Couple took a vacation from abroad and went off to admire the Galilee.

Does this say something about the Galilee, or just that they too had had enough

congestion from shouting bulldozers who get salaries as Knesset members?

Holocaust Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day still manage to be seen by many

of us as days of introspection… a source of pride for our part in this wonder called The

State of Israel. For me, songs like the “Little Prince from Platoon B, "who would never

see a sheep eating a flower since all his roses are thorns now”, mean something;

not to mention touching movies on “Channel 1”, that shed light retrospectively on the

incomprehensible naïveté and heroism of all the fallen upon whose bodies we’ve built

our state.

Painfully, one of the them didn’t deal at all with the Nazis, but rather with the story of the

Ethiopian community who, having survived against all odds for two thousand years in the

diaspora, some of them were brought to Israel in the 50s, thanks to the brave decision

of Shlomo Hillel, then Israeli Minister of the Interior, the intrepid

heroism of the Mossad and the naval commando. I must admit,

though, that even I, shirtless most of the day, was embarrassed by

the Rabbinate forcing those enviably, gentle religious men to strip

in front of them in order to draw blood from their sex organs in a

disgraceful circumcision ceremony despite their crying protest.

But without cynicism… or with… why not… I think that the most

shocking movie is still being written, and I don’t mean that idiotic

argument about the broadcast corporation, even though this also

has something to do with the “directors”. It is, of course, about the

State’s criminally shameful treatment of Holocaust survivors, 37

of whom die every day, 13,000 each year, and according to the

laws of nature, their numbers are gradually lessening. The State

Comptroller wrote in his last report that in 2014, 100 million shekels

were allocated for their care, but only 4% (!) was spent by the

Ministry of Welfare; namely, four million, three hundred thousand

NIS, slightly less than the cost of one flight abroad of our eternal

Prime Minister, whose annual overseas budget is only 27 million

NIS, though they’re working on it… or rather on us.

In the course of time that flies like a swing, there have been many jokes about those

condemned to death. The best one is about a condemned man who is walking to

the gallows with his hangman, complaining that he was deathly cold. “How dare you

complain” said the hangman, "I have to go all the way back!"

Passover has gone, the Memorial Days and so has the 69th Independence Day of the

State of the Jews, and Jonathan Geffen’s song about the Little Prince from Platoon B

still hums in my head, “if you ever come here, know that he dropped in silence and the

sound of the fall was never heard because of the soft sand”… in the eyes.

P.S.

In honor of Independence Day, the editorial has exempted me from writing about

architecture this time.

Architect Dr. Ami Ran

the sound of the fall was never heard

editorial

Editorial