West Bank Story: All

Oct 31, 2023

In the satirical new musical ‘On the Hilltop,’ the cast sings of ‘price tag’ attacks, dances in settlement outposts and waits for the beautiful landscape to be free of Arabs. Even former radical settlers are impressed

"Good evening and thanks for joining us here this evening! If you’re media consumers, you’ve probably heard a lot about the ‘hilltop youth’ – the ‘atrocious youth,’ ‘wild weeds,’ ‘rioters,’ ‘terrorists,’ and a great many more deeply unpleasant words [describing activists on illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank].

"So, we decided to reach out to you directly, with no unnecessary media filters! Over the next hour, you’ll get to know the most vilified young people in Israel, the country's most persecuted youth, up close. Are you ready? Enjoy the show!"

This monologue, delivered by a girl named Simhat Torah, opens the musical "On the Hilltop" ("Al Hagivah"). She exits the stage and returns within seconds to the backdrop of music that sounds like it came from Broadway. She is accompanied by her friend Emunah; both are holding plastic crates.

"Good evening, we’re donating goods for Shabbat to Ma’aleh Maoz," Emunah sings, instructing her friend – a brand-new member of the hilltop youth – about how the business works. The plot then takes us on a satirical journey with five girls who are living alone on a West Bank settlement outpost as they plan a wedding for one of them and worry that the "Zionists" might come along at any moment to forcibly evict them.

"What was fascinating about the creative process was trying to understand the Other; trying to understand what lies behind those very harsh statements by hilltop boys and girls," says the show's writer, Keren Shefet. "On the one hand, this musical levels criticism. But on the other, it also enables people to identify with a part of the population that we don't meet in our everyday lives, yet which has a very strong connection to our lives here in Israel.

"We’re feeling this now," she adds. "I wrote the play a year ago – and who knew then that we’d be in a different world today where they are in power and can make decisions? It didn't happen by chance. We’re talking about a group that works for this; people who live their belief. I think that's rather inspiring and something I wanted us to learn from."

Little Outpost of Horrors

Shefet, 32, grew up in a secular family in Kfar Yona, near Netanya, and studied theater and directing at Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts. In 2021, together with Adi Drori and Chen Lugassi, she staged the show "Commander to Skirt" ("Hatzait Kan Kodkod"), which dealt with the culture of sexual harassment in the Israeli army. She then went to London, where she got a master's degree in film and television. I was during this period that she began working on "On the Hilltop."

The musical enables people to identify with a part of the population that we don't meet in our everyday lives.

"This was the first time I had ever been abroad, and in London no less," she recounts. "It was very tough to be there during Operation Guardian of the Walls," she says, referring to the mini-war between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in May 2021. "In fact, I got to experience how people see us, and me, from the outside.

"For some of them – even good friends and people I greatly admire – there's not much difference between the settlements of West Bank and Tel Aviv. So I felt that in some ways they look at me like I’m a settler. The distance from Israel, the view of us from the outside, raised a lot of questions about my connection – which preoccupies me greatly – with the Land of Israel, with my Jewish identity."

If the song that opens the show, "Good Evening, We’re Collecting Donations," reminds you of the opening of Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone's riotous Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon," that's no coincidence.

"I watched the musical in London and said to myself, ‘Wow, I want to do something like that – but female and Israeli,’" Shefet says. "Then I came to the world of the hilltop youth. I saw a story on [Israeli public broadcaster] Kan 11 about the Givat Na’arot [Girls Hill] outpost. Because of that, a whole new world opened for me."

Do-Re-Area C

Shefet chose to do something very unusual, though: the musical, about five teenage girls who leave their homes and occupy an illegal outpost in the West Bank, is based entirely on quotes and interviews with hilltop youth. Indeed, some of the funniest parts are taken verbatim from those TV stories about Givat Na’arot, without being taken out of context. For instance, this exchange:

"And here there's a display case, like at your parents. Perfect for that amazing view of the Bedouin!" says Mishenet, the young woman who is about to be married. Her younger sister Homiyah responds:

"The Bedouin won't be here in another two years and then the view will be even prettier."

Originally, this dialogue was between a young settler and his fiancée in the Maoz Esther outpost, in a scene that opened the series of Kan stories by journalist Carmel Dangor. Otherwise, the recreation is spot-on.

Were you concerned about creating characters who are so far removed from your own life?

Shefet: "It's theater and that's what's fun about it. It's not a documentary. In theater, it's possible to step into someone else's shoes; a 30-year-old can play a 13-year-old, and boys can play girls. Theater is simply a tool for investigation. That's why it's the right medium for this work."

Director Eliana Magon adds: "I asked myself this question a lot. I said to myself: ‘What do I have to do with [hilltop youth]? Why should I create a work about a group I don't agree with, that's not part of my ideology?’ And very slowly I began to understand that they are part of my people." She says these words with an embarrassed laugh.

"They’re Israelis just like me, and they live in the same tiny country in which there are so many disagreements and conflicts – and yes, they are me. Because I don't agree with them and their opinions doesn't turn them into something distant and foreign. I didn't want to have a feeling of superiority over these girls. I said, ‘Let's understand what's similar between us so we can make our criticism in a clearer way, not because I’ve been in this mold since I was born and that's the way I was educated. Maybe I have something that connects with them? Maybe I play a part in this too?

"Is it because I live in Tel Aviv, and in this country, that it's possible to talk about how it was created and in what form it was taken or given, make me better than them?" she asks rhetorically.

In Magon's case, she also found a distant connection. "My mother was ultra-Orthodox and [left religion] at a very young age. All that side of my family is Haredi. … From the start I said: ‘I have a family I know, good folk, who have people who can hate them just because they’re Haredim, without knowing who they are. So okay, the hilltop youth aren't Haredim, it's something else. But I knew there were real people there. I wanted to understand: How do these people, who are neither enemies nor the devil, reach these conclusions that are so different from mine?"

One of the show's actresses, Dvora-lea Fisher, also has a connection of sorts to the character she plays: the responsible adult of the group who also shares the same name: Dvoraleh.

"I grew up in a Chabad home, my [leaving religion] happened relatively early on," says Fisher, who now lives in Haifa. "On the one hand, these are familiar worlds, in terms of character. But on the other, the attitude of the hilltop youth is far removed from the worlds I come from. The settlements, all of that, is a thousand times more extreme. I can have conversations with my father, who is a Chabadnik, and his opinions are sometimes extreme in my eyes. But they don't come close to extremes of action – which I’m not saying is for good or bad."

Fisher also drew from her experience as a Border Police officer during her military service and conversations with her cousins, who live in settlements. "I wanted to understand the fanaticism, the places that are far from me," she explains.

Even so, she still found a personal connection to the material. "To leave home at 13 or 14, that's something that I – with all due respect to the rebel I was – never had the balls to do, and certainly not when there's a deep ideology behind it. They are really young women making independent decisions, and I very much identify with that," she says.

"There was a sort of courage that stimulated me when I got my hands on this play and said, ‘Wow, these girls are different.’ To say that I feel close to them with the type of life I live? No way. To say that it's similar to my views? Not that, either. But I think I have something inside that can understand this place, which believes in something and pursues it until the end, weighs the consequences and is not afraid."

Somewhere over the checkpoint

The musical, which played at Tel Aviv's Tzavta Theater in mid-May, originally premiered at last year's Acre's International Fringe Theatre Festival, where it won both praise and awards: musical director and composer Udi Ehud Knebel won the festival's music prize, while the five actresses – Bar Cohen (Emunah), Fisher (Dvoraleh), Sapir Rosenfeld (Simhat Torah), Shir Shealtiel (Mishenet) and Rotem Simhy (Homiyah) – won the festival's ensemble prize.

The musical is now being performed in coordination with the fringe Jerusalem Theater Company and will return for more shows at Jerusalem's Beit Mazia Theater on June 14 and Tel Aviv's Tzavta Theater on July 9.

"On the Hilltop" is a rare representation of hilltop youth in Israeli culture. Previous sightings have come in skits on TV comedies such as "The Jews are Coming" and "Shabas" ("Prison Service"). The novels "The Hilltop" by Assaf Gavron, "Five More Minutes" by Yonatan Berg and "On the Edge" by Galit Dahan Carlibach also take place, to some extent or another, on isolated settlements.

As the musical progresses, the satire definitely becomes sharper. For instance, the fourth song sees Simhat Torah undertake her first stint of guard duty. While she shines her flashlight in the darkness, clearly anxious, she sings: "It always made me laugh at family events / When the leftist uncles were afraid to come to Hebron / I told them, ‘But you love Arabs, so why are you afraid? / You want to make peace with them!’"

Later, when she declares that "in order to aid the Arab enemy in taking over / tens of billions are donated from overseas to support the expansion," the rest of the actresses come on stage wearing black burkas. Simhat Torah delivers a monologue in which she explains that everything would be really simple "if there was no terrorism, and all the Arabs wanted to connect and be part of the Jews." Then the rest of the actresses remove their burkas, revealing belly dancer's costumes, and sweep Simhat Torah along with them – as she returns with the chorus: "There's no time to wait, the Arabs have understood this for a long time / It's either we’re here, or we’re not here."

A few unlikely figures were spotted in the audience at the Tel Aviv show: religious women, some wearing head coverings. It turned out that a few were related to Fisher. Four others, meanwhile, taught theater, cinema and civics in religious schools and had come to see if the play was appropriate for their students.

One of those attendees was Ma’ayan Siton from the Kfar Tapuah settlement in the northern West Bank. The theater teacher and 11th-grade homeroom teacher at a school for religious girls said she had come "ready to be attacked." However, after the show, she took part in a very unusual conversation: A discussion between the four religious women and the creators of the play, actresses and any passersby who were curious to hear the women's views about what they had just seen on the stage.

"A minute before we went in, I told my friends that I felt they were going to do a play about me, even though I’m far from representing the female hilltop youth – I’m married to a policeman, a police officer who was in the Border Police. In short, our lives are very complicated and we’re not black and white," Siton explains. She left pleasantly surprised, chiefly due to that post-show discussion.

"For the first time in my life, I went through it as an experience: that I came to Tel Aviv and they wanted to hear what I had to say. It could be that, actually, this recent period, which has led people to go out into the streets from every direction, created it – as opposed to the gloomy forecasts of polarization and a violent discourse. I left very optimistic; people really wanted to listen."

Siton felt the show itself had a few problems. "It falls into a lot of stereotypes," she critiques. "But unlike the other times I saw right-wing settlers in the theater or films, I felt that finally they managed to bring another voice. I don't necessarily think there was true authenticity in this voice, but there was still a voice.

'What was fascinating about the creative process was trying to understand the Other; trying to understand what lies behind those very harsh statements by hilltop boys and girls.'

"The Brechtian nature of the play – which has lots of songs and music, and we’re not engaged emotionally but mostly listening to opinions – actually aided this. One of the pieces of advice I offered the director [post-show] was that if the actors have met directly with hilltop youth girls and looked them in the eye, their acting would have been different."

The actresses in return say that while they may not have met any hilltop youth women during their research, at least one of them knows female former hilltop youth activists.

Rotem Simhy, who plays Homiyah, works in the Tzivei Halev children's theater founded and run by Efrat Stern, 33, who is from the settlement of Revava. She grew up in a religiously traditional Mizrahi home in Petah Tikva, but became religious when she was in sixth grade. After a few years, she found herself on the hilltops.

"I was a hilltop girl in 11th grade, right after Gush Katif, after the expulsion," she says, referring to the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria. "We were very broken young people, we searched for something with values to do, for our ideals. I was on a lot of hills. I may not have been one of the people who really lived there – it was less appropriate for me. I remember at the time critiquing it as something very free, without limits – but I did participate in the struggles, in evictions and moving up to new communities."

When Simhy told her about the new musical, instinctively Stern was against it. "It set me off right away," she recounts. "I asked, ‘Once again, another nonreligious woman who doesn't know, and doesn't understand, is going to study it and deliver her political opinion? Or will it really be something significant that shows both sides?"

Still, when Stern watched the show in Acre last year, she says she was "surprised for the better, because I saw they did in-depth work here. It's very easy to slip into being judgmental, and that didn't happen. They placed the problem right in front of you; they showed its nice sides and also the difficult and painful sides that require treatment – like with every marginal group in Israeli society."

Did you feel you saw something of yourself?

"I think so. As a hilltop youth girl, I remember being at one of the evacuations from Hebron, in the casbah, and yes – we prepared bags of paint [to throw at soldiers] and burned tires. I saw all those things. I think there's something very naive and impassioned in this place – because these are mostly young people who are, ultimately, simply at-risk youth.

"There are also those who follow the herd and then there are the people who really don't know what they’re doing, and there's not always critical thinking or supervision. There's someone who's 18 or 19 leading everyone, and it's not someone with a wise head on their shoulders. … I personally didn't get to this dangerous place. Every at-risk teen is playing with fire. If there wasn't a political point here, it would simply have been at-risk youth in every shape and form."

As for playing with fire, Stern mentions one of the musical's central motifs: Jewish acts of revenge. In one of the songs, two of the women – Emunah and Homiyah – recruit Simhat Torah for a "price tag" operation against Arabs. They repeat the mantra: "Burn property, damage trees / block roads, spray slogans / Throw stones, break cameras / Burn tires, burn fields." At the end of each description of a revenge attack, they declare: "Let them know that it's us, price tag!"

Until, that is, a turning point: Emunah describes an especially violent incident in which it is hinted that a child's life was taken after they were beaten by settlers. She shuts her eyes, "deactivates her conscience" and hears how they beat him: "I must hide it, so they won't know it's us who did the price tag." She subsequently finds a quiet corner and emotionally crumples, but then comes back as if nothing happened. Later, four of the five women respond to the evacuation of their outpost with a price tag attack that goes awry.

The handling of this subject is where the musical falls into stereotypes, Siton argues. "There are other responses in addition to a ‘price tag’ attack. There are essential and positive actions – sure, they’re not dramatic, they don't have conflict, they’re seemingly not interesting on the stage – even though I think that's not true at all. It's possible to create amazing things out of it."

What, for example?

"How you rebuild something after it was destroyed. You make more of the same, and you never despair. In general, the situation in which a girl hears that someone hit a 7-year-old Arab boy who didn't do anything and buries her feelings – I don't know of any such thing. It's concocted, as far as I’m concerned. It made me react negatively."

Shefet, however, says the incident was not an invention. As part of her research, she says she spoke with two former hilltop youth girls, who described that exact feeling. Only looking back – as adult women – did they succeed in judging the social pressure they were under at the time, she adds. "They both were amazed by their behavior as young women and their ability, in their own words, to ‘neutralize their conscience.’ One of them even explained that there's something in very extreme and messianic ideology that cancels out the conscience very quickly – because it's not me who said to do it, it's God who told me to do it. It was important for me to turn the spotlight on the human conflict that teens find themselves in, and what they are willing to do to be part of ‘the group.’"

These themes – of bowing to peer pressure and moral ambivalence – find expression in Bar Cohen's performance as Emunah. "I really believe that even the most extreme people have a small internal voice inside them that perhaps says, ‘Wait, but...’ You’re supposedly standing behind something very extreme, but suddenly doubt finds a way in. It's something that's possible to connect with on a lot of levels, and on this political issue I think it's burning in every one of us," the actress says.

The fact that the question crops up, and a dialogue is being held between the religious and nonreligious public – which is happening after each performance – makes Magon happy.

"A lot of people leave the play and ask: So what did you want to say? It's very important for them to know – are you in favor? Are you against? We’re always trying to explain that we’re not in favor of the phenomenon, that's obvious – we didn't grow up that way, we weren't educated that way.

"But they’re also women, and they’re part of me, part of the people, and I also have a part in it. It's terribly complex. I spoke about it with the religious women after the show, too – that we’re all women, that we’re talking and there's a complexity in our messages. What did we want to say? Go home and think about the play."