The song ‘The White Beaches of Goa’ from the play ‘Sujud or the White Beaches of Goa’ released in 2000 in ‘Tsotva’, is one of the songs that symbolize the spirit of the time when the IDF was in the security strip in southern Lebanon.
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Sujod outpost in southern Lebanon
(Photo: Udi Shushan)
The song, written by the playwright Roy Rasheks of Kibbutz Sasa, corresponds with the feelings of the fighters who were there in the outposts, but unlike the song ‘Two Fingers from Sidon’ which was a great success, ‘The White Beaches of Goa’ did not gain the same popularity, did not break the boundaries of the Tel Aviv hall And actually forgotten – until recently.
“On the white beaches of Goa, that’s the only place I found calm, another six months and a day and I’ll go to Lebanon… on every tour, on every toss, taking a shingle of weed, on every friend who explodes, on Jennifer I jump… “, Rasheks wrote somewhere in 1995, which was a year with several difficult events for the IDF in the security zone. Recently, the song, which was composed together by the director Avi Malka and the actor Dror Levy, began to unfold among fighters who graduated from the security strip in southern Lebanon without knowing who wrote it, why it was written and who Jennifer is. 23 years after the actor Dror Levy, a graduate of Lebanon, sang it for the first time in the play, Rashaks reveals for the first time the story behind the song that opens a big and unclosed wound called – Lebanon.
Rasheks, a member of Kibbutz Sasa where he was born, is one of the most respected, interesting and genius playwrights in the theater world, with over 50 plays he wrote appearing on a professional stage. He is 60 years old, married, the father of three children and today he also works in the Kibbutz’s kiwi orchard.
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Roy Resheks. Wounds of Lebanon
(Photo: Avihu Shapira)
In 1980, Rasheks enlisted in the IDF as a military correspondent ‘in the Nahal camp’. The First Lebanon War, which began in June 1982, caught him mid-service. He was sent to Lebanon to cover the war and returned from it with a full stomach. “After I was released, I was nervous about the whole event that happened there. I saw things from the side. It caused me pain,” Resheks says, “While working at the newspaper, I had an emotional view of the events. I lost friends in Lebanon. So after the release, I wrote because in this situation I write songs or a play”.
The first play he wrote after the army was ‘like in a box’, which was directed by his uncle Palma. It was a satirical cabaret that appeared in 1987 and eventually included three songs about the Lebanon War and seven songs about kibbutz life. Those who performed there were friends from Kfar Hanasi – Anat Miron, Nir Perelson, Mike Haskin and Gershon Meder and Adam Meder who composed the songs.
In 1993, Rashek’s second play dealing with Lebanon was released – ‘Catch 82’. It is a one-man show starring the actor Sharon Tzur that tells about a kibbutznik who suffered a battle shock during the First Lebanon War. The play appeared at the Teatronto and then ran for many years in schools.
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Rasheks during his military service
(Photo: Private)
Two years after ‘Milkud 82’ Rasheks wrote the third play dealing with Lebanon – ‘Sujud or the white beaches of Goa’. The play was written a few years before the Israeli public understood that it was necessary to leave Lebanon.
Why did you deal so much with Lebanon in your work?
“Because Lebanon is a trauma. I’m not a pacifist, I have no problem protecting my family and my home. I have no problem taking a Molotov cocktail and jumping on a Syrian tank. What drove me crazy there, in Lebanon, is that I didn’t understand what we were doing there. The feeling was that they sent us to die there. In the Shoof Mountains I met a guy who said: ‘Why should I die here?’. As soon as I realized that our lives and those of our children were being treated casually, I said enough.
“Our children are the most important thing in the world to us,” adds Rasheks, “after all, we will pour out our hearts for them. Your child is the thing you protect the most because as a parent, his essence is to keep his child and raise him. Suddenly you take away the splendor of the creation of The same parents who raised their children and throw them to die for nothing in a place where no one was able to explain what we have to do there beyond the range of the Katyushas from the fence. It annoyed me and I said so far – the club should be burned down, of course in my way. In my profession the way is writing. I did the The plays because I was thinking about Uriah the Hittite. He was the character I had in my head – the one David sent to the war knowing he was going to die and for no reason. To die for Sasa or for the State of Israel – fine. To die in a place where I don’t know what I lost there would have seemed completely insane to me “.
When Rasheks began writing the third play about Lebanon, he had already been released for more than a decade, but the anger over what he saw and experienced in Lebanon still burned in him. At that time, the IDF was still deep within the security zone, continuing to suffer losses, but also striking powerfully at its main enemy, the Hezbollah organization.
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The actor Dror Levy from the play ‘Sujud or the white beaches of Goa’
(Photo: Courtesy of Aryeh Zonshein )
How did you come to write a play specifically about the Sojud outpost?
“I did an in-depth investigation. I talked to at least 50 people about Lebanon, about the situation there, what they feel, what they felt. I am excellent at listening to people. For months I only talked about Lebanon. The choice of Sujod was because this place is an extreme image of what I wanted to present. After all, this outpost guarded the entrance to Jezin. This outpost was unnecessary, but they stayed there and did not withdraw from it. For me, it is quite crazy to put soldiers in an outpost that protects a dead-end road. Therefore, for me, it was an image of what I have to say. The technique that I A work in it is to take a place and plant a completely fictional plot into the situation that I know is completely real, so that there will be no situation, God forbid, that someone who reads the play will find in it a friend, a son or a brother who lost there.”
The Sujud outpost was an outpost in the north of the eastern sector in the security strip, which was manned by soldiers of the South Lebanese Army but also by IDF forces in order to strengthen the SDF soldiers. The task of the troops at the outpost was to keep the axis between Marj Eyon and the Jezin enclave open.
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Resheks. Received awards for the play Sujod
(Photo: Avihu Shapira)
The plot of the play tells about a TV reporter named Ricky who arrives at the Sujod outpost in Lebanon in search of a soldier who has not left his home for a long time. When she arrives at the outpost she discovers the truth about what happened to him. The play, which received the Bernstein Prize for Plays in 1999, presented the unimaginable reality of IDF soldiers in an outpost penetrating deep into Lebanon.
In 2000, the play directed by Avi Malka, whom Resheks defines as a “genius”, was presented and starred Adi Eisenman, Dror Levy, Michal Varshai, Gabi Cohen, Tzachi Mena, Boaz Avraham and Eldad Tamir. The talented Aryeh Zonshein was responsible for the music and the show ran for a short period in the Tel Aviv ensemble.
“I wrote Sujod five years before the play came on. In 1995 I brought the play to a large theater and met with the artistic director. I told him what the play was about and he didn’t even agree to read it, nor did he agree that I would leave the play to him. He didn’t want them to say that the war This is unnecessary because it is a betrayal of our soldiers. It took five years for the token to fall. I promoted the Four Mothers movement.”
Reviews of the show were excellent, but it only ran for three months. What is Rashek’s explanation? “It was an important show that received awards, but people in difficult times want funny shows and at that time people didn’t want to see such a show. In any case, I had a mission to do it.”
One of the songs in the play, which lasts about 67 minutes, is, as mentioned, ‘The White Beaches of Goa’ sung by the actor Dror Levy. With genius and sensitivity, Rasheks wrote a poem that makes everyone who was there in the infiltrating outposts and in the outposts on the fence identify with him. He conveys in it a feeling as if the song was written about him or his friend.
How was the song born? Rasheks reveals for the first time: “I did my winter training in a terrible place. Our tents flew off and we were wet. In the midst of this bad situation, a friend who was with me there did a guided imagery and described to us how he finishes the army and goes to New Zealand. It was a two-hour description. The highlight was that we were sitting on A rock in a transparent blue sea, we put our feet in the cool water and fish tickle us between our toes. And the truth is that I felt like I was there. When I wrote the song ‘The White Beaches of Goa’ I thought about this. This friend was killed in Lebanon in a convoy that the Air Force bombed. The image I had in my head from the smoke And the fire soldiers die. I wrote the song about a dead soldier who leaves Lebanon for his unfulfilled dream.”
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The cover of the booklet published about the play – Tel Aviv Tel Aviv and the Kibbutzim Seminary College School of Performing Arts
(Photo: Private)
“Just a girl’s name. When you run away from Lebanon, you run away from everything. The woman is a metaphor for running away from something that is contrary to what is happening in Lebanon. The lyrics of the song are not Alterman. It is a song that needs to convey a message and a situation. I had the thought that if there is a heaven somewhere the soldier sits There and the fish tickle him.”
Why does this song deserve new exposure?
“The performances don’t stay, but the songs do stay. It’s a song that has real pain in it and therefore it remains relevant. The so-called law of conservation of pain.”
Where does this sensitivity of yours come from? Where does the pain touch you?
“My late father Avraham was killed in the Six Day War when I was five years old. He was a paratrooper. He was killed on the fifth day of the fighting in Jalabina in the Golan Heights. The sensitivity comes from the fact that I am a bereaved son. I am intimately familiar with the events and this omission.”
For 35 years now, Shersheks has been an active playwright, focusing his works on important issues in Israeli society. Through the plays he expresses a cry, criticism or focus on a certain subject. In his ingenious interpretation, which is reflected in equally ingenious writing, he tells a story that cannot leave you indifferent. “From the age of 16 I already knew that this is what I wanted to be – a playwright,” he admits, “I built it for myself in stages. When I was a child I went to plays a lot with my mother, I was exposed to plays and it connected with me with a pleasant and good experience.”