Bustan Sephardi - Habima Theatre

This legendary play, written by Yitzhak Navon — the fifth President of the State of Israel, a politician, diplomat, and a man of education and spirit — was first staged in 1969 at the Bimot Theater, directed by Yosef Milo. The second production of the play was taken on by Habima Theater, which has carried the torch for more than twenty years — since 1998. Today it is the longest-running show at the theater. Yaakov Cohen, for example, continues to play the role of Mushon — the narrator who returns to his childhood neighborhood and leads the audience through its streets, characters, traditions, and dramas. Alongside him on stage appear stars such as Guy Zu-Aretz, Galit Giat, and others. One of the goals of the play at the time was to raise the profile of Israel's Mizrahi (Eastern) communities, during a period when Mizrahi culture was suppressed and given almost no expression in the Israeli mainstream. As Navon himself said in an interview with Eli Eshed: "There were stories and dialogues there... and talk about the world, about Sephardim and Ashkenazim, about mixed marriages, and about each other's customs — with the message being: 'When you marry someone different, the mixed salads taste better in the end.' That was a breakthrough — the first time something from Spanish-Jewish culture was brought to the stage." The play is built as a collage combining stories from the 1930s in the Sephardi neighborhood of Ohel Moshe in Jerusalem with sacred and secular songs taken from the "Book of Romances" and from the "Anthology of Spanish Cantorial Music" by the composer, ethnologist, and singer Yitzhak Levy. By: Yitzhak Navon. Director: Tzadi Tzarfati. Cast: Roni Dalumi, Hani Nahmias, Pini Kidron, Gal Goldstein, Shachar Raz, Matan Shavit, Yuval Shlomovich, Ruthy Landau, Shafi Marciano, Miki Peleg-Rothstein, Uri Hochman, Shmulik Cohen, Hila Shalev, Gal Shitrit, Ronit Apel, Nil Mishan, Tal Mosery, Avraham Salekter, Roberto Polak, Shiran Huberman.