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El Al is pleased to announce a very special departure and arrival. Happy Rosh Hashanah.

ELL AL

Beautyworks

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356-6590

Cranbrook

REALTORS

Best wishes to all our customers
for a happy and healthy
New Year

134

Franklin
32440 Franklin Rd.
626-8700

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1989

West Bloomfield
5839 W. Maple
855-2200

Dahn Ben-Amotz's
Irreverent Farewell

LISA SAMIN

W

A Happy and Healthy
New Year
To Our Many Friends

Bloomfield Hills
950 N. Hunter
540-5500

A friend shares a joke with Dahn Ben-Amotz, right.

Special to The Jewish News

*

The Airline of Israel.

ASSOC inc.,

om,

Birmingham
1424 S. Woodward
645-2500

hat does a man who
has been a recog-
nized, notrious, ir-
reverant non-conformist most
of his life, do when confronted
by death? If that man is Dahn
Ben-Amotz, he invites 150 of
his closest friends, admirers
and critics and arranges a
funeral party for himself.
Dahn Ben-Amotz is a noted
Israeli writer, satirical colum-
nist and humorist, myth-
maker, taboo breaker and one
of the more colorful per-
sonalities in Israel's cultural
and artistic society. After
undergoing a coronary bypass
and discovering he has pan-
creatic cancer, doctors gave
him less than a year to live.
Ben-Amotz decided to
celebrate himself and his im-
minent death by throwing a
party.
He invited his closest
friends, many of Israel's bohe-
mian elite as well as those
who visited him during his
long hospital stay. The invita-
tion read "The dress rehear-
sal for the real event." Ben-
Amotz, an egoist to the end,
wanted to direct, produce and
act in the "dress rehearSal" as
he had done during his years
as manager of "Hamam," a
satirical theater.
Ben-Amotz, who had writ-
ten his own eulogy more than
ten years ago, read it public-
ly on many occasions. It was
recognized as a piece of
humrous writing, but now, it
was made up of his final
words about his life and
himself. The atmosphere was
unusual; a mixture of grief
and laughter, pain and joy.
Ben-Amotz's past was one of
paradoxes and extremes,
where confrontation with
near death was common.

Born in Poland in 1923, he
came to Palestine in 1938,
while his parents stayed
behind, eventually to perish
in the Holocaust. Ben-Amotz
was a member of the
Palmach, an elite troop of the
Haganah in Israel's War of In-
dependence. His escapades
were outrageous, his dreams
for the creation of the State of
Israel relentless.

A humorist, Ben-Amotz's
most recent work includes a
column in the newspaper
Hadashot, expressing highly
independent views and his
book, Bag of Lies, a collection
of stories about the Palmach,
written in 1956 with poet
Hayim Hefer. Ben-Amotz also
wrote a semi-autobiographi-
cal novel in 1968, To
Remember and to Forget. In it
he delves into his past and
the conflicts which arose out
of having left his parents
behind in Poland to perish at
the hands of the Germans. He
also addresses the issue of
guilt and morality of the Ger-
man peple.
Ben—Amotz was once the
heart of the Tel Aviv cafe.
society. At his favorite cafe,
Bonanza, he would often be
found verbally sparring with
his long-time feuding partner
Amos Kenan, another well-
known Israeli personality.
Jerusalem journalist Robert
Rosenberg, once wrote of Ben-
Amotz, "It is easy to regard
him as a personification of
Israeli attributes — rude, ar-
rogant, charming, inventive
— and peple with those at-
tributes . . . tend to make
enemies and lose friends."
But Ben-Amotz's par-
ty/funeral seemed to defy that
statement, as friends paid
their last tribute to a man
whom author Meir Shalev
described as "one of the most
influential." ❑