Hippocrates of Kos, the classical era Greek physician probably best known for pointing the way to good moral medical practice, once sagaciously posited: “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”
If that is indeed the case, author Ron Dahan and bibliotherapist Dr. Tamar Simon, and several other cohorts with the requisite skills, gifts, and experience, have provided several dozen people in dire need of a palliative helping hand, with just such a means of achieving some relief from their pain and angst.
That will be patently and, no doubt, emotively demonstrated on May 30 at Mishkenot Sha’ananim as part of this year’s Jerusalem International Writers Festival, when Dahan and Simon join forces with celebrated writer and festival honcho Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler, with actors Maya Maoz and Alex Krul offering some epexegetical visual and sonic dramatics.
A festival session that takes place on the final day of the four-day program marks the launch of an indisputably significant and palpably relevant Hebrew-language book called Saturday, Oct. 7. The original Hebrew title has “Shabbat,” not “Saturday.” There is, of course, no need to expound on the titular date. The second half of the festival slot header reads “Discussing Testimony, Literature and Therapy,” which indicates the idea behind the project and the editor-compilers’ objectives.
The book, crafted and edited by Dahan and Maayan Avidan – Avidan initiated the remedial literary venture – contains over 50 accounts of the bloodcurdling events that took place in communities down south near Gaza on that fateful Shabbat. This is not news bulletin coverage, nor is it a mass media splash about something so dramatic that even the most ratings-driven show editor could not possibly hype up.
The Saturday, Oct. 7 session is only one of dozens of discussions, talks, and musical and comedic performances. The subject matter and disciplinary stretch are varied and expansive in the extreme.
On the local side of the agenda, there is a musically based tribute to late internationally renowned poet Yehuda Amichai, who would have turned 100 on May 3, courtesy of DJ and sound artist Tai Rona. And Jerusalem-born, globally celebrated writer David Grossman gets a richly deserved pat on the back a few months after his threescore and ten personal milestone. The festival program information justly describes the tête-à-tête between Grossman and TV personality Kobi Meidan as “celebrating the 70th birthday of a literary giant.”
The four-day agenda is peppered with towering figures of the literary world.
Iconic Jewish British art historian and writer Sir Simon Schama, who has been very vocal about his support for Israel since Oct. 7, is in the Mishkenot Sha’ananim lineup. He will talk about his book The Story of the Jews with journalist and commentator Nadav Eyal.
There are a couple more offshore heavyweights in the cast, in the shape of feted American-Canadian novelist and short story writer John Irving; and French Reform rabbi, author, editor, and prominent leader of the Jewish community in France, Delphine Horvilleur.
The latter will expound on the theme – which, sadly, is constantly relevant in these parts – she examines in her 2021 French-language book Living with Our Dead, recently translated into Hebrew, in the company of Ben-Gurion University lecturer on foreign literature and linguistics, and writer, Yael Segalovitz.
Jerusalem Writer's Festival after Oct. 7
THAT IS as impressive a roll call as any in the Jerusalem Writers Festival’s 12-year history to date. If one takes into account the fact that the current edition takes place in the challenging mire of hateful anti-Israel tropes around the world, third-time artistic director Fermentto-Tzaisler clearly deserves some extra kudos.
She says she had the odd moment of reflection and hesitation in the run-up to the festival but remained confident throughout that the event would eventually take on corporeal form.
“Yes, it is encouraging that the festival is happening at all. We live in a very unstable reality, for obvious reasons,” she observes. “But we never thought for a moment that we wouldn’t hold the festival this year.”
That took into consideration the possibility of Fermentto-Tzaisler, who this year also serves as festival director, and her colleagues not being able to coax anyone over here from abroad. Still, there was a highly viable plan B available. “We were concerned that no one would want to come here, so we thought about having an exclusively Israeli program.”
That would have been disappointing but not exactly a worst-case eventuality. In addition to Grossman, consider the likes of homegrown talents Eyal Megged, Zeruya Shalev, and Eshkol Nevo, and you can appreciate how Fermentto-Tzaisler could have put together an attractive itinerary across the four days purely based on domestic writers.
Add to that non-literary fare such as an intriguing exchange with superstar chef Israel Aharoni, a session with popular artist and cartoonist Zeev Engelmayer, which explores the intersection of art and activism – yet another unveiled reference to the ongoing political turbulence here – and you have yourself a programmatic offering that appeals to a broad swath of tastes and interests.
Music, as usual, also appears in the lineup, with internationally acclaimed vocalists Ester Rada and Riff Cohen, Rotem Bar On of the multi-genre Angelcy outfit, singer-songwriter Ori Toledano – aka Kayma – and Tair Haim from the Yemenite music-based A-Wa sibling threesome, all of whom perform in languages other than Hebrew.
Even with the political brouhaha raging around the world, Fermentto-Tzaisler says she was going to pull out all the stops in an effort to bring in non-Israeli literary stars.
“They are part of the DNA of the festival,” she notes. “They have been since it began. Literature is supposed to be above conflicts and politics. I can’t say it was easy this year, but we managed it.”
You can say that again. The proof of the crowd-pulling pudding is already very much in evidence.
“It is a very rich program and, I have to say, ticket sales so far are unprecedented,” Fermentto-Tzaisler states with more than a hint of hard-earned pride. “I have never experienced anything like this. There are events that are already sold out.”
SHE ATTRIBUTES that to the current wartime and national trauma zeitgeist. I wondered whether that may have something to do with the realization that, in such troubling times, we all need to grab hold of something that enriches our souls and buoys our spirits. “Absolutely,” comes the quick-fire response. “Suddenly you understand that culture is not some sort of privilege. It is the air we breathe. It is the essence of our lives.”
Not that we have been short on artists, across all the disciplines, or consumers of their output, but Fermentto-Tzaisler believes something has shifted in the field. “It indicates some kind of cultural change,” she says of the clamor for festival tickets. “The program is very much tailored to the spirit of the time, and represents this moment. It is hard to go out now and celebrate and have a good time.”
That came into the curricular reckoning. “We have an evening dedicated to remembrance. All the events, on some level or other, are relevant to the situation – including the sessions with the guests from abroad.”
That ethos is present right through the program. This is a festival that gets down and dirty with what we are going through right now, rather than looking to distract us by offering some sorely needed respite from the sorrow, gloom, and doom. “I think that coming to the festival will not feel like something alien, that you are divorcing yourself from the situation we are in. That may be also something that draws people. It is not escapist.”
Fermentto-Tzaisler stresses that she has nothing against us losing ourselves in a good book, and getting away from our challenging daily issues, but says that is not the point of this year’s festival.
“Escapism is fine, but at this specific juncture, it can be something coarse for the soul.” There is a time and place for everything. “Escapism will be fine, possibly, one moment after everything is over – after all the hostages are released, after they withdraw all our soldiers from Gaza, after there is peace. Then we can return to our humdrum reality and look for a source of escapism. We are in the throes of a human drama. There is hardly anyone I meet who doesn’t know someone who has been involved or is involved. We are all in the midst of grieving and great sadness.”
After over 40 years in this country, I find it difficult to recall too many “humdrum” passages of time here, but I suppose everything is relative.
THEREIN LIES the crux of the session with Avidan (who provides opening remarks), Dahan, Simon, and the artistic director.
Having started to peruse the book Saturday, Oct. 7 – in all honestly, I don’t know whether I am emotionally equipped at the moment to read right through it – I was astounded by the vividness and simplicity of the way in which the first witness, Nira Sharabi of Kibbutz Be’eri, gave her account of that dark, dark day.
The book, published by Kinneret, Zmora, Dvir, also incorporates reports by residents of Ofakim and other communities in the region, as well as attendees of the Supernova music festival. The testimonies were collected and edited by poets, authors, and theater professionals.
“I think now is the time to find comfort and humaneness in literature,” Fermentto-Tzaisler continues.
This is not just a highly regarded professional giving her informed view of the new book. Fermentto-Tzaisler also met survivors of the barbaric terrorist attack and collected some of the testimonies herself.
Naturally, she and her fellow documenters got some much-needed support and preparation from Dr. Simon about how to approach the witnesses and, basically, how to deal with what they were about to hear firsthand. “We had sessions with her. She explained the meaning of basic terminology to all the writers – the meaning of trauma, the significance for the survivor of telling their story, and how we are supposed to conduct ourselves in the circumstances.”
The latter was particularly trying. “At one of the sessions with Tamar [Simon], I said I was anxious about crying myself when I’d be listening to the witness, that I wouldn’t be able to play the poker-faced professional. Tamar said that would be fine, and that we were not supposed to set ourselves apart from the survivors. That happened to all of us.”
The book was not on the agenda at the outset. “It did not start as a literary project. The project is called Ha’otef Be’milim (The [Gaza] Perimeter in Words). One of the main goals was for someone to tell their story to someone else, to encapsulate it, and for the survivor to hear their story from beginning to end, from their own mouth.”
Fermentto-Tzaisler feels she and her fellow professionals have an important role to play in that regard. “That is something we writers can give them – this is something that is so crucial for healing.”
She says she got a lot out of the storytelling encounters herself. “These are experiences I will remember until the day I die. You sit down with a stranger who tells you about probably the most challenging moment of their life, when he escaped death.
“All the stories are only about that day, with a lead-in about the previous evening.”
That sounds palpably crystallized and patently moving.
“It was a therapeutic experience for me, too,” she notes. No doubt, the members of the audience at Mishkenot Sha’ananim on May 30 will take some of that curative benefit away with them, too.
ELSEWHERE OVER the four days, Harry Potter fans may be drawn to the Great Harry Potter Trivial Ball, on May 29, dedicated to 13-year-old Noya Dan, a passionate fan of the J.K. Rowling series, who was murdered on Oct. 7 at Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with her 80-year-old grandmother, Carmela.
That will be followed by some light relief in the form of a Harry Potter stand-up comedy program. Noya’s mother, Carmela’s daughter, will deliver the opening remarks. Rowling mourned Noya’s death on Twitter.
This year’s Jerusalem Writers Festival will surely be a special and, no doubt, lasting experience for all concerned.■
For more information:
https://fest.mishkenot.org.il/en/home/a/main
