I loved the Friends spoof. It’s a testament to the human spirit that creativity can emerge even in wartime. Much love to all the IDF soldiers including my son who is a Tzanchan reservist.
Hello SharonS I am so happy to see your post. Tell your son that there are strangers praying for him and his and brothers in arms to remain safe🙏 If only the Palestinians start looking at life diffrently.
While one should not want to begrudge members of the IDF moments of levity, restorative sanity and breathing space for comradeship during what is an unimaginably difficult period in every possible way, the “Friend’s” video was beyond distasteful. It trivializes the degree of loss, fear for the entire region. I can only assume it is or will play poorly outside of Israel (and perhaps within; if I had a relative who is or was a hostage or an IDF soldier who has been killed, or a Palestinian who shares our anger and horror toward Hamas and their fear of the IDF, I suspect I’d feel as though acid was being poured on my spiritual wounds). There are enough people (Jewish and non) outside the region who are under the impression we are indifferent to the impact of this war. Jews are being threatened and attacked physically and socially outside of Israel and Jewish men dancing with guns and sitting on a stained sofa in an area where Palestinians have lived is, at best “unprofessional” and tone deaf; at worst, it shows an incredible indifference toward the scale of trauma and grief. Unfortunately, it reminds me of the disgust I have felt when Palestinians and others who call for the destruction of Israel and the annhilation of Jews dance when a Jew is murdered. We need to be better than that (and this extends to those Settlers who have appropriated such behaviours, too.) During a tie of constant and immediate losses of life is never an occasion to dance.
Sorry, Marc, it feels deeply unJewish and very unfunny.
But here’s the thing, you’re not any of those things. And those soldiers did none of those things.
Your comment - which at first I thought was a parody - is an incredible example of how fragile people looking at a situation have the first impulse to seek to be offended instead of any other possible interpretation or reaction.
These soldiers are showing another way to approach life, and it’s how Israelis like myself (and the Jewish people) survive.
I’m happy that you may not get it, because it means you did not face the kind of adversity that citizens of Israel and the soldiers have had to deal with the last three months. All I ask is that you do not judge or tell us how to deal with our circumstances.
I am Jewish and I have loved ones in Israel so please do not insult my understanding, pain and compassion. I am the child and grandchild of Survivors, I know exactly how people survive. We all do things differently. If you take the tie to read what I wrote without getting your back up or starting from a profile position, you might understand my concerns are also about the dynamic of how the rest of us are able to see the impact of things in a different way and what that can mean. Shabbat shalom.
Ah come on man! Your knee jerk response reminds me of the humourless response to everything by the left in university and now. “You can’t joke because it’s offensive”. But it’s offensive because of your insecurity and weak fortitude. If your confident in your actions you can recognize your faults and foibles. You can take the cards you’ve been dealt (fate) and shape your destiny and make light of a pretty shitty situation. When your in the shit (that being in a life and death war) you can either joke to try and make light of how stupid things are and to control your destiny or you can pout, cry, pander and feign sympathy to all—which gets you killed. Humour is how soldiers especially citizen soldiers deal with things. All soldiers btw. Quit worrying on what others think, that’s the job of diplomats. Jews have always used humour to take charge of the bad cards we’ve been dealt over the centuries so as to have semblance of control of the unfathomable. Don’t take that away too. Btw the hamas has its own sense of humour given the laughter they showed in their videos—to which the Arab populous gave out candies. I’ll take our humour over theirs any day.
Posting a video like this publicly (and @danielgrodis making it seem accepetable) is a shuddering expression of disrespect to the lives being lost and the ones being held hostage and ya, it’s a very bad look as we fight against accusations of genocide and have people marching in the streets around the world calling death to all Jews. So, it actually DOES matter what people think. If we look like indifferent assholes we lose all credibility on the public stage (and we’re not faring very well there, if you haven’t noticed). Tying to win a competition with how inhumane and contemptuous Hamas is with the loss of human life and celebrating murder is not a competition we should want to engage in. This is not “Jewish humour”, this is a shande.
I’m not sure that the onus is on the ones who are in battle to “look good” to the rest of the world.
Our supporters will love us despite being flawed- a grubby old sofa gets used as an impromptu set for a comedic show. A Friends cover song? How quaint! Think of the alternative...
Who is going to be angry with stressed out soldiers? And do we care about those people?
Being able to share footage so easily these days does create a pioneering adventure that might be disastrous or it might not. But that’s not their concern.
Letting off steam is paramount and we can choose to ignore it. Again there’s an alternative: nicely behaved and too stressed out to think, dead soldiers.
Write a letter to the UN and have a go at them. They’re massive villains here.
I trust that your family are all well and safe. Shalom ✡️
I respectfully disagree. Levity is one of our best potions to ease the grieving heart. There was nothing distasteful in this video. Soldiers dancing and playing together in a barren landscape, during a terrible war. What could possibly be wrong with that, especially if it lifts their spirits during this agonizing time?
I thought I was pretty clear when I say I do not begrudge members of the IDF moments of levity. However, in their capacity as soldiers whose job involves the likelihood of killing someone, behaving publicly like war is akin to colour war game at summer camp is profoundly disrespectful and even hurtful to many people, as well as in terms of public image in a world that is looking for any excuse to think we are indifferent to life.
When choosing between this kind of expression and potentially causing harm to us all both spiritually and in the public perception at large, discretion seems appropriate. If individual opt to act out in this way in private and as a means of coping , that’s a while other story. Barreling into one’s infantile ego-driven need to become “viral” might be fine for someone who loves makeup or gaming, but this is war and everything we do - and most especially our military should be and will always be judged. This is not a time or place for public displays of solipsism.
I agree with תמרה I found the Friends spoof difficult to watch in the midst of the war. Yes, I smiled at some of their antics, and was very uncomfortable doing so. I understand the need for levity, for humor. It's one of the ways people survive. I have no problem with the soldiers having made the video. I just wish they had limited sharing it with friends and family. But not to the world. I am an American Jew with relatives in Israel, some of whom are currently serving in the reserves. I pray for their safety, for the safe return of the hostages asap and for an end to the carnage and to the war.
I am a non-Jew but like to say that I have a Jewish soul. The first time I saw the Friends spoof I smiled and then I prayed that all of them are still safe. So to the young men - enjoy life even in the face of your enemy BUT do stay safe💙💙🙏 Le Chaim! To Life!
It is very difficult to respond to all of the commentors as they each speak a bit of truth. My father was a physician on a troop transport during WWII going across the Atlantic, inoculating on the Eastward voyage and treating wounded on the way West. He remarked many times (he became an anesthesiologist later) that the most important times on the OR to be "sane" was during moments of stress, when a good joke was the most important surgical instrument.
If you read what I wrote, I didn’t say no levity. I find the video and the context in which it was presented here as a vulgar and insensitive public display. It disregards the overall impression made to the world that Jews don’t care about killing people. We should care. We should always care about committing the harshest of actions - even when defending ourselves. We should not become indifferent to what it is we are doing and what is being done in our name. And this war is like no other war. No situation Jews are in are ever like the others. We do not need to present ourselves in such a callous manner while we are killing people. Gruesome as Hamas is, we don’t need to be, nor should we be like them in any way. We nee dot be better than them - for ourselves.
I agree that it is important to be who we are and not to allow ourselves to be drawn down to the level of our enemies. Nonetheless, we need to maintain our inherent humanity.
Indeed. That’s why I began my initial comment noting the need for levity in coping with the stress ... which is VERY different than putting it out there into the world as some sort of grim spectacle of indifference to the gravity of the reality which is that lives are being lost, regardless of whose. The worst thing one human can do to another is to kill them, whatever the reasons or circumstances. Levity can be experienced in a private manner, between comrades, but posting such things to social media ... that is not a thing that has ever been necessary to find a place to ground oneself as a soldier in the insanity of war. Doing so as a public spectacle is strikingly insensitive (and even narcissistic)and diminishes the gravity of the job and the sanctity of life to the rest of the world. If soldiers don’t give AF about how they appear as professionals whose core competency is to be prepared to take the life of other human beings - even within a defensive stance, even when those humans are terrorists - and even though one does not always know who exactly they are slaying - then it is a dishonour toward of all life to behave in such a publicly trite manner. Anyway, I am done trying to explain why publicly sharing how one is dancing on the job when the job is to kill is very much not ok.
The Friends parody was just the humor needed across the Gulf of the Diaspora . I can just imagine the spoofs that were created after the Jews crossed the Red Sea, especially by the non-swimmers in the tribe! Am Yisrael chai and laugh!!!
Unless you are in Israel now fighting the fight all of us who are not there need not comment. We aren’t there now.
Stop worrying what the world thinks. We know a majority of people hate Jews.
Be Jewish. Read Torah. It’s all there. Read Torah and stop trying to please the world.
To those who fought and left. You left Israel. To those who’s parents were holocaust survivors the world appears to not care. To people like me born in North America Am Israel Chai.
I’m sorry, I’m American, Israeli and an ex combat soldier. I fail to see the humor in either spoof and it, in my opinion, reflects the depths of despair and anguish when a nation can find such videos funny.
@Sabrina Paradis You write the way a dog barks. Eventually, people turn away because it just sounds like noise. You seem more interested in asserting how right you are blurting at people you haven’t taken the tie to actually listen to and understand . Which is fine, if that’s what you want. (But then why bother commenting. It’s hard to take you seriously with that degree of bull-in-a China-shop bluster and DGAF0about-anyone-else-arrogance) But it’s a dead end. But you won’t even realize it because only your venting opinion and need to think you are superior and know things (you clearly do not know - and it shows). Ugh 🤦🏻♀️
As a Jew who sits safely in Canada not ever fighting for Eretz Israel let alone sending my child to fight, the soldiers are doing exactly what they should do. No negative comments from anyone jnless you are in the fight.
Bravo for finding a moment of humor and camaraderie in the midst of the ongoing horror, which absolutely no one is not taking seriously. Humor is rarely politically correct. Its incongruity is often what makes it funny. Humor has far more capacity for release and restoration in dark times than does worrying about what the neighbors might think. Good on ya, and thanks for sharing. Love from the U.S.
A week or two later, when very many victims had not yet been identified, when they were just beginning to understand the extent of the catastrophe, when people left their families, jobs and homes to protect them, an episode of the comedy show “Eretz Nehederet” was shown on TV.
This is what was needed at this time. Many could not understand whether they would be able to laugh after all this.
I loved the Friends spoof. It’s a testament to the human spirit that creativity can emerge even in wartime. Much love to all the IDF soldiers including my son who is a Tzanchan reservist.
Hello SharonS I am so happy to see your post. Tell your son that there are strangers praying for him and his and brothers in arms to remain safe🙏 If only the Palestinians start looking at life diffrently.
While one should not want to begrudge members of the IDF moments of levity, restorative sanity and breathing space for comradeship during what is an unimaginably difficult period in every possible way, the “Friend’s” video was beyond distasteful. It trivializes the degree of loss, fear for the entire region. I can only assume it is or will play poorly outside of Israel (and perhaps within; if I had a relative who is or was a hostage or an IDF soldier who has been killed, or a Palestinian who shares our anger and horror toward Hamas and their fear of the IDF, I suspect I’d feel as though acid was being poured on my spiritual wounds). There are enough people (Jewish and non) outside the region who are under the impression we are indifferent to the impact of this war. Jews are being threatened and attacked physically and socially outside of Israel and Jewish men dancing with guns and sitting on a stained sofa in an area where Palestinians have lived is, at best “unprofessional” and tone deaf; at worst, it shows an incredible indifference toward the scale of trauma and grief. Unfortunately, it reminds me of the disgust I have felt when Palestinians and others who call for the destruction of Israel and the annhilation of Jews dance when a Jew is murdered. We need to be better than that (and this extends to those Settlers who have appropriated such behaviours, too.) During a tie of constant and immediate losses of life is never an occasion to dance.
Sorry, Marc, it feels deeply unJewish and very unfunny.
But here’s the thing, you’re not any of those things. And those soldiers did none of those things.
Your comment - which at first I thought was a parody - is an incredible example of how fragile people looking at a situation have the first impulse to seek to be offended instead of any other possible interpretation or reaction.
These soldiers are showing another way to approach life, and it’s how Israelis like myself (and the Jewish people) survive.
I’m happy that you may not get it, because it means you did not face the kind of adversity that citizens of Israel and the soldiers have had to deal with the last three months. All I ask is that you do not judge or tell us how to deal with our circumstances.
I am Jewish and I have loved ones in Israel so please do not insult my understanding, pain and compassion. I am the child and grandchild of Survivors, I know exactly how people survive. We all do things differently. If you take the tie to read what I wrote without getting your back up or starting from a profile position, you might understand my concerns are also about the dynamic of how the rest of us are able to see the impact of things in a different way and what that can mean. Shabbat shalom.
*Edit: Not “Marc” (I inadvertently confused this post with the Substack written by Marc Shulman. I meant to say @Daniel Gordis.
Ah come on man! Your knee jerk response reminds me of the humourless response to everything by the left in university and now. “You can’t joke because it’s offensive”. But it’s offensive because of your insecurity and weak fortitude. If your confident in your actions you can recognize your faults and foibles. You can take the cards you’ve been dealt (fate) and shape your destiny and make light of a pretty shitty situation. When your in the shit (that being in a life and death war) you can either joke to try and make light of how stupid things are and to control your destiny or you can pout, cry, pander and feign sympathy to all—which gets you killed. Humour is how soldiers especially citizen soldiers deal with things. All soldiers btw. Quit worrying on what others think, that’s the job of diplomats. Jews have always used humour to take charge of the bad cards we’ve been dealt over the centuries so as to have semblance of control of the unfathomable. Don’t take that away too. Btw the hamas has its own sense of humour given the laughter they showed in their videos—to which the Arab populous gave out candies. I’ll take our humour over theirs any day.
Posting a video like this publicly (and @danielgrodis making it seem accepetable) is a shuddering expression of disrespect to the lives being lost and the ones being held hostage and ya, it’s a very bad look as we fight against accusations of genocide and have people marching in the streets around the world calling death to all Jews. So, it actually DOES matter what people think. If we look like indifferent assholes we lose all credibility on the public stage (and we’re not faring very well there, if you haven’t noticed). Tying to win a competition with how inhumane and contemptuous Hamas is with the loss of human life and celebrating murder is not a competition we should want to engage in. This is not “Jewish humour”, this is a shande.
I’m not sure that the onus is on the ones who are in battle to “look good” to the rest of the world.
Our supporters will love us despite being flawed- a grubby old sofa gets used as an impromptu set for a comedic show. A Friends cover song? How quaint! Think of the alternative...
Who is going to be angry with stressed out soldiers? And do we care about those people?
Being able to share footage so easily these days does create a pioneering adventure that might be disastrous or it might not. But that’s not their concern.
Letting off steam is paramount and we can choose to ignore it. Again there’s an alternative: nicely behaved and too stressed out to think, dead soldiers.
Write a letter to the UN and have a go at them. They’re massive villains here.
I trust that your family are all well and safe. Shalom ✡️
I respectfully disagree. Levity is one of our best potions to ease the grieving heart. There was nothing distasteful in this video. Soldiers dancing and playing together in a barren landscape, during a terrible war. What could possibly be wrong with that, especially if it lifts their spirits during this agonizing time?
I thought I was pretty clear when I say I do not begrudge members of the IDF moments of levity. However, in their capacity as soldiers whose job involves the likelihood of killing someone, behaving publicly like war is akin to colour war game at summer camp is profoundly disrespectful and even hurtful to many people, as well as in terms of public image in a world that is looking for any excuse to think we are indifferent to life.
When choosing between this kind of expression and potentially causing harm to us all both spiritually and in the public perception at large, discretion seems appropriate. If individual opt to act out in this way in private and as a means of coping , that’s a while other story. Barreling into one’s infantile ego-driven need to become “viral” might be fine for someone who loves makeup or gaming, but this is war and everything we do - and most especially our military should be and will always be judged. This is not a time or place for public displays of solipsism.
I agree with תמרה I found the Friends spoof difficult to watch in the midst of the war. Yes, I smiled at some of their antics, and was very uncomfortable doing so. I understand the need for levity, for humor. It's one of the ways people survive. I have no problem with the soldiers having made the video. I just wish they had limited sharing it with friends and family. But not to the world. I am an American Jew with relatives in Israel, some of whom are currently serving in the reserves. I pray for their safety, for the safe return of the hostages asap and for an end to the carnage and to the war.
I am a non-Jew but like to say that I have a Jewish soul. The first time I saw the Friends spoof I smiled and then I prayed that all of them are still safe. So to the young men - enjoy life even in the face of your enemy BUT do stay safe💙💙🙏 Le Chaim! To Life!
It is very difficult to respond to all of the commentors as they each speak a bit of truth. My father was a physician on a troop transport during WWII going across the Atlantic, inoculating on the Eastward voyage and treating wounded on the way West. He remarked many times (he became an anesthesiologist later) that the most important times on the OR to be "sane" was during moments of stress, when a good joke was the most important surgical instrument.
If you read what I wrote, I didn’t say no levity. I find the video and the context in which it was presented here as a vulgar and insensitive public display. It disregards the overall impression made to the world that Jews don’t care about killing people. We should care. We should always care about committing the harshest of actions - even when defending ourselves. We should not become indifferent to what it is we are doing and what is being done in our name. And this war is like no other war. No situation Jews are in are ever like the others. We do not need to present ourselves in such a callous manner while we are killing people. Gruesome as Hamas is, we don’t need to be, nor should we be like them in any way. We nee dot be better than them - for ourselves.
I agree that it is important to be who we are and not to allow ourselves to be drawn down to the level of our enemies. Nonetheless, we need to maintain our inherent humanity.
Indeed. That’s why I began my initial comment noting the need for levity in coping with the stress ... which is VERY different than putting it out there into the world as some sort of grim spectacle of indifference to the gravity of the reality which is that lives are being lost, regardless of whose. The worst thing one human can do to another is to kill them, whatever the reasons or circumstances. Levity can be experienced in a private manner, between comrades, but posting such things to social media ... that is not a thing that has ever been necessary to find a place to ground oneself as a soldier in the insanity of war. Doing so as a public spectacle is strikingly insensitive (and even narcissistic)and diminishes the gravity of the job and the sanctity of life to the rest of the world. If soldiers don’t give AF about how they appear as professionals whose core competency is to be prepared to take the life of other human beings - even within a defensive stance, even when those humans are terrorists - and even though one does not always know who exactly they are slaying - then it is a dishonour toward of all life to behave in such a publicly trite manner. Anyway, I am done trying to explain why publicly sharing how one is dancing on the job when the job is to kill is very much not ok.
The Friends parody was just the humor needed across the Gulf of the Diaspora . I can just imagine the spoofs that were created after the Jews crossed the Red Sea, especially by the non-swimmers in the tribe! Am Yisrael chai and laugh!!!
Unless you are in Israel now fighting the fight all of us who are not there need not comment. We aren’t there now.
Stop worrying what the world thinks. We know a majority of people hate Jews.
Be Jewish. Read Torah. It’s all there. Read Torah and stop trying to please the world.
To those who fought and left. You left Israel. To those who’s parents were holocaust survivors the world appears to not care. To people like me born in North America Am Israel Chai.
I’m sorry, I’m American, Israeli and an ex combat soldier. I fail to see the humor in either spoof and it, in my opinion, reflects the depths of despair and anguish when a nation can find such videos funny.
Oops apologies- LOVE dogs. Stay safe
One more thought. The Romans invented Palestine. The Romans are long gone. Palestine is fictitious. Meaning NOT REAL
Keep the videos coming!!!!
@Sabrina Paradis You write the way a dog barks. Eventually, people turn away because it just sounds like noise. You seem more interested in asserting how right you are blurting at people you haven’t taken the tie to actually listen to and understand . Which is fine, if that’s what you want. (But then why bother commenting. It’s hard to take you seriously with that degree of bull-in-a China-shop bluster and DGAF0about-anyone-else-arrogance) But it’s a dead end. But you won’t even realize it because only your venting opinion and need to think you are superior and know things (you clearly do not know - and it shows). Ugh 🤦🏻♀️
As a Jew who sits safely in Canada not ever fighting for Eretz Israel let alone sending my child to fight, the soldiers are doing exactly what they should do. No negative comments from anyone jnless you are in the fight.
This does NOT look funny beside the TV news reporting from inside Gaza. Would that Gd the giftie ‘’ge’us to see irselves as ithers see us.
Stop trying to appease - just be a Torah Jew. Stay strong
Humor is a way to deal with pain. This shows it and gives hope n
Bravo for finding a moment of humor and camaraderie in the midst of the ongoing horror, which absolutely no one is not taking seriously. Humor is rarely politically correct. Its incongruity is often what makes it funny. Humor has far more capacity for release and restoration in dark times than does worrying about what the neighbors might think. Good on ya, and thanks for sharing. Love from the U.S.
A week or two later, when very many victims had not yet been identified, when they were just beginning to understand the extent of the catastrophe, when people left their families, jobs and homes to protect them, an episode of the comedy show “Eretz Nehederet” was shown on TV.
This is what was needed at this time. Many could not understand whether they would be able to laugh after all this.