Four things I do as I try to understand the culture we live in:
1. I'm the outgoing chief editor of Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, Israel's leading publisher. I'm also the incoming editor in chief of Ha'aretz, Israel's leading quality newsdaily. It's fun to have two part-time jobs like these.
2. I'm the administrator of The Israel Project on Flickr.
3. I interview young artists of all kinds in my TV show, Nispah Tarbut.
4. Sometimes, I just gaze through the window.
Five key places in my distant history:
1. Livorno – a seashore town in Tuscany, Italy, Livorno was a leading center of Jewish study and mysticism, particularly under the influence of Rabbi Joseph ben Emanuel Ergas (1685-1732) and other proponents of the Kaballah. This is where my paternal roots are. Since my late grand parents flew Livorno before WW2, not a single generation of our family was born on the same continent.
2. Sousse – a port on the east coast of Tunisia, chosen by Montgomery as a landing point for the Allied forces before the El Alamein battle. I was born here in 1961. I was four months old when my parents left Tunisia for France, and I never went back.
3. Paris – the capital of France and the most beautiful city on Earth. I was brought up here and hated every moment of it. I've written a short memoir of this period that Yeshua Knaz was kind enough to include in his (otherwise excellent) anthology, "The Best Writing From 75 Years of Ha'aretz" (Schocken Press, 1996)
4. Ashdod - an Israeli port and the place chosen by the Jewish Agency for my parents when we made our Aliya, 1972. From the 63 children photographed then in my school yearbook, only 4 pupils finished high school seven years later, while 5 died before their majority. I've written a lot about this period, but never published it.
5. Glilot – the military base I served at in 1980-1982, leading to my discovery of information gathering and data communication. I wrote about its influence in this YNET article.
Four things I'm not sure I understand:
1. Authenticity
2. Beauty
3. French culture
4. Reality
Four things I believe I dig:
1. Magazines
2. Fictional heroes
3. Fashion
4. How to do interesting things with words
More about me:
Four quotations of Voltaire I use a lot:
1. If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new (Candide, 1759)
2. All styles are good except the boring kind (L’Enfant prodigue, 1736)
3. God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions (Letter to M. le Riche, 1770).
4. This is no time for making new enemies. (On being asked to renounce the Devil, on his deathbed).
Talkbacks: