BS: Obit: Ephraim Kishon (Jan 2005)

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Ephraim Kishon
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 11:31 AM

I used to read his column in the _Jerusalem Post Weekly_ back around 1960. I especially liked the one about the guy who has a little internal voice named Schlesinger who makes snide remarks every time he begins to get riled up & serious about something. Finally he up & asks Schlesinger "Who the hell are you? My conscience?" and Schlesinger replies, "I'm your sense of proportion". Another time, Kishon recounted answering the phone & being treated to a vituperative scolding by a stranger who did not stop to find out he had gotten a wrong number. After the stranger hung up with a bang, Kishon thought, That must have done him good, and didn't do me any harm, so he dialed a random number & did likewise. One may hope that no-one has broken the chain yet.

Rest in peace.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: The temptation in business, politics, and public health is :||

||: to judge everything by one number.                         :||

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Ephraim Kishon
From: Wolfgang
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 05:32 AM

Yes, he is/was extremely popular in Germany. He was a good observer with a brilliant wit, great for everyday humour. I did appreciate somewhat less his political humour/writings, his too rightwing (for my taste) leanings spoiled the fun a bit. But everything else I just love.

Wolfgang

Subject: BS: Obit: Ephraim Kishon
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 03:55 PM

Ephraim Kishon, Israeli author, playwright, satirist, at 80 reported this afternoon in the NY Times. I remember him from when I was a kid in the post Six Day War period. He wrote about complex problems with a complete lack of humbug, and with a few exceptions saved his sharpest barbs for his fellow Israelis. He was born in Hungary, survived Concentration Camps, and learned to write stylistically in Hebrew.

I don't think it's going too far to say that he was an Israeli version of Flann O'Brian. In fact I remember starting a conversation with a pretty girl on a bus going to Dublin because she was reading a book by Kishon (in English).

A few excerpts from the Times article:
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JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel on Sunday mourned the passing of its premier satirist, Ephraim Kishon, whose biting wit shaped the national agenda of the formative years of the Jewish state and kept people laughing at the same time.

Kishon, who apparently suffered a heart attack, died in the shower at his home in Switzerland, his son, Rafi, said. He was 80.

Kishon, who had mixed feelings toward Israel late in life, also gained widespread popularity in Europe, and he often felt better appreciated there than in his adopted home of Israel, target of his sharpest barbs.

He helped set the tone of national discourse by drawing attention to social problems facing the nation in a way people could relate to -- through laughter.

Paramount was his 1964 play ``Salah Shabati,'' later made into a movie, lampooning Israeli society for making life hard for successive waves of new immigrants. In one telling scene, immigrants emerge from the sea, literally as in a wave, to be vilified by ``veteran'' Israelis already on the shore.

In the next scene, the immigrants seen emerging from the sea are now on the shore, vilifying the next wave. The scene is repeated several times.


The same idea was reflected in last year's award-winning Israeli movie, ``Turn Left at the End of the World,'' about Jewish immigrants from India sent to a desert development town, where they are disparaged by Moroccan immigrants who arrived just 10 years earlier.

A friend for decades, actor Haim Topol -- who won international fame in the leading role of the 1971 movie ``Fiddler on the Roof'' -- said Kishon's satirical column in the Maariv daily newspaper reached the hearts and minds of ``simple readers and decision-makers.''

Born Ferenc Hoffmann in Budapest, Hungary, on Aug. 23, 1924, Kishon narrowly escaped death in the Holocaust.

In one Nazi camp, a German officer lined up Jewish inmates and shot dead one in every 10, passing him by. He later managed to escape en route to the Sobibor death camp, his son said.

Kishon later wrote of the experience: ``They made a mistake -- they left one satirist alive.''


He changed his name to a Hebrew form when he immigrated to Israel in 1949.


Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking at the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, spoke of Kishon's transformation from Holocaust refugee to cultural icon.

Kishon felt pleased with his success in Europe, particularly in Germany.


``He said, 'It's a great feeling that the children of my hangmen are my admirers,''' Rafi Kishon said.
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