COMMENT STUART SCHOFFMAN " Special to The Jewish News erusalem — There's nothing like the holidays to make a man homesick for the Old Coun- try. The nostalgia had been mounting for some weeks, as Thanksgiving drew near I ap- proached the first anniver- sary of my emigration to Israel. During a radio inter- view on the army station Galei Tzahal, the question was recently put to me: What do you miss most about America? I was able to reply without hesitation: "Certain restaurants, a culture where they don't interrupt movies in the middle, and real Anglo- Saxons." A few words to clarify. In America I enjoyed four decades of anonymity. But here, as a Hollywood screen- writer who came on aliyah I am something of a rare giraffe — a curiosity, if not outright bizarre. Zionism is predicated on the idea of aliyah, yet Israelis often seem baffled that anyone would come here out of choice and not necessi ty. The fact that I am a Zionist, not a refugee, stuns and amuses my Israeli-born friends, most of whom are in the arts or media. Film peo- ple have fled Israel in droves, frustrated by the tiny market and tinier budgets, for the very land of plenty I left behind. Therefore I found myself invited to appear on P'gisha Yomit, a daily hour- long interview show, and ex- plain what on earth I am do- ing here. Sometimes, while poring glumly over a menu, I do wonder. With all my heart I miss Duke's and Canter's and the Siamese Princess in Los Angeles, the ziti with pesto at Caffe Sport in San Francisco, Manuel's fajitas and margaritas in Austin, Texas; and in New York, the Acropolis on Eighth Avenue, if it's still there, and that Korean place in the West 50's where I once got drunk on ginseng cocktails with my friend the mad Russian direc- tor. Emotionally, few things weigh heavier than food. Ethnic cuisine, Middle Eastern excepted, is a serious problem in Israel, since it's axiomatic that if Mexicans don't live in your country, there ought to be a law against what passes for an enchilada. In recent years Israel took in several hundred Vietnamese boat people, a - j 132 .... '` 71`. "f '- iwien ilt ---- - ' ■ _ — - - __ fidi Andrew San Diego / 417 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1989 4i77e9 C) What I Miss About America goodly number of whom have become purveyors of food which they call, perhaps figuring that few here can tell the difference, Chinese. The food is perfectly palatable, and it's delightful to converse in Hebrew with a native of Saigon, but first-rate Chinese cooking this is not. So antithetical are Zion and Diaspora that in this country you can't even get eggs, lox, and onions scrambled with a toasted bagel on the side (my staple at Canter's), except perhaps at a five-star hotel for about $28.50. And in Jerusalem, where kosher restaurants are the norm, the best Italian food is served up by olim from Livorno who used to be partners but now compete — one serving dairy, the other only meat. But I can live with it. Strictly kosher trattorias, like the sukkah at the Hilton hotel and the absence of trick- or-treating and Santa Claus, are to my thinking a healthy sign of Jewish sovereignty. Besides, I figure that after Israel makes peace with its neighbors the food situation will improve. Billions previously spent on defense will generate economic pro- sperity that will attract im- migrants from all over, in- Further Confessions of an American Screenwriter Living in Jerusalem cluding someone from Guadalajara who knows how to make perfect tamales. Even if he opens his restaurant in Ashkelon, I won't mind because the road by then will be wide and paved, and it will be like driv- ing from Hollywood to Malibu for dinner. We are in a period of nation-building, and certain things just take time. Interrupting movies in the middle, on the other hand, is a far more serious matter. When I first visited Israel in 1968, people used to roll bot- tles of grapefruit drink down the aisles for fun, so things have improved — but not much. One's fellow patrons talk loudly and often during the show, and since everyone else is reading the subtitles and doesn't need to hear the dialogue, one's complaints arouse little sympathy. The theatres begin the show with 15 minutes of commercials — not coming attractions but ads, none too artistic, for everything from mattresses to foot powder. They almost never bother to show the final credits, a grave insult to dozens of people who worked on the picture. But suddenly to shut off a film in the middle, at a spot chosen by all evidence at ran- dom, so the theatre owner can sell candy and sunflower seeds — this is nothing short of criminal. Unquestionably the nadir of my year in Israel was the night my wife and I went to see New York Stories at the Imperia Theatre on Shammai Street in Jeru- salem. As will be recalled, this is an anthology of three short films, by Martin Scorcese, Francis Coppola, and Woody Allen. I wondered idly beforehand where they would put the intermission. Even when they went from the first segment directly into the sec- ond, I continued to dismiss as unthinkable what did transpire ten minutes later: they stopped smack-dab in the middle of the Coppola. This shook to the marrow my faith in the idea of a Jewish state. If the goal of classical Zionism is to create a "normalized" Jewish socie- ty, a nation k'chol hagoyim, as the famous biblical expres- sion goes, like all nations, then here we have the reduc- tio ad absurdum of k'chol hagoyim: what my grand- mother of sainted memory used to call goyische kop. Only someone with the brain of a Cossack would cut open a movie in the middle. The home-video situation is no better; the video-rental outlet closest to my house seems to specialize in Turkish love stories, kung-fu epics, and made-for-TV movies you can see free in the States but wouldn't want to. What good films they do carry are sometimes hard to locate, as they are listed only by their Hebrew titles: Hahaverim shel Alex (Alex's friends) for The Big Chill and words to the effect of "International Intrigue" for North by North- west. Mercifully, "Casablan- ca" is still Casablanca, and in- deed was aired recently on television, a cause for great celebration. Most people in Jerusalem pick up only two TV stations, Israel and Jordan. Ours is marginally better than theirs, if only because Israel TV doesn't carry as many ceremonies in honor of King Hussein. Between them the two stations broadcast perhaps eight movies a week, which has been quite a shock to my system after "cable- surfing" with my remote con- trol through 50 or so channels in Los Angeles — but we do have more Sephardic-music festivals, bible quizzes, and French sitcoms with Arabic subtitles. A movie buff com- ing to Israel is like Bogie go- ing to Casablanca for the waters. So I read more, especially the Hebrew press. And before I moved I taped some favorite movies from those 50 cable channels, and people in the States send cassettes. And frankly, as much as I miss American TV, I'm troubled by the way it portrays Jews. A friend in California men- tioned in passing — all my conversations with the States are in passing, phone rates be- ing astronomical — a recent "trend piece" in the Los Angeles Times about how Jews are now "in" on network TV: the hero Michael on thir- tysomething and his cousin;