Joelle Lifestyle - The World at Home

It all started in New York, when a friend insisted I spent a few days in Israel for Passover with his family.

Israel, at this time of the year, so much to do….I reflected on the interesting opportunity, after all it’s nothing less than the Holy Land and I should not miss the opportunity to reunite with my ancestors at holy sites.  But still, I thought I should try to work things out to write a Tel Aviv edition for my website.

I am walking on the sidewalk at the Tel Aviv port, one of my favorite places in the city.  It’s late afternoon, almost sunset.  I’m so happy to finally relax.  I notice that a red light blinks from my messenger BB (the Blackberry Bubble)… it’s my Israeli friend Mordechai in New York writing:  “Have you called Itzik?”  I can’t believe he’s checking on me.  I have just arrived in Israel and I’m still not sure if I am willing to socialize or just want to focus on working on the city edition.  Red light BB comes back, “Go now, he’s waiting for you.”

Mordechai is responsible for the good health and style of my hair, and because of this I must admit, he is one of those few people in the world that have a tremendous power over me.  One could clearly observe this fact by the tone in which he addresses me.  This is why I find myself in an Israeli taxi, on my way to the small gallery where, at this moment an artist  named Itzik Badash – a dear friend of Mordechai and protege of Israeli diva and actress Ronit Elkabetz – is apparently showcasing his work called “Bread”.

The taxi stops on a small and almost deserted street, in the residential area of  Tzedek    .  At an entrance door in a grey limestone wall, a few stairs take me to a narrow white room and a reception desk.  A woman receives me, smiling silently as if she knows who I am after I mention Itzik’s name.  I instantly get from her an English-ed Hebrew introduction to the few gigantic photographic panels inside another white high ceiling-ed room, while she quickly attempts to make a phone call to Itzik.

Perplexed, I ask for more information about the splendid art work  displayed on the walls of that narrow space.  The curator, as she calls herself, tells me Itzik is on his way to the gallery and he will explain everything I wish to know personally.  She hands me some sort of flier and disappears in the same way she came, through a grey curtain behind the reception desk.

As I turn myself around and around I can’t stop relating to these images. They are strange, extremely disturbing yet at the same time they are constantly talking to my deranged soul.  What is the meaning of their theme?  Where were those pictures taken?  Is it a real cave?  What cave? What kind of action is taking place?  A ritual?  What about those birds, and the fire?  And where in heaven is this Itzik for God’s sake?  Why does he keep me standing here alone?   Shall I bubble Mordechai?

‘Shalom,” I hear from afar.  “Comment vas tu?- I am Itzik, do you speak Hebrew?”

“Finally,” I think while I turn around, curious to see who is at my back – the intriguing author of this even more intriguing art work.  “Itzik, I am a friend of Mordechai,” I say, “and these hair products are for…”

“I know who you are and toda (thank you).”

There’s a silence between us, he looks at me in the eyes.  He is handsome and somehow kind but very serious.  For some reason I connect with him in a strange way.  I decide to ask directly all the questions that are haunting my mind.  Itzik answers slowly, slightly ethereally.  He is making a quick mental evaluation to see if I can be trusted to inquire about the divine creative process of his inspiration and more over, if I truly deserve to get acquainted with the precious information he holds within himself.

Bread is his most recent exhibition.  It started in Tel Aviv and will be going to Jerusalem next week.  After that it’s still to be decided.  The rituals are real, the characters in the pictures are himself, a friend and a renowned Israeli actress representing the universal motherhood in the fullness of its physical limitations.  The cave is in the nearby hills of Jerusalem, and the theme basically is about spiritual nourishment.  “This is why it is called Bread,” he tells me, looking down at the smoothly cemented floor.

But while he talks to me, I realize there is something about Itzik that he is not telling me yet.  There is something important I am aware of, something  I should know, and it’s definitely related to his life and, as a consequence, to his work – a work maybe that I have yet not seen.  I recognize a voice in him that wants to talk about something we have in common… I decide to ask deeper questions about his origins, his family sharing with him that his work sometimes related in my mind to Michelangelo’s Pieta.

In a dream state he describes an analogy of the cave being the like the mother womb.  All limits between real life in the outside world and the inner self are secured in the fullness of the four primordial elements, connecting through the passage of a flying bird – a messenger between those two worlds.

He realizes my attention is fixed on his words and now, more confidently, he confides in me a story about the influence on his persona from his beloved grandmother Gita.  She is from Tripoli, Libya.  She is a magician.  She prepares  healing potions and rituals invoking the protection of our great ancestors, the Tazddiks (righteous) and cabbalists Shimon Bar-Yohai, Rabbi Meir Ba’ Al Hanes and the enlightened Itzhac Luria.

Breathless, I hear myself asking: “You are Sepharadi then?”  There is the connection!  The cultural-religious connection!  Itzik finally smiles, his eyes recognize in mine the warmth of the anthologies of poems, odes and lamentations written by the Jewish poets of Spain and the inner wild agony of my soul gypsy-ness.  It’s within this same cultural sphere that Itzik Badash in his previous exhibition curated by Tal Ben Tzvi,  called the Dwali,  ( meaning both collection of songs” and a “salon for entertaining guests” ) chooses to hold a rite of passage with his grandmother and mother’s help.

In the ceremony he exposed the fact that he is an HIV carrier and presented the illness as an aspect of his identity, alongside artist, Jew, Israeli and a person of Oriental origins, oscillating between the Hebrew language and the Arabic-Libyan language that he remembers from his childhood in Natanya.

For the purpose of this ceremony, Badash turned to his grandmother and his mother, who belong to a dynasty of strong women holding important roles and enjoying power and status.  The grandmother has a social-communal role as a wailing woman, like her own mother before her, who used to fulfill the same role in Tripoli, Libya.

Lamentation is based on emotion.  Badash is closely familiar with the magnitude of the loss, the depth of the pain and the weight of the grief, and it is these emotions that he wishes to pour forth into the blessing ceremony. The blessing constitutes for him an understanding and recognition of AIDS as a social disease, which in order to confront he needs his family as a source of strength; strength based on exposure, truth, reinforcement, empowerment and support.

We go to a cafe nearby.  Itzik introduces me to all his interesting friends and tells me that his next project is going to be video art based on the Lashon Hara ( Gossip) . He knows for a fact that it will be a great financial success and truluy hopes it will influence people in understand more about the power of speaking no evil.

Tel Aviv, here I am.  Speak more to me.

Read more about the ritual  Diwani