The Oxford Union is probably the premier debating society in the world. It remains separate from Oxford University, to maintain its freedom to debate any subject, including the controversial ones, but to me it spoke of the best of Britain’s educational institutions. Entering the impressive Gothic-style building in which it is housed sent a shiver up my spine as I thought of all the illustrious people who had preceded me. Before the actual debate there is a dinner in the MacMillan Room that both teams attend. The dining hall is two stories high, with two tiers of windows and beamed ceilings. There was enough tableware in front of me to make me nervous that I’d pick up the wrong spoon or fork at some point during the meal. But also before me was the key to my ultimate victory, my wine glass.
As the dinner progressed, I made a point of proposing toast after toast. “To Oxford.” “To the Queen.” “To debating.” Each time I raised my glass, but not a drop of wine passed my lips. My opponent, on the other hand, had to ask to have her glass filled several times. By the end of that dinner, the outcome of the debate was sealed.
One highlight of the debate, at least as I saw it, came when one of the members of the other side, a young man, spoke. “As a medical student I know my anatomy, but I’m not in need of sex ed because I’m a virgin and intend to stay that way until I am married.” I suppose he thought I would attack or make fun of him for his status, as here again, those on the opposing side made the mistake of thinking of me as some sort of sexual deviant. “Young man,” I said, “you are to be commended for saving yourself until marriage. As an observant Jew, I see nothing wrong with being a virgin and waiting until you are married to have sex. But just as you wouldn’t want to take care of a patient without the proper training, I also believe that you shouldn’t go to bed for the first time with your wife without also knowing exactly what to do to give her the most pleasure.” Of course, the audience roared at that. One point for our side.
As for my main opponent, she was having trouble getting her thoughts straight. I’d seen videos of a few of her television appearances, and she had some very convincing arguments that she made eloquently. But I could tell the first time she opened her mouth that evening that the wine had had a considerable effect on her ability to think straight.
The audience decides which team has won, and the way they vote is similar to how they vote in the Houses of Parliament: they exit through either the “aye” or “nay” door. I watched carefully as the crowd left the room and the vast majority went through the door that favored my side of the debate. Another successful Westheimer maneuver!
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against alcohol. I recommend a glass of wine or two to loosen inhibitions before having sex. I even came out with my own line of low-alcohol wine, Vin d’Amour. But too much alcohol will only mean that those imbibing will fall asleep rather than have terrific sex, and possibly wake up much worse for wear.
Far too many people seem to require alcohol or drugs in order to have a good time. That, to me, is very sad. I’m not saying that these substances don’t offer any pleasurable aspects, but if they become requirements to feeling pleasure, then something is wrong.
I mentioned earlier that toddlers squealing with delight are the perfect example of joie de vivre. Well, toddlers aren’t using recreational drugs, legal or otherwise, except maybe for mother’s milk. At that age they can just let go of their feelings. If you need alcohol or drugs to let go or embrace your feelings of joy, then take that as a sign that something is wrong and see if you can’t get it fixed. It could be something wrong with you or your relationship or something else altogether. Alcohol and drugs should just add a little lubrication. If they’re being substituted as the entire experience of having fun, then that’s not joie de vivre; it’s fear of life.
Documentary Filmmaker
I didn’t set out to be a sex therapist, yet I ended up doing fairly well in that field. Making documentaries wasn’t something I ever had on my list of things to do either, but I’ve now done six, and though I don’t have any planned right this minute, that could change as quickly as it took to make the decision to make the first one.
What set me off on this new tack was the last major exodus of Ethiopian Jews who were flown to Israel in May of 1991. As someone with a master’s in sociology, I recognized that this was a singular moment in history taking place. These Ethiopians were going from a backward culture to becoming fully immersed in a very modern one. That would change them in a multitude of ways and over a very short period of time. This was an event that was unlikely ever to be repeated. The only reason that Israel accepted these immigrants was because they practiced a form of Judaism. No other large group of primitive people had such a bond with a modern counterpart, so this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study what would happen after they set foot in the twentieth century. And as soon as I realized that, I made up my mind to take on this challenge of documenting the absorption of the Ethiopian Jews into Israel.
Let me be very clear: I’m not a filmmaker. But if I set my mind to it, I can be a rainmaker. In other words, I have some talents in front of the camera, but zero behind one. My job as executive producer is to come up with the concept of the documentary, find someone who has the expertise to actually write a script and shoot the film, and then work some magic to come up with the money to complete the project. One reason that magic is required is that documentaries are not money-making propositions. They’re not even break-even propositions. And if they get on national television—as many of mine have done—then that will cost even more money. So why does anyone bankroll these sinkholes? Maybe it’s to see their names roll by quickly on the credits. I don’t actually know, because I would never put any of my money into someone else’s documentary. I’m not a rich person with money to burn, but I am someone who knows how to ask rich people to allow me to burn some of their money for one of my projects.
The documentary was titled Surviving Salvation, and for a filmmaker I linked up with Malcolm Clarke, who was an Oscar winner (and, by the way, won again in 2014). In addition to the documentary, which eventually aired on PBS, there was also an accompanying book that I coauthored with a professor from the Hebrew University, Steve Kaplan. And it’s the book’s cover that tells the story as well as anything.
On the cover there are two pictures of a family. In one, the elders are all in front, dressed in their traditional garb, with the young people in the back, as befits the society from which they came where elders are to be respected. (In fact, back home, the Beta Israel, as they were called, considered their first gray hairs as a source of pride, indicating that they were becoming of greater importance in their society.) Turn the book upside down and you see the second picture. In this one, taken only six months after the first, it’s the young people in front, wearing blue jeans and sneakers, while the elders are relegated to the back, illustrating the dramatic transformation that took place among these people. The elders weren’t able to fully adapt to their new surroundings, while the young people—though coming from the same backward villages—were much quicker to adjust, and so their societal norms were turned upside down. The elders, instead of retaining command, had to rely on the young to lead the way.
But the role reversals in the two societies go far deeper than just age. In Ethiopian society, men are “first” and given more respect. A woman is always to defer to a man. When these Ethiopian people came to Israel, they were suddenly confronted with social workers, almost all of whom were female. How to react? The social worker was in a position of authority, able to decide the man’s fate as far as where he and his family would live, and so on, yet his upbringing led him to believe that she should listen to him.
I ran into similar situations when doing the documentary. Here I was, a woman, asking questions (through an interpreter, of course) of these Beta Israel men. If I’d been a woman back in Ethiopia, they would have refused to listen to me; but in Israel, they weren’t quite sure how to react. And this was especially so because I was
invading their space, so to speak, by asking them personal questions. There was one gentleman, perhaps forty years old—thus making him an elder—dressed in his traditional garb, which included a flowing robe and a scarf wrapped around his head. And there I was, dressed in a skirt (as I knew the slacks I would normally have been wearing would not have been deemed appropriate) and a short-sleeve shirt, as the temperature was in the nineties.
“How are you adjusting to life in Israel?” I asked him. To me, as a sociologist, this was an innocent question. But in part because I was a woman, he was loath to offer any criticisms, as that would have been a sign of weakness when speaking to this woman, even further down the totem pole because of her size. He looked down at me for a moment, considered where this question was coming from, and said, “Thank you.” It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the question, but rather he didn’t really want to give an honest answer to someone like me, so he preferred to dodge it.
However, when I’d lived in Israel many years before, one of my jobs had been as a teacher of Yemenite children, another group of immigrants. Dealing with children is always easy, but I’d had to learn to deal with their parents—who, like this Ethiopian man, didn’t quite trust me. The key to getting your message across is patience. Now, I am an impatient person, so it took me quite some time to absorb that lesson. Once I did, though, I never lost the knack. So in this case, I answered him in kind. “Thank you,” I said, and then, very firmly, “How are you adjusting to life in your new land?”
He could sense that I wasn’t about to go away. Slowly he told me of some of the difficulties that he was having, such as living in a very small apartment several stories in the air, a condition that he, as a goat herder who was used to always being connected directly to the land, found disconcerting. Our discussion lasted quite some time. I teased more and more information from him as he began to consider me not as a female but as someone who possessed some authority and should be respected. In fact, that is how the Ethiopian men learned to treat all the women in authority that they met. They were able to “desexualize” them, creating a new category in their minds.
In addition to this documentary on the Beta Israel, I’ve also done one about the Druze in Israel, the Bedouins in Israel, and the Circassians in Israel. Notice a pattern? There are a couple of reasons for this choice of locale. You want good weather when you make a documentary on a shoestring and can’t afford rain dates, and during the summer months in Israel you’re as likely to have your shoot rained out as me to slam-dunk a basketball. You can also hire a crew for a much more reasonable price. But most of all, it means that your producer gets to spend several weeks in the land she loves, driven by some gentlemen who’ll do pretty much anything she asks.
But while Israel may be a prime shooting locale for practical reasons, the actual theme of my documentaries is always linked to the family. Since I lost mine, I very much appreciate the importance of family and so want to show the world via these films how different people manage their family lives. For The Olive and the Tree, a film about the Druze, the main question was how these people maintain their identity while living in a country where they are a teeny minority. For Shifting Sands, I wanted to show how Bedouin women are advancing and how that affects their society.
Traditionally, a Bedouin woman could never meet with a man by herself. She actually risked death in doing so. For me to speak with Bedouin men was problematic, though it was always in a group—even an “old” woman such as I couldn’t be left alone with a Bedouin man. The setting was also uncomfortable because the Bedouin are uncomfortable in the housing that is forced upon them by the State of Israel. The older generation looks back with yearning on their former nomadic life, and to be sitting in a house sharing a cup of coffee, rather than sitting on pillows outside a tent, is not what they want from life.
Hussein a-Rafayah wore the traditional headdress, and his skin was olive brown. He served me coffee, but not in the same way that he would serve a man. I would get one full cup and that’s that. As a woman, it’s all I was worthy of. A man would get a smaller first serving but then several more. Actually, as many as he wanted. Everything the Bedouins do follow the ancient traditions, at least for those of the older generations.
I asked Hussien if he isn’t better off now than before. He looked at me with sad eyes and before replying gave a heavy sigh, expressing to me before his words came out that I would never understand what it meant to be a Bedouin. “You look at this room and you say to yourself, ‘Here is a modern Bedouin, a happy Bedouin, content with modern life and its comforts.’ Wrong. I am not a happy Bedouin. I have not adjusted because I did not choose this life. I feel imprisoned in my own home. I still miss the nomadic life in the desert. I dream of the day I wake up in the land of my grandparents, without books and running water, without a brick shelter over my head—but as a free person.”
He was certainly right about one thing: I never want to live in a tent in the middle of the desert. And I say that not as conjecture but from experience, because actually, I did live in a tent for a time when I first arrived in Israel, which back then was more desert than anything else, and lived on a kibbutz. I wasn’t even alone in that tent. I shared it with two men. Had I been a Bedouin, my family would have pinned a target on my back for such living arrangements. But I didn’t have a family to rely on for company, so sharing a tent with two men wasn’t such a terrible experiment. However, while I tolerated living in that tent, it’s not a habitat I want to make a return to anytime soon, though my escape route was actually not all that bad. You see, if you became paired with someone from the opposite sex (and no, it wasn’t one of my tent mates), the kibbutz moved you from a tent into an actual building with four walls and a roof. Israel needed babies, so any inducement to baby making—for example, some privacy—was yours for the asking. I’m not saying that I found a boyfriend on the kibbutz solely because that allowed me to give up tent living, but I also won’t tell you that before I met that guy the thought had never crossed my mind. What these stories illustrate is that when we look at the situation in the Middle East today, without understanding that someone might prefer a tent, we can’t possibly understand the dynamics of the area. And while book learning is wonderful, it doesn’t compare to going out into the real world and examining life on the ground as it is taking place.
Another group of Muslims living in Israel that attracted my attention were the Circassians. Their land is part of Russia now, as the entire native population was forcibly evicted by the czar in 1864. While most Circassians live in Turkey, there are small pockets of them here and there—including, of all places, Wayne, New Jersey. But it was the village of Kfar Kama in Israel that I visited with my film crew.
One aspect of Circassian culture that made me want to learn more about them is their marriage customs. In truth, today only some ritual enactments of the old ways remain. But the way a Circassian male would finalize the choice of his bride was to ride up to where she lived on horseback, grab her, and carry her away to his clan. This kidnapping was usually not unexpected, as a relationship would have been brewing and the young woman in question was perfectly safe. The women of the family of the man who’d abducted her would make sure that once he deposited her in their midst, that he would have no further contact with her. Circassians are Muslims and obey the rules of that religion. The abduction was just the opening salvo in negotiations between the family of the abductor and that of the young woman. But Circassian traditions say that while the parents may object, they can’t stop a couple from marrying, so sometimes these abductions were a bit more than ceremonial—though once they occurred, the two families would settle matters peaceably and the arrangements for the marriage would be made.
Like the Bedouins, the Circassians would prefer nothing more than to return to their homeland but for the time being that’s not possible and may never be. However unlike the Bedouins, the Circassians have adapted themselves to their new homelands, and in Israel they speak Hebrew as well as
the Israelis, and the men serve in the armed forces. But this yearning for “home” never leaves them. I interviewed Adnan Gerkhad, a seventy-year-old retired school principal. To look at him, you would see nothing much different than any other Israeli. If his skin seems a little dark, that comes not from his background, as Circassians can be fair, but his hourlong daily morning hike in the sun to stay in shape. He wears a green shirt, khaki slacks, and sandals—again, nothing at all unusual for an Israeli man. We are at a café in the Circassian village of Kfar Kama, but this café could be in any Israeli town; there is nothing to distinguish Kfar Kama to make it appear particularly Circassian. In part that’s because while almost every Circassian can speak their native tongue, Adyghe, few can write it. And so the menus are written in Hebrew as are the signs on the wall advertising Coca-Cola and Fanta. Circassian children are taught to speak in Adyghe, but once they enter the school system, they are taught to speak, read, and write in Hebrew so that those Circassians who have grown up in Israel speak it perfectly, and that’s the language Adnam and I used to converse.
“What are the difficulties of maintaining your culture?” I asked him.
“We face many difficulties in keeping our culture alive. Obviously there is the Israeli culture that surrounds us everywhere. We are like a small boat sailing in the great ocean of Israel. But while there is a strong Arab culture here, it is not our culture. Yes, we are Muslims, but we are not Arabs. Our children learn Arabic in order to study the Koran, but Circassian society has a much different culture than that of the Arabs.”
“Before I came here to film this documentary, I met with some Circassians in the New York area,” I told him. It was part of my preliminary research. “Certainly it is no easier for them than had they lived here.”
“In Turkey there are many Circassians. It is easier to maintain our traditions when you have a larger population. I’m sure the Circassians in America have similar problems to those of us here in Israel. On the one hand, American culture is so overwhelming—just look around you and you’ll see so many signs of American influence. That must be hard to combat, I’m sure. But in America, it is a melting pot, and nobody really cares what you are. And yes, gradually you become assimilated, but you can also hold on to your values. Israel is Jewish and we are Muslim. Assimilation is not really possible, and that means there is a jagged edge between our two cultures. We are accepted and yet we are not.”
The Doctor Is In Page 13