Video Series Three (in Hebrew)

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Each of the following spots was aired as the first program of the day for a long period of time on Israel’s leading television station. The material, written and taught by Marc Gafni, revolves around what he has termed (on the Scholar’s page in the introduction to his bestselling English and Hebrew work Soul Prints) Personal Myth.

In Israel, the dominant national relationship to Judaism was based for many years on what Marc Gafni has referred to as National Myth. When Marc Gafni first began talking about this distinction in the early nineties in Israel, the “knit skullcap” religious Zionist movement, which might have provided a genuine spiritual option for much of secular Israel, was mired down in National Myth. Religious Zionism taught its adherents a path of deep engagement in spirit, tradition and Mitzvah, and viewed commitment to secular learning, historical consciousness, literature, humanities, and the sciences as part of its engagement with spirit. Moreover, the religious Zionist community serves in Israel’s Defense Forces as opposed to the Ultra-Orthodox population.

All of this together should have made this community a natural role model for Israel’s secular majority. However, it did not. Simply because this same community had taken a stand on the issue of Greater Israel, for the most part refusing to consider trading land for peace. Whatever the validity of this position may or may not have been, it severed the natural influence that this community might have had on broader currents in Israeli society. The myopic commitment to personal myth obscured the tremendous contribution of depth and insight found in the tradition in regard to Personal Myth.

Personal Myth is how Marc Gafni refers to the stuff of daily living: Silence, Laughter, Tears, Dance, Eros, Sexuality, Gossip, Anger, Jealousy and Malice, Ecstasy, and more.

In an attempt to redress this imbalance in the society, Marc Gafni filmed a National Television show that ran for three years on Israel’s leading television station called Under His Vine, Tachat Gafno in Hebrew (a take on Marc’s Hebrew name, Gafni). The television shows were followed by another three years of television spots of five to seven minutes, which were called “Rega Im Gafni” (“A minute with Gafni”). Both the shows and the shorter spots were based on an in-depth engagement with Personal Myth as opposed to National Myth. The goal was to open the Personal Myth door of spirit to many in Israel who were repelled or simply nonplussed by the National Myth door preferred by the rabbis and institutions of religious Zionism, or by the fundamentalist bent of Ultra-Orthodoxy.

Both shows were met with critical and popular acclaim as well as significant critique within some sectors of the Orthodox world.

After the full-length show, Under his Vine, was completed, Marc Gafni became very involved in creating an Israeli spiritual cultural movement, Bayit Chadash, which he founded and headed for six years.

Caveat: Gafni is a translation of Marc’s English-born name Winiarz, which literally means ‘vineyard in polish,’ hence the translation of Gefen and ‘under his vine.’ Like many committed Americans who moved to Israel, Marc Gafni hebraicized his name as an act of commitment to Israel. However, he never abandoned his birth name and in all of his books on the author’s page, he refers explicitly to his birth name and to the reasons he hebraicized it upon moving to Israel.

For more about the television show, see upcoming postings of some of the shows.

for future television shows, movies and media projects of Marc Gafni see updates as they become available on the home page.

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