Owner of Tel Aviv's Barby Club on hunger strike near PM's Residence

Shaul Mizrahi: Gov’t won’t let me reopen, won’t compensate

By BARRY DAVIS
SHAUL MIZRAHI begins his hunger strike yesterday. The posters read: ‘No compensation and no performances’ and ‘They forgot me at home for 3 months.’ (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
SHAUL MIZRAHI begins his hunger strike yesterday. The posters read: ‘No compensation and no performances’ and ‘They forgot me at home for 3 months.’
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Shaul Mizrahi is not a happy man. For the past two and half months he has mostly been sitting around at home twiddling his thumbs, observing corona-related developments here with an ever-increasing level of frustration.
Now he is on hunger strike just around the corner from the Prime Minister’s Residence, in a last desperate attempt to get the government to allow him to reopen the Barby music club in Tel Aviv that he founded over a quarter of a century ago.
Granted, sadly, he is not the one in that particular vexing boat but Mizrahi is in a deeper financial hole than most.
Barby is one of the country’s most popular live music venues, hosting international acts like Mark Lanegan and the Afghan Whigs, and local pop and rock icons Shalom Hanoch and Beri Sacharoff. When the Ministry of Health introduced lockdown measures, back in March, the Barby, along with all cultural institutions here, shut its doors to the public, not knowing when they would be reopened.
“I still don’t know,” says Mizrahi when we met on Sunday morning, as he began his hunger strike to try to get someone to sit up and take note. “No one is setting a timeline for when that might happen. Clearly the government has no idea what it is doing. Maybe, if some other country’s government decides to open music clubs Israel will follow suit. Israel was supposed to be ‘a light unto the nations.’ From what I can see, we are waiting for someone else to show us the way, and then we’ll just do a copy and paste.”
Mizrahi sounds indignant and doesn’t look any calmer. Yesterday morning he set out his physical and professional stall when he put up shading, with a handful of plastic garden chairs and a few placards with poignant slogans at the top end of Jerusalem’s Aza Street. A TV crew was just packing up, and a cameraman from the KAN 11 TV channel arrived as a couple of young religious men dropped by to shake Mizrahi’s hand and to try and boost his sagging morale.
“We just wanted to tell you with are with you all the way,” one of them proffered.
Mizrahi is desperate. There is no delicate way to put it. “It’s not just my livelihood. What about the lighting people, the sound professionals, all the backliners? They have all been out of work all this time too,” says Mizrahi.
 I wondered why he was sitting there on his lonesome. Why hadn’t any of the aforementioned music industry professionals made the trip with him from Tel Aviv? What about the other club owners around the country? Wasn’t this the time to close ranks?
Mizrahi recently expressed his frustration with what he called “the guilds” and the bifurcation of the entertainment industry. “Instead of splitting up and trying to do things just for ourselves, we should join forces and help each other now,” he suggested at the time.
Just a few days later Mizrahi has clearly concluded that it is now, unavoidably, a matter of each culture provider fending for themselves. “I won’t tell anyone else what they should do. If someone wants to sit at home and wait for the Lord to come to their rescue, that’s their choice and their privilege. I am not out to set the whole world to rights. I am here to take care of my own patch.”
The last straw for him was the latest announcements of the easing of restrictions on concert halls, theaters and, in particular, events venues. “People will now be able to go to weddings,” he notes. “You mean to tell me the guests are going to maintain social distancing while they are dancing? This is a farce.”
Mizrahi feels the same social distancing guidelines that have been laid out for theaters and wedding function halls can be applied to the Barby. “So, theaters can have 75 percent capacity, and events places can take in 85 percent? We have a balcony at Barby, and we can divide our audiences up to three groups, and not exceed the 75 percent capacity limit. And then we can all make some kind of living. But no one in the government cares. No one is offering us some kind of framework for getting back to work. And there is no end in sight.”
It is time for forcing their hand, Mizrahi feels. The Barby website shows that ethnic music-based rocker Dudu Tasa is due to play there on June 18, with veteran rock band Mercedes Band lined up for the following day. Both shows are already sold out. “I don’t know whether I’ll have to pay a fine if the shows go ahead,” he says resignedly. “What will be, will be.”
Mizrahi says he has reached the point of no return. When I ask him how long he is willing to sit it out he simply says: “Probably until they have to take me away on a stretcher.” That did not come across as an idle threat. “They say the Jews are the ‘People of the Book.’ I don’t see the people in power, with their hands on the purse strings, showing any respect for culture. How did we get to this?”