MKs join grandchildren on camera
In special project by photographer Baruch Greenberg, Israel's Knesset members open up their private lives and show the world how they behave when their grandkids come to visit
VIDEO – We see them every day working tirelessly in the Israeli parliament, but for a special project by photographer Baruch Greenberg they decided to open up their private lives and show the world how they behave when their grandkids come to visit.
Uri Orbach, who is the first ever Israeli minister for senior citizens, has decided to create a very unique project to launch the public's awareness to his ministry.
Video courtesy of jn1.tv
"I have to change the consciousness in the Israeli society, and this event of the exhibition in the Knesset and that the MKs are a part of it is the whole thing, to introduce the elderly in a new light, in a different and brighter light," Orbach says.
"My mission is not here to publicize the Knesset, rather to be speaking out and amplifying the whole subject of the new grandparenting and to tell people, 'Look how wonderful, the family spirit and the elderly is not a crippled old Ashkenazi man who is speaking Yiddish and then dies. 'Instead, he lives with his grandkids, happy to see them.'
"It comes through clearly in all of those photos of the political leaders, who are usually very tough and strict and barely smile, and suddenly, when you take pictures of them with the grandchildren or few of them, with their own grandfather or grandmother suddenly they shine a different light of happiness."
Getting all those politicians, who are used to giving people orders, to listen to his instructions was quite a challenge for photographer Baruch Greenberg.
"With some of them it was very challenging," he says. "These are people who have very limited time, it was hard for them to find some time off. Some actually tried to teach me how to do my job. There are a few who came from the media and you can sense it in the photos, a sort of awareness. But most cooperated, eventually, after we clarified that this is not the press, this is something else that should be really fun, to show how they are around the family and having fun. At some point we even began to have a good time."
We wanted to find out from some of the participants in the project how they felt about the outcome.
"One of the emotions I feel most strongly about in my grandparenting experience is the generational exchange, how significant it is for us as the Jewish people," says Knesset Member Orit Strock (Habayit Hayehudi). "When I was a little girl I didn't have grandmothers, as also was the case with many of my friends, and for those who did have grandparents they were very different from what I am now, because our nation has been through terrible and horrible things.
"Two generations back we had the Holocaust, and the fact that today there is a whole generation of young grandmothers and it's a part of our evolvement as a nation, I feel I am a part of this new generation of grandmothers and I feel it's a great privilege for me."
According to MK Ilan Gilon (Meretz), "Famous poet Avraham Shlonsky said that if he had a grandchild, he would go with him all around Tel Aviv. So everyone said, 'So what? 'And he told them, 'Don't think of the matter lightly: Any cat can be a father, but only a human being can be a grandparent.'
"To be a grandfather is the bonus of being a parent. Some of us would have skipped being a parent and gone straight to grandparenting if it were possible, but it is not. But being a grandparent, as much as it sounds banal, brings out the best in a person."
"There is not even one day that I'm not seeing one of my grandchildren," says MK Reuven Rivlin (Likud). "With the grandchildren, it is a must, it is something that I cannot even bear to think that I can live one hour without them. I'm a much better grandfather than I was a father."
The Ministry for Senior Citizens hopes that the Grandpa Knesset project will bring greater awareness to the growing number of elderly people, which today stands at around 15% of the population of Israel.
