Independence Park: The Lives of Gay Men in Israel (Contraversions)

Rating:
Summary: revealing, entertaining, and thought provoking!
Review: I have read the draft of this book, and it is undoubtedly one of the most revealing, enlightening and entertaining writings on modern gay life in Israel. A must not only for readers interested in gay culture, but for anyone who wants to know more about young people - gay or straight - in modern Israel. The book comprises of a tapestry of interviews, whose translation artfully captures all layers of spoken Hebrew. These are complemented by the authors comments and shrewd observations, making it an accurate and up-to-date survey of modern Israel. Enthusiastically recommended!

Rating:
Summary: The Life of Gay Men in Israel Sucks
Review: This book presents a series of interviews conducted in the early 1990's with twelve self-identified gay Israeli men. These men are from a variety of backgrounds, social classes, and ethnicities. They are purported by Fink and Press to represent a broad selection of gay men in Israel. In fact, the majority of them are in their early to mid-twenties, Ashkenazi, single and non-religious. Two are immigrants. Two are married to women. One is a Christian Arab. Most of them are closeted.

The book has twelve chapters; each based upon an interview with an individual man. Chapters begin with a brief vignette about how the authors encountered the subjects. These introductions provide an almost poetic description of the settings in which the interviews occurred. For example, one especially closeted man selected to meet at "Mt. Herzl, the official Israeli military cemetery and the serene, wooded burial site of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement"(p.50). One interview of a Jewish-Russian immigrant took place in his mother's apartment. She greeted the interviewers with refreshments, making them uneasy because she and her mother remained within earshot throughout. This particular interviewee was not out to his mother and grandmother. He promptly soothed the authors' anxiety, though, with the reassuring information that his family did not understand enough Hebrew to comprehend the nature of the discussion. While generally less ironic, there is always a sensitive description of the ambience and elaborate explanations of the events leading up to each interview. Other, more banal, meeting places included a kibbutz and some Tel Aviv apartments.

Chapters seem to follow a similar structure. They all begin with childhood experiences, move on to periods of military service, discuss relationship and family issues, and conclude with the interviewees making declarations about their position on Zionism and contemporary politics. The final version presented in the book reads as a series of free-flowing monologues. Fink and Press note "we were continually amazed at the willingness of these men to share their secrets with us" (p. XVII). Indeed, these confessions derive much of their gripping charm from the genuine earnestness in which these men bare their souls. The only exception, "Dan," who immigrated to Israel from the United States as a teenager, "has reviewed the text of his interview with a censor's pen. `I expect that my kids will read this,' he explains" (p. 165). As a result, his sanitized account lacks the characteristically Israeli raw sincerity seen in the other accounts.

The interviews were recorded in Hebrew and translated into English. "We have done our best to keep the vibrant spoken Hebrew of these men from becoming homogenized into a stagnant literary English" (p. XVIII). They succeed in communicating complete and differentiated personalities. These translations are a literary feat in their own right.

A provocative introduction prefaces the entire book. It starts with a news item from an Israeli daily titled "Four Soldiers in Basic Training Had Oral Sex Party" (p. 1), which describes the Israeli army's mind-boggling tolerance and sensitivity in handling gay issues in the military. The authors conclude this amazing item with the comment, "The lives of gay men in Israel are not what you would think" (p. 4). They proceed to describe dramatic positive developments in Israeli politics regarding gay issues, manifesting in a "mad rash" (p. 9) of bills passed by the Knesset and court rulings granting various forms of equal rights to gays. They also describe a very positive public attitude to these developments. These glowing appraisals of the political scene in Israel regarding gay issues created an expectation that the lives of the men described in the text would be equally positive. Specifically, one expected that they would have succeeded in integrating their sexual identities with the rest of their personalities in some kind of holistic manner.

Sadly, this expectation remained unmet. Reading this book, I felt that the upbeat promise of the introduction contrasted sharply with the picture of gay life in Israel described in the body of the work. The young authors, who state that they were in love with each other at the time, seem oblivious to the fact that these men were recounting dismal existences. Practically all of the men described continuing struggles with coming-out issues. Seven of them refused to give their real names for the book and, instead, chose to use aliases. They all articulated a longing to reach out to a gay community that seemed hardly present. All of them expressed a sense of marginalization in Israeli society and a fear, be it real or imagined, of rejection by loved ones. It seems that these men manage to cope by mobilizing significant denial and various forms of compartmentalization of their lives. Only one, Rafi Niv, provides a lucid assessment of the closeted nature of gay life in Israel. He is presented as an extremist by the authors. Yet his disillusioned views seem echoed in all of the other chapters. This gloomy vision I interpret from the text may simply result from the relative youth of the respondents, and possibly as well as that of the authors. Confusion about sexual identity, fear of the consequences of separation from family, and anxiety about the possibility of significant romantic relationships are all stage-appropriate concerns for young adults. The authors' uncritical acceptance of this pessimism startles. Either they do not recognize the problem, or it is one that is so pervasive in Israeli culture that they see no alternative. The older and more experienced interviewees seem to support the later view. They, like the younger men, do not envision the expectation of leading an integrated life in an accepting and respecting milieu with a committed, long-term partner.

The authors allude to the political subtext of gay existence in a Zionist state. Linking the struggle for gay sexual identity with the struggle of the Jewish people to create Israel, they read the nascent gay movement as a similar kind of liberation. Independence Park in Tel Aviv is the best-known meeting place for gay men in Israel. Its name celebrates Jewish national independence. However, Fink and Press fail to perceive how individual struggles clash with the collective one in these histories. The authors define Zionism as "a form of Jewish politics developed in nineteenth-century Europe which argues that the Jewish people properly constitutes a nation and that its condition of geographic dispersal is an anomaly in need of correction in the form of political autonomy in the ancient Jewish homeland" (p. 6). A consequence of this is that Israeli society is based on the premise of similarity and conformity, rather than diversity. There is a constant tension that is felt in these accounts between living as a sexual minority in a society defined by its desire to emancipate itself from its minority status. The title of the book is very apt in a way unintended by the authors. Independence Park, rather than being a place associated with anything to do with independence, is infamous in Israel for furtive anonymous sex and bias attacks. It is a symbol of shame rather than of hope.

Rating:
Summary: The Life of Gay Men in Israel Sucks
Review: This book presents a series of interviews conducted in the early 1990's with twelve self-identified gay Israeli men. These men are from a variety of backgrounds, social classes, and ethnicities. They are purported by Fink and Press to represent a broad selection of gay men in Israel. In fact, the majority of them are in their early to mid-twenties, Ashkenazi, single and non-religious. Two are immigrants. Two are married to women. One is a Christian Arab. Most of them are closeted.

The book has twelve chapters; each based upon an interview with an individual man. Chapters begin with a brief vignette about how the authors encountered the subjects. These introductions provide an almost poetic description of the settings in which the interviews occurred. For example, one especially closeted man selected to meet at "Mt. Herzl, the official Israeli military cemetery and the serene, wooded burial site of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement"(p.50). One interview of a Jewish-Russian immigrant took place in his mother's apartment. She greeted the interviewers with refreshments, making them uneasy because she and her mother remained within earshot throughout. This particular interviewee was not out to his mother and grandmother. He promptly soothed the authors' anxiety, though, with the reassuring information that his family did not understand enough Hebrew to comprehend the nature of the discussion. While generally less ironic, there is always a sensitive description of the ambience and elaborate explanations of the events leading up to each interview. Other, more banal, meeting places included a kibbutz and some Tel Aviv apartments.

Chapters seem to follow a similar structure. They all begin with childhood experiences, move on to periods of military service, discuss relationship and family issues, and conclude with the interviewees making declarations about their position on Zionism and contemporary politics. The final version presented in the book reads as a series of free-flowing monologues. Fink and Press note "we were continually amazed at the willingness of these men to share their secrets with us" (p. XVII). Indeed, these confessions derive much of their gripping charm from the genuine earnestness in which these men bare their souls. The only exception, "Dan," who immigrated to Israel from the United States as a teenager, "has reviewed the text of his interview with a censor's pen. 'I expect that my kids will read this,' he explains" (p. 165). As a result, his sanitized account lacks the characteristically Israeli raw sincerity seen in the other accounts.

The interviews were recorded in Hebrew and translated into English. "We have done our best to keep the vibrant spoken Hebrew of these men from becoming homogenized into a stagnant literary English" (p. XVIII). They succeed in communicating complete and differentiated personalities. These translations are a literary feat in their own right.

A provocative introduction prefaces the entire book. It starts with a news item from an Israeli daily titled "Four Soldiers in Basic Training Had Oral Sex Party" (p. 1), which describes the Israeli army's mind-boggling tolerance and sensitivity in handling gay issues in the military. The authors conclude this amazing item with the comment, "The lives of gay men in Israel are not what you would think" (p. 4). They proceed to describe dramatic positive developments in Israeli politics regarding gay issues, manifesting in a "mad rash" (p. 9) of bills passed by the Knesset and court rulings granting various forms of equal rights to gays. They also describe a very positive public attitude to these developments. These glowing appraisals of the political scene in Israel regarding gay issues created an expectation that the lives of the men described in the text would be equally positive. Specifically, one expected that they would have succeeded in integrating their sexual identities with the rest of their personalities in some kind of holistic manner.

Sadly, this expectation remained unmet. Reading this book, I felt that the upbeat promise of the introduction contrasted sharply with the picture of gay life in Israel described in the body of the work. The young authors, who state that they were in love with each other at the time, seem oblivious to the fact that these men were recounting dismal existences. Practically all of the men described continuing struggles with coming-out issues. Seven of them refused to give their real names for the book and, instead, chose to use aliases. They all articulated a longing to reach out to a gay community that seemed hardly present. All of them expressed a sense of marginalization in Israeli society and a fear, be it real or imagined, of rejection by loved ones. It seems that these men manage to cope by mobilizing significant denial and various forms of compartmentalization of their lives. Only one, Rafi Niv, provides a lucid assessment of the closeted nature of gay life in Israel. He is presented as an extremist by the authors. Yet his disillusioned views seem echoed in all of the other chapters. This gloomy vision I interpret from the text may simply result from the relative youth of the respondents, and possibly as well as that of the authors. Confusion about sexual identity, fear of the consequences of separation from family, and anxiety about the possibility of significant romantic relationships are all stage-appropriate concerns for young adults. The authors' uncritical acceptance of this pessimism startles. Either they do not recognize the problem, or it is one that is so pervasive in Israeli culture that they see no alternative. The older and more experienced interviewees seem to support the later view. They, like the younger men, do not envision the expectation of leading an integrated life in an accepting and respecting milieu with a committed, long-term partner.

The authors allude to the political subtext of gay existence in a Zionist state. Linking the struggle for gay sexual identity with the struggle of the Jewish people to create Israel, they read the nascent gay movement as a similar kind of liberation. Independence Park in Tel Aviv is the best-known meeting place for gay men in Israel. Its name celebrates Jewish national independence. However, Fink and Press fail to perceive how individual struggles clash with the collective one in these histories. The authors define Zionism as "a form of Jewish politics developed in nineteenth-century Europe which argues that the Jewish people properly constitutes a nation and that its condition of geographic dispersal is an anomaly in need of correction in the form of political autonomy in the ancient Jewish homeland" (p. 6). A consequence of this is that Israeli society is based on the premise of similarity and conformity, rather than diversity. There is a constant tension that is felt in these accounts between living as a sexual minority in a society defined by its desire to emancipate itself from its minority status. The title of the book is very apt in a way unintended by the authors. Independence Park, rather than being a place associated with anything to do with independence, is infamous in Israel for furtive anonymous sex and bias attacks. It is a symbol of shame rather than of hope.