Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on December 13, 2014

Francophone Comic Brings Israeli Yucks Back to Homeland

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Published December 12, 2014.

(JTA) A decade ago, when Israels community of French-speakers was only beginning its huge growth, my mother dismissively remarked that the newcomers biggest contribution to this country will be all the lovely concerts.

A French speaker who grew up listening to chanson giants on Israeli radio, she was referring to how the accumulation of Francophone audiences in Israel meant more frequent performances by singers like Charles Aznavour, Enrico Macias, Jean-Jaques Goldman and Patrick Bruel.

But like many passionate Zionists, she judged French prospective olim to be too materialistic to ever amount to a flood. When it came to the French, she maintained, Israel could never realty compete with the conveniences of Frances welfare system.

My mother passed away several years ago but I still wanted to call her up last month from Paris, where I chanced upon a flyer that suggested to me that she had gotten it all wrong.

The flyer was for the Paris premiere of a one-woman show about aliyah by the French-born comedian Judith Mergui, who has made an international name for herself from Israel, where she moved seven years ago.

To me, it demonstrated the creeping shift in French Jewrys cultural center of gravity, from France to Israel. You see, maman, I wanted to tell her, now French-speaking Jews in Paris are flocking to see performances by French-speaking Jews from Israel.

Titled Inchalyah, the show is a comedy drawing on experiences from Merguis own immigration to Israel. The name is a mashup of the Arabic Inshallah, meaning God willing, and the Hebrew word for Jewish immigration to Israel, which literally means ascent.

Read the original here:

Judith Mergui Finds Funny Side of Sephardic French Exodus to Israel

Category: Sephardic
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