Why are the secular silent?

Tony Kushner didn't see the documentary "Wrestling with Angels" screened this week at the Homo-Lesbian film festival at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Although Frieda Lee Mock's film tried to crack the complex and contradictory character of the American playwright, screenwriter and translator, Kushner finds it difficult to sit himself opposite the screen and watch his life.

"I planned to watch it, I know I should," he says as though he were discussing an everyday chore, and yes he is curious, particularly after the wave of reverberations that came in wake of the documentary's debut screening at the Sundance festival. Yet, nonetheless, he finds it difficult to watch. "I hate to see myself on screen, I hate the way my voice sounds, so I chicken out," he says.

But with a Pulitzer Prize, Tony awards and the Emmy awarded for "Angels in America," the breakthrough play written in the 1980s, and his Oscar nomination for writing the screenplay of Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" behind him, Kushner is not afraid of revealing his emotions and vulnerable points in person.

Perhaps it is his raw nerves and sensitivity to his surroundings that turn Kushner into one of the most celebrated and involved writers in the political and social reality prevalent in the US. "There are playwrights who want to change the world, others who want to revolutionize the world of theatre." Kushner is a rare species – a writer in whose writing lies the promise to do both things simultaneously, as a review published in the New York Times wrote.

Superlatives make Kushner cringe; he finds refuge in his topics of inspiration. "I am a great admirer of Bertolt Brecht and when I began writing I related to Brecht's belief that all art should aspire to improve the world, change it or try to make it a better place. If art doesn't strive for that, it's useless."

However life has taught him that artistic aspirations are more complex. Art has power, he says, but its power is relatively weak because it has an indirect impact. Art changes people's feelings and in rare cases opens their eyes, such as in the case of the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin," whose impact was immediate and perhaps greater than any other creative work he can think of.

Does this make it the best novel ever written? Kushner does not think so. Or, he says, take for example Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," who was an ardent anti-Semite and a reactionary, yet despite this, his novel had the power to change the world for the better and to heal it. The power of art is a complex power, notes Kushner. It cannot be compared to a direct political act.

I suppose that artists in every country with complex political conditions and which face immediate danger such as Israel have to deal with these dilemmas. I see this in the US in recent years as well. People are so terrorized about what’s happening here under the Bush administration that artists are impulsively looking to respond to the situation in every possible way.

They generally don't do such a good job although there are exceptions. It’s like a magnetic field that engulfs everything, that stimulates it and energizes the artistic work. However, when looking at the artwork itself, when the magnetic field is neutralized, an impoverished piece of work generally emerges. Virginia Woolf said that Jane Austen's writing is so wonderful because she writes with no anger. This is a difficult question, however, I think that if you are an Israeli or Palestinian artist, you must ask yourself how your work of art can contribute to the situation and understand that the choice to indulge in art that responds to reality comes with a price.

Doesn't keep the Sabbath, but has a Seder

"Angels in America," the play written by Kushner in the 1980s, sent shockwaves throughout when he brought the topic of AIDS - which is close to his heart - to the public at large. Following the successful play, which was first performed in Israel in a disturbing production performed by the Cameri Theatre, came a successful and much talked-about TV series, almost two decades after it was written. Lee Mock's documentary film corresponds with Kushner's flagship production and touches among other things on homosexuality.

Kushner, who for the past three years has been married to Mark Harris, editor of the Entertainment Weekly magazine, is following Israel's attitude towards the gay community with great concern. There are quite a few members in the gay-lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender communities in the US who point at Israel as an enlightened democratic state with a fair judicial system and an electoral system that works.

"I think that the attempt to legislate a bill in the Knesset that would ban pride parades in Jerusalem and in other cities is a slap in the face for all those who view Israel as an example of pluralism and tolerance. This proposed bill, I have no doubt, was submitted by fundamentalists who are not much different to the ayatollah. I am convinced that progressive, secular Israelis are terrorized by this but the Left, which has suffered many upheavals in recent years, is not actively putting up any resistance," he says. 

In 2003 the book "Wrestling with Zion" was published, a collection of essays by progressive American Jews relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book, which was edited with Alisa Solomon and which surprisingly has not yet been translated into Hebrew, was written by leading Jewish American intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Arthur Miller.

The idea for the book came about when Kushner returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank at the beginning of 2000 where he was "amazed to discover how intelligent and advanced the talks on the conflict are compared to those prevalent in the US and among the Jewish community here. People considered progressive in the Jewish community in the US, will be perceived in Israel as radical right wing. My feeling is that the Jews of America have the luxury to live in a fantasy with regards to the conflict. It’s a privilege you don't have. It was important for me to show that American Jewry, which is presented as monolithic in its stance towards Israel, is in actual fact comprised of many different voices."

I hope the situation can be resolved. I hope very much that Israel will survive and I think that's possible. Opportunity after opportunity was missed and now the entire situation between Fatah and Hamas, seems to be getting out of control and that's terrible. People are talking about a two-state solution, at the moment it looks like three states – Israel, the West Bank and the Islamic state in Gaza. This is very frustrating because it could have been prevented. Things were managed badly, and I believe that the US is very much responsible for this situation, it breaks my heart.

In parallel, Bush has created a situation which is no less complex in Iraq. Something should be learned from this. I believe that if the sides sit down at the negotiating table and not get up, even when the masses outside hurl stones, shell and fire, a way out of this nightmare will ultimately be found. I think that diplomacy never gave it a real chance but I believe that there are two possibilities: Either another Holocaust, genocide, mass killing, mutual destruction and a nuclear war whose outcome will be disastrous, or dealing with the situation in a way that would lead to a solution.