After 37 years: Benny Ziffer says goodbye - and he has something to say about the Netanyahu couple
After 37 years as editor of the "Culture and Literature" supplement of "Haaretz", Benny Ziffer is ending his role with the closure of the supplement. In an interview with 103FM, he spoke about the shock of being fired and discussed the connection between his dismissal and his closeness to the Netanyahu couple.
After 37 years as editor of the "Culture and Literature" supplement of "Haaretz", Benny Ziffer is saying goodbye to the role and to the supplement, which will be closed and integrated into the newspaper's book section. In an interview with Iris Kol on 103FM, he spoke today (Tuesday) about the dismissal, about the changes occurring in the world of journalism and culture, and about the long period in which he stood at the head of one of the most identified literary supplements in Israel.
"Benjamin Tammuz told me when I joined 'Haaretz': 'Know this, only the poor and the stupid work'. He said about himself: 'I don't actually work, I just enjoy myself, I am not considered someone who works'. I persisted in this and I simply enjoyed it. I enjoyed it," Ziffer recounted.
Despite the way his path ended, he does not look back with anger. "After the initial shock, I tell myself that one should look back not with anger at all, it really was a wonderful period that I had," he said. "I feel that I can say as a headline that once belonged to Aharon Appelfeld, 'The Age of Wonders' - it was an age of wonders. A wonderful period, and it is unique in its kind, this period that I edited the literature supplement. Essentially, it was the end of a generation. Think that I was still at the tail end of the era of Agnon and Kurzweil".
Ziffer described the years in which he edited the supplement as a direct connection to central generations in Hebrew literature. "I received the supplement from hands that truly saw the greatest geniuses of that literature, and I also had the privilege to know and publish the generation of writers of the 60s, some of whom are no longer with us today: Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Yehoshua Kenaz. I worked with Yehoshua Kenaz!" he said with undisguised enthusiasm. "Think that this was an editor of a French literary supplement who lived in the era of Flaubert or Balzac, or in Russia in the days of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. That is my feeling - I truly had the privilege to be in a wonderful era of literature".
"Today, of course, there are wonderful writers and all that, it's not that literature has stopped, it never stops, but this feeling that I lived in an era that is really like a legend and that I had the privilege of this, so I cannot be bitter or anything like that," he added.
Ziffer, who is also identified with his closeness to the couple Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu and has absorbed criticism for this over the years, rejected the possibility that this connection is behind his dismissal. "It is really not true," he ruled. "The fact is that years after I had already switched sides, they still gave me [work]".
According to him, the reason is broader and touches on the change that has passed over the journalism market and the way success is measured. "Even in the theater, one sees this tendency toward terrible popularization. I am talking about journalism and literature. We were used to having an automatic audience that was willing to give, for example in the case of 'Haaretz', that was willing to pay its best money and buy a subscription, and everything was some sort of very harmonious order of things. And that's it, it's over," he said.
"'Haaretz' is not funded by the government like cultural institutions, it has no support, it must arrive and survive. And in order to survive, this is what happens," he added with sorrow. "And the literature supplement is like the end of the end of the end, because how much traffic can there be for literature? Even so, it is for the few. That is to say, there really needs to be a person with a huge breadth of spirit who will say 'Okay, this is not profitable, I am holding this even though it is not profitable at all'".
According to him, even in recent years he tried to adapt the supplement's work to the changing reality. "With my meager powers, I did something that brings a few more readers, and I did not seclude myself in an ivory tower".
Now, with the end of the period, Ziffer also looks at the decisions he made over the years as an editor. "There are always regrets about things I did not publish. There were many people who wanted to publish and I told them 'no'. One always has to choose a little from all the abundance that arrives. There were personal cases of people who were caused terrible heartache, poets, even from the establishment, whom I did not publish, and the heart broke to see it. But that was the task of an editor".
And what next? From his perspective, the routine has not yet ended. "Slowly. Until the beginning of October, I will still get up to do a new supplement, to plan a new supplement, always with such a feeling that I am going to a routine job, it is actually creation," said Ziffer.
