Rabbi Benji Levene, Associate Director of Gesher, presents a one-man show like none you have ever seen. Performing for over 25 years to groups of adults, teenagers, and soldiers, audiences sit in on a series of interviews with four (exaggerated) personalities found in Israeli society, all played masterfully by Benji:

   A black robed Meah Shearim rabbi
  An Israeli bus driver
     A cosmopolitan Jewish artist living in Safed with his wife Christine
   A wealthy American tourist who gives millions to Israel but prefers Jewish life in America.

Rabbi Benji, as he is affectionately called, gives a performance that is so real, the audiences seem to forget that it is an actor on stage. Benji’s hilarious responses to an interviewer have the audience laughing in the aisles.  Each character then engages audience members in lively discussion.

“In working with young people, I came to recognize the limitation of direct, frontal education, no matter how imaginative,” says Rabbi Levene.  “The mutual animosity between the religious and non-religious has grown so great that we were searching for a better way to ‘break the ice' ”.

Emotions run high in Israel. No secular kibbutz or school would ever invite a Meah Shearim rabbi to address their students.  No religious school or kibbutz would consider asking a secular ideologue to come and speak to them. The Four Faces of Israel bridges this divide.  Amidst all the laughter the audience is hardly aware that it is confronting issues of Jewish identity and unity. At the conclusion of each show, Benji discards his costumes, appears onstage as himself, and engages the audience members in an affecting and moving discussion.  

Feel free to contact me for any reason benji@gesher.co.il