Catch The Jew! Read online

  Copyright © Tuvia Tenenbom

  Jerusalem 2015/5775

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express written permission from the publishers.

  Cover drawing: Shay Charka

  Typesetting: Raphaël Freeman, Renana Typesetting

  Photographs in book taken by: Florian Krauss, Jan Sulzer, and Isi Tenenbom

  ISBN: 978-965-229-798-3

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Gefen Publishing House Ltd.

  6 Hatzvi Street

  Jerusalem 94386, Israel

  972-2-538-0247

  [email protected]

  Gefen Books

  11 Edison Place

  Springfield, NJ 07081

  516-593-1234

  [email protected]

  www.gefenpublishing.com

  Printed in Israel Send for our free catalog

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954970

  This book is dedicated to my wife and partner, Isi Tenenbom, who never feared joining me wherever the wind blew, safe or not, ever sharing with me the brightest of ideas and offering me the loveliest of smiles.

  Praise for Catch the Jew!

  REVIEWS OF THE HEBREW EDITION OF CATCH THE JEW!

  “A literary sensation.”

  Haaretz

  “A brilliant book.”

  Maariv

  “The most important book I have read in the last five years.”

  Channel 2

  “The best book in the bookstore!”

  Galei Zahal

  “The humor in Catch the Jew! is razor sharp, it is highly intellectual and it’s so funny that it will bring tears to your eyes.… Tuvia is curious as a cat, sly as a fox, friendly as a Labrador, and is also a man with seismographic sensitivities.”

  Mida

  “One of the funniest books I’ve read in years – and one of the most heartbreaking. Here is the Middle East conflict as you have never experienced it before. Tuvia Tenenbom is a brilliant satirist and an extraordinary reporter. Beware: This book is like a pungent French cheese – for connoisseurs of truth only.”

  Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute

  “A fascinating, picturesque book by a picturesque author.”

  Yedioth Ahronoth

  “Funny, shocking, depressing documentation of anti-Semitism and self-hatred.”

  Makor Rishon

  “Run to your nearest bookstore and pick up a copy. . . . I haven’t laughed this hard out loud in a long time. . . . This book is a must for anyone who wants to formulate an independent opinion on the reality in this region.”

  Israel Hayom

  “It’s been a long time since a book affected me so deeply.”

  Walla

  Praise for Tuvia Tenenbom’s previous work

  “Bluntly satirical.” “Emotionally explosive . . . irresistibly fascinating . . . seductive . . . engaging.”

  New York Times

  “Hugely entertaining, terribly funny, sarcastic, engaging, powerful, accusatory, judgmental, good!”

  National Review

  “Every word that comes out of Tenenbom’s pen can set the world on fire.”

  Forward

  “Tuvia Tenenbom is Michael Moore and Borat in one.”

  Die Welt (Germany)

  “Tenenbom rides the razor’s edge . . . and goes all the way off.”

  Amsterdam News

  “Tenenbom’s laughter touches our soul in places where mere intellect could never reach.”

  Die Zeit (Germany)

  “A force of nature . . . provocative, satirical, intellectual.”

  La Repubblica (Italy)

  “He sees and he hears. Exactly as it is.”

  Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany)

  “Courageous . . . without shame.”

  News1 (Israel)

  “An anarchist.”

  Stern (Germany)

  “Tenenbom dares.”

  La Razon (Spain)

  “Brilliant.”

  Deutschlandradio (Germany)

  “Tenenbom’s hodgepodge of politics, zealotry and literary genres is fresh and audacious.”

  The Village Voice

  “A mystical provocateur.”

  Le Monde (France)

  Tuvia Tenenbom is a political dramatist and journalist. His articles and essays have been published in newspapers including Die Zeit of Germany, Corriere della Sera of Italy, and Yedioth Ahronoth of Israel as well as on various internet sites. In addition, Tuvia is a columnist for Zeit Online and Forward. Tuvia, who holds advanced degrees in both fine arts and science, is also the founder and artistic director of The Jewish Theater of New York.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments and Thanks

  Introduction

  Farewell and Welcome Armed with a wink and a smile from a beautiful Turkish lady, I start my journey to the Holy Land.

  Gate One What happens when the feminine side of God, the son of God, and the messenger of God meet a sexy German girl who helps the Arabs because she loves the Jews?

  Gate Two Did you ever try Islamic beer? Would you like to be blessed by the rabbi of Auschwitz? Would you like to date a Jewish Taliban lady? How would a rabbi know that his wife is menstruating?

  Gate Three Would you like to join thousands of dead Jews guarded by a German convert?

  Gate Four Facts: No Jewish state ever existed here. Jews must pay Arabs for five years of music training. Palestine was founded fourteen thousand years ago.

  Gate Five An American Jew loves his old mama so much that he wants to see her homeless.

  Gate Six An Israeli soldier detains President Barack Obama.

  Gate Seven Little white Jew doesn’t want to marry little black Jew. German teenagers wouldn’t mind watching Jews being stoned. A soldier drives nine hours to meet his dead comrade.

  Gate Eight An American Jewish lady finds the Jewish libido and an Israeli biblical expert can’t recall the Book of Isaiah.

  Gate Nine A man who invented three words, Na Nakh Nakhman, changes a country.

  Gate Ten God is naked and gay.

  Gate Eleven What’s a German minister doing among stray dogs? Why are Israeli soldiers scared when Arab kids throw stones at young Jewish ladies? Why is Catalonia spending millions on an old lady?

  Gate Twelve A Jew finds the “Jewish racist DNA.”

  Gate Thirteen Palestinians discover “Our Lady of Palestine” plus 368,000 Zionist colonialists.

  Gate Fourteen Germans in the Holy Land: dead and alive.

  Gate Fifteen You are heartily invited to attend three days of romantic German-inspired dances in Jordan performed by Germans who are in love with peace and Arabs.

  Gate Sixteen Cats, the UN and the Chosen Golden.

  Gate Seventeen Sponsored by the European Commission, Italian teenagers come to the Holy Land to take pictures of homeless Palestinians.

  Gate Eighteen Ordained by God and the angels, a rabbi will save you from turning into a she-ass.

  Gate Nineteen The European Commission heartily invites you to a fact-finding mission led by an ex-Jew who will take you to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and unveil the true face of lying, brutal, murderous, syphilis-ridden Jews, dead and alive.

  Gate Twenty Meet the most charismatic man in Palestine, a genius spymaster, a raging, kind, serious, funny, ruthless leader, and find out how a Jew, Tobi the German, became a Saudi prince.

  Gate Twenty-One Homeless Palestinians park their Range Rovers in front of their gated villas.

  Gate Twenty
-Two A Jewish pilot with a mission: Catch the Jews!

  Gate Twenty-Three Gun-toting men in search of sweets and Germans.

  Gate Twenty-Four The Bus Stop University is alive and well in the land of Israel.

  Gate Twenty-Five Walking with the lions of Palestine and licking ice cream in solidarity with Adolf Hitler of blessed memory.

  Gate Twenty-Six Lawmakers: from the granddaughter of a Zionist leader accused of collaborating with the Nazis to the granddaughter of a persecuted model who survived the Nazis.

  Gate Twenty-Seven What do humanist foreign journalists do when a half-dead Syrian civilian is lying next to them?

  Gate Twenty-Eight How do you become an international human rights rabbi? What does a Christian Zionist girl love more, man or grapes?

  Gate Twenty-Nine Will an educated, beautiful Arab lady fall in love with a Jew?

  Gate Thirty Heeding the advice of my stray cats, I go on a ride north to see how people prepare to greet the newest made-in-the-USA super-killer missiles.

  Gate Thirty-One Roadmap to peace: paint a swastika and win an international human rights competition.

  Gate Thirty-Two Roadmap to peace 2: become a European diplomat and beat up Israeli soldiers.

  Gate Thirty-Three Time to relax: pamper yourself with the ladies of the night or watch faithful housewives in the zoo.

  Gate Thirty-Four Please help: European diplomats rush to help Bedouins who would like to have naked German women running between their goats.

  Gate Thirty-Five Peace and rape.

  Gate Thirty-Six “We are very lucky that Hitler did not recruit German Jews to the SS.” – Yehudah, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz

  Gate Thirty-Seven Alone among Bedouins: What will happen to you if you walk into a Bedouin home and fondle the most attractive hijab-covered lady you see?

  Gate Thirty-Eight Doctors without Borders and a dead rabbi with no trains.

  Gate Thirty-Nine Why do Europeans spend lavish sums of money to watch a Jewish soldier pee?

  Gate Forty The EU ambassador would like to explain everything to you.

  Gate Forty-One If you see your neighbor’s olive fields, do you leave them alone or do you set them on fire?

  Gate Forty-Two An inaugural session of the Knesset.

  Gate Forty-Three Experiencing war: inside an Israeli navy battleship in mid-sea.

  Gate Forty-Four Jews are barbarians.

  Gate Forty-Five A professor finds the real Jews: the Arabs.

  Gate Forty-Six Take a guess: Which country invests the most funds on anti-Israel campaigns?

  Gate Forty-Seven Where Jesus Christ has fed the poor, a German monk is feeding visitors his deepest thoughts about the Jews.

  Gate Forty-Eight Here Jesus the Nazarene lived, but no other Jew is allowed to live here.

  Gate Forty-Nine Who am I? Am I an offensive right-winger or a leftist troublemaker?

  Gate Fifty A date with history: kings, professors, and a toilet.

  Gate Fifty-One A date with the Good Europeans: How good are they?

  Gate Fifty-Two The legal system: Israeli parliament at work – the loudest mouths win.

  Gate Fifty-Three The legal system 2: Is an MK allowed to respond to your question by breaking your iPhone?

  Gate Fifty-Four Show time: journalists join human rights activists in a staged demonstration involving firebombs and repeated calls to kill the Jews.

  Gate Fifty-Five The end: the Red Cross vs. the Jewish state. How white vans with little red crosses roam this land on a crusade to get all its Jews out.

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments and Thanks

  MY THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO OPENED FOR ME THE DOORS TO THE HIDDEN rooms of their hearts and minds, helping me navigate the Holy Land’s maze of never-ending paths and roads: spiritual leaders and prostitutes, professors and miracle makers, warriors and storytellers, talkers and doers, racists and lovers, peace activists of every kind and politicians of every sort, people of faith and people of doubt, seekers of truth and merchants of lies, women of many minds and men of many colors, young and old, rich and poor.

  They include the stray cats in my garden, Jibril Rajoub and Moshe Feiglin, David Batsri and Lars Faaborg-Andersen, Brother Josef and Amos Oz, Ahmad Tibi and Ayelet Shaked, Zeev Elkin and Gideon Levy, Hanan Ashrawi and Nir Barkat, Michael Ben Ari and Aluf Benn, Shlomo Sand and Meir Porush.

  I also thank my dedicated video crew – Debbie Meininger, Jan Sulzer, and Florian Krauss – who followed me with their lenses any hour day or night; and Dr. Illa Sanger, who spent many days going over the text and graciously offered her comments as well as to David Mills for his enlightening comments. Special thanks to the best mother-in-law one can dream of, the amazing Isa Lowy, who is always here to help and lavishes kindness on all present.

  Introduction

  MY NAME IS TUVIA. I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN ISRAEL TO AN ULTRA-ORTHODOX, anti-Zionist family, and grew up in the most elitist neighborhood of ultra-Orthodoxy at the time. My father was a rabbi, as were many of our neighbors, and we were the ones who represented God to the rest of humanity. My grandfather refused to come to Israel because he did not want to live with Zionists, and the Nazis rewarded him and most of his family with on-the-spot burials. My other grandfather fled his homeland just before the Nazis arrived, but those who were left behind never showed up again.

  My mother was a Holocaust survivor, my father was a refugee, and if not for Adolf Hitler I wouldn’t exist. I come from a long line of European rabbis, and I was groomed to become a rabbi as well. This Master Plan worked for a few years, when I excelled in every act imaginable against non-believers, spending day and night studying God’s laws and jealously protecting Him from all His earthly enemies.

  But then, as my former co-believers assert, Satan got hold of me and I decided that God was strong enough to take care of Himself without my help. Thirty-three years ago I left Israel for the United States, hoping to dedicate my life to the pursuit of science and the arts, both of which had been totally forbidden to me in my former neighborhood. In the fifteen years that followed, I attended various universities and studied various disciplines, ranging from mathematics and computer science to theater and literature. Two decades ago I founded the Jewish Theater of New York, which I direct and manage with my wife, Isi.

  In addition to being a dramatist, I’m also a journalist and columnist for various media in the USA and in Germany.

  In 2012 Suhrkamp Verlag published my book Allein unter Deutschen, which went on to become a Spiegel bestseller for four months. Allein unter Deutschen is a six-month walking study of Germany today, its people and their most intimate thoughts. It was published in the United States as I Sleep in Hitler’s Room.

  My very dedicated editor at Suhrkamp, Winfried Hörning, asked me last year if I would like to do a similar study of Israel and its people. To spend six months in Israel, a country I left so many years ago and only sporadically have visited for extremely short durations, was both a frightening challenge and an exciting opportunity. I asked Winfried how much Suhrkamp would pay me to do this job and he gave a figure I didn’t like; then he gave me another figure that I did like.

  I am going to Israel.

  With the exception of finding a home that would serve as my base, I haven’t planned anything. Let the winds carry me to wherever they blow. I will do my best to let the facts and realities reveal themselves to me and to be objective about what I find. If I like what I see or not, I will report what I see, not what I like. But I will share with you, my reader, what I think and feel at various turns.

  My name, as I stated before, is Tuvia – but this is between you and me. Tuvia is a Hebrew name meaning “Goodness of God,” and is not always safe. To protect myself, I might at times give interviewees a different accent, let’s say, or a dialect version of my name, but they will always know that I’m an author and journalist and that what they say might
one day appear in space and freeze in time.

  Before going to Israel, a land internationally known as that of an occupying force, I decided to spend a few days in another occupied land, so that I’ll have an entity with which I can compare later on. I love mountains – their sheer size makes me be humble – and I go to South Tyrol, a parcel of land occupied by Italy in 1918 and never given back. Like the rest of Tyrol, it is one of the most gorgeous places on Earth, and its Italian occupation is letter-perfect: nobody knows it’s occupied. The Italians have signed treaties and agreements left and right and have cleared every legal issue there ever was. They even gave residents some extra rights so they shut up, and before long the German-speaking South Tyroleans started calling themselves Italian. Which is all nice, fine and dandy.