Zionism’s Sacred Cows Satirized : Israeli Comedian Helps Nation Laugh at Itself

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was once asked to name the funniest thing that had happened to him in the previous year, and he replied without hesitation, “Tuvia Tsafir”--the comedian.

The late Aliza Begin said she wouldn’t miss a Tsafir show because she so enjoyed his impersonation of her husband, former Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Jerusalem Post columnist Mark Segal has observed that Tsafir can change personalities “like a chameleon changes color.” Popular satirist “Bet” Mikhail says Tsafir could impersonate a wall.

In a country that takes itself very seriously, Tuvia Tsafir has mimicked his way to stardom by making Israelis laugh at their leaders and at themselves.

His latest project is a satirical review, nearly three hours long, spoofing former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban’s “Heritage” television series. Tsafir’s version is called “History of the Jewish People: Additions and Corrections,” and for the last two months it has been playing to capacity crowds across the country.

The show, which Tsafir describes as the pinnacle of his work to date, ravages virtually every Zionist sacred cow imaginable, and in the process, it reveals much about what Israeli society sees when it looks in the mirror.

Its targets range from American Jews to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, from historical figures such as Zionist pioneers Theodore Herzl and David Ben-Gurion to contemporary Israeli politicians and Tel Aviv’s street people.

Herzl is shown conceiving the idea of a Jewish state while standing at a balcony in Basel, Switzerland--a scene burned into the brain of every Israeli schoolchild--but Tsafir has Herzl shrugging off the notion as preposterous.

Babylonian Skit

Tsafir’s Ben-Gurion intones, “We are gathered here. . . “ not at the somber moment of Israel’s historic declaration of independence but as he is about to be surprised by his wife while playing poker with his cronies.

The Jews in Tsafir’s vision of the Babylonian exile wear loud sport shirts and relax in lounge chairs against a Miami Beach backdrop. The skit’s hero has a hundred reasons why now is not the time to return to the Promised Land. And as threatened in the Bible--and to the delight of the audience--his arm goes limp and his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth as he frequently forgets the name of Jerusalem, the holy city for which he is supposed to yearn.

In this show, the Grand Spanish Inquisitor, Torquemada, is the spitting image of Avraham Shapira, an ultra-Orthodox member of the Israeli Parliament who advocates imposition of Jewish religious practice as the law of the land.

In a satire on religious rules that severely restrict medical transplants here, a black-garbed ultra-Orthodox Jew races on stage to stop God as He is about to fashion Eve from one of Adam’s ribs.

Apes Political Leaders

A rousing finale that has audiences clutching their sides in laughter depicts two palm-slapping, gold chain-wearing, jive-talking Tel Aviv street vendors who do a “My Fair Lady” in reverse, teaching a cultured Israeli woman how to speak in slang and spit sunflower seeds on the sidewalk.

But what Israelis seem to love most are Tsafir’s impersonations of political leaders--in this case as part of a skit where they respond to a heavenly chronicler who asks how they want to be recorded in the Book of History.

“Like this!” responds Tsafir’s David Levy, the carefully coiffed minister of housing, after prissily fixing his bouffant hairdo.

Tsafir plays Israel’s diminutive Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on his knees and right-wing former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon as a wild-eyed expansionist who bounds onto the stage pledging, “If you don’t take me in history, you’ll get me in geography!”

Tsafir’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is a self-promoter who dictates a lengthy list of his accomplishments for inclusion in the book.

“They generally love it,” Tsafir said of the politicians who are the butt of his impersonations. In fact, according to columnist Segal, “being impersonated by Tuvia has become a politician’s status symbol.”

Begin Delighted

If Tsafir doesn’t have a politician in his repertoire, it probably means he’s not very important.

When then-Prime Minister Begin turned up in the audience one night, Tsafir asked discreetly whether Begin would be embarrassed to see himself impersonated. On the contrary, Begin replied, he would be offended if he were not.

Tsafir studies his characters, pinpointing what he calls the “gravity point” that is the key to their personalities. He sees Peres, for example, as being up-tight. “He doesn’t blink,” Tsafir said. “It’s inhuman!”

The people he enjoys impersonating the most, he said, are “the fat people, like ‘Arik’ ” Sharon.

The one group he finds difficult to impersonate, the comedian concedes, is women. “The only woman I ever did was (the late Prime Minister) Golda Meir, and she was the only man in the government,” he once told an Israeli interviewer.

“I’ve wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember,” Tsafir said the other day. “I used to go as a boy three or four times a day to a movie. Sometimes I’ve seen a single film eight times.”

TV Spot Launched Career

He said he got involved in drama in primary school, and in the service he was drafted into an army entertainment troop. After his discharge he became a professional actor.

The break that changed his life came in 1974, when he was asked to substitute for one of the regulars on a popular television satire. He impersonated Begin and was a smash hit, earning a regular spot on the show and launching his comic career.

Now 40, Tsafir still takes an occasional acting job. He just finished a television production in which he plays a murderer. But his real niche is among a small group of Israeli satirists, the best of whom are all involved in the new stage show, which Tsafir also financed.

Some Israelis balk at their irreverence. Efraim Sidon, one of the writers, for example, said his late father, who was a Zionist pioneer and friend of Ben-Gurion, could never get used to his satire. “For the older generation, it’s like mocking about Torah,” he said. “It’s like mocking a dream. . . . It’s like spitting on your mother.”

But Mordechai Kirschenbaum, the show’s director, said: “The whole idea is to say to people in a democratic society that there really aren’t sacred cows--not religious, not political, not social. . . . You can look at all things in a variety of ways--even at God in a religious country like Israel.”

‘Relief’ Through Satire

Kirschenbaum said that it may be because Israelis are so intense that satire is popular here. “Because we live in a society that goes to extremes in everything it does, satire is a relief,” he said.

It is sometimes criticized as being leftist, but “this group is very Zionist as I see it,” Tsafir said. “They love this country very much.”

The sharpest religious satire they perform is written by “Bet” Mikhail, an observant Jew, Tsafir said. Dubi Gal, another well-known performer who co-stars in the show, is a supporter of the rightist Likud Bloc.

And in an intensely politicized society, Tsafir and his colleagues somehow manage to remain popular across most of the ideological spectrum.

Tsafir said one reason is that he is very conscious of the fine line between impersonation and insult. Also, he once told an Israeli interviewer, “I have no malice in my character or in my repertoire. I think I’ve become kind of a one-man national consensus.”

But perhaps most important, the comic said, is that beneath their often prickly manner, his countrymen love to laugh.

“In order to survive all those pogroms they went through in all those ages, the Jews had to keep their humor and ability to laugh at themselves,” he said. “Maybe that’s the answer. I’m very proud to be part of it.”