Most of My Guilt Stems, Unfortunately, From My Israeli Identity
Where are we catching you? “After a lecture on political economy. I would be lying if I said I understood much, but I tried. My actor’s brain, which hears ‘economics’ and shuts down, makes things pretty difficult for me. But I am in a period where I am increasingly socially engaged, so I also want to understand how economics affects the way modern society looks.”
How and where do you drink your coffee? “I drink about five cups of coffee a day. My whole fuel supply runs on caffeine.”
Who would you like to sit down for a beer with? “I’d love to sit down for a beer with Sam Smith. He is very gay and queer, so the conversation topics would be joyful. He has the most beautiful voice in the world, and I think after the third beer we’d already be singing together. So I’m bringing a microphone to that get-together too.”
What are you working on now? “Three years ago I launched the podcast ‘Hamanifa’ with the Tel Aviv LGBT Center, where I talk with people from across the LGBTQ spectrum. I’m finishing recording a season now and starting to cook up the next one. It is really at the center of my professional life and brought me into social activism around LGBTQ rights, and from there to equal rights in general, and the struggle for a liberal and pluralistic society in Israel. This month I will host the pride parades in Beersheba and Rehovot, host panels and give lectures at several high-tech companies, take part in a conference on queer parenting, speak at an event of the gay caucus in the Knesset, and more.”
What is your quirk? “I need to do things with my fingers to concentrate. I have a kind of tic where I rub my fingers together. People always think something is wrong with me. Once a traffic police officer even stopped me while I was driving because he thought I was under the influence of some mind-altering substance. That is better than the worse thing I do with my fingers, plucking stubble from my beard. Terrible.”
What is the best advice you received? “Advice from the late Rachel Shor, who was my acting teacher and mostly a life teacher: ‘Be a person.’ Not necessarily nice, polite or liked by everyone, but in the sense of ‘be authentic, be yourself,’ and that is the most beautiful thing you can give the people around you.”
How do you like to spend Friday afternoon? “It is a festive moment. I really love Tel Aviv at that hour, buzzing almost too much but full of options. I like to take in theater and cultural events then. As a father to two little girls, I am very tired in the evening, so a play or a movie on Friday afternoon is a complete win. I am awake, focused and happy because tomorrow is Shabbat.”
What superpower would you want? “I would like to identify the moment when emotion and reason split, to know when I am being led by an emotional component and not an intellectual one. To surrender to emotion without committing to life-altering decisions, without hurting my loved ones and without hurting myself.”
In what circumstances do you lie? “Since I became a father, I find myself practicing the proverb my Bulgarian grandmother always says: ‘Not every truth is good to tell.’ In the middle of the difficult reality of an endless war, I find myself sparing my children a lot of that reality. I try to mediate only what has to be mediated.”
Who is, in your eyes, the sexiest person? “Very specifically, Erez Bernholtz, my beautiful and sexy partner, whom I have wanted for 18 straight years.”
Who do you miss? “The most burning longing is for the one who was taken too soon, my cousin Flory Vital-Shaked, my age, the sister of my heart. She was run over 8 years ago by mistake and aggressively while crossing the road at a crosswalk on Yigal Alon Street in Tel Aviv. She was a mother of two children, ages 2 and 4. That absurdly painful loss shattered my heart with a force I had never known and opened up a hole of longing that does not fill. I also miss the joyful 1990s, when Michal Yanai, my childhood heroine, won Festigal with the song ‘Shalom Hi Milah Shimusheet’ (‘Peace is a Useful Word’). I am full of longing for the days when the pursuit of peace was a central and popular value that was cool to believe in. I believe in peace now more than ever, and from the deep wound our society is experiencing there is a flourishing of a renewed imagination of the term.”
Where would you most like to live? “Right now my modest dream is to live in the apartment my partner and I bought with a great deal of blood, sweat and tears, in South Tel Aviv. Its renovation is set to begin this year, and I hope it goes quickly. I want to live in Israel, in my own home, and raise my children there safely. I want to live in a place with mutual trust, shared life, enjoyment of our unique civic diversity, and leadership you can look up to without wanting to throw up.”
What would you like to change about yourself? “I would be glad to change the absolute lethargy I feel toward sports, to want it a little more and enjoy the outward benefits it brings.”
What do you feel guilty about? “Most of my guilt is rooted, unfortunately, in my Israeli identity. The conflict between my great love for my Israeli identity and the great pain I see being caused within us and around us in the name of some idea of what Israel is supposed to be is difficult for me. I lost a relative on October 7 in Kibbutz Holit, and the personal and national pain from that day brought me to numbness and even a desire for revenge that lasted only a few days. Very quickly that mixed with pain over the tens of thousands of lives taken in the war, which felt to me pointless. And when I see how such a large public in Jewish Israeli society clings to numbness and reinforces the sentiment of revenge, I am left with even more guilt.”
What do you consider your greatest achievement? “My nuclear family. As an LGBTQ person, bringing children into the world and forming a family unit is no small matter. Our two daughters, Ora and Talia, are growing up in two very loving homes, of dad and dad, and of mom. I watch them becoming human beings with expanding awareness, look at the three parents who are also expanding their consciousness and together holding a complex and beautiful family structure, and I am very proud.”
What scares you? “What scares me most is the loss of hope. It is encouraging to discover that when you try to have a positive impact, actively, and it really does not matter how big the action is, hope immediately begins to sprout.”
What makes you happy? “Acting still makes me happy. To enter a ‘pretend’ state and be in it for real. And also cooking for people.”
What is most missing in your life? “Attention, social media is killing it for me. I want to read more books.”
What do you consider your most valuable asset? “My ability to express myself.”
Which artists influenced your work the most? “First of all Madonna, and then everyone else, the writer L.M. Montgomery who wrote ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ the playwright Tennessee Williams, Björk, Bnot Psia, the Spice Girls, Aviad Kisos as a journalist, Marina Abramović, HaChamishiya HaKamerit, Shuli Rand בעיקר as an actor, drag queen and actress Jinkx Monsoon, the directors Michael Haneke and Steve McQueen, and Brad Pitt in the 1990s בלי shirt.”
Yedidia Vitel, age 41. Lives in Tel Aviv. Married, unofficially, to Erez Bernholtz, together for 18 years plus 2 daughters in shared parenting. Actor, podcaster and content creator. Appeared in the series “HaShminiya,” “Shakshuka,” “Hachzuvya,” “Tamid Oto Chalom,” at Beit Lessin Theater and in the play “Fucking Man” at Tzavta Theater. Hosts the podcast “Hamanifa” of the Tel Aviv LGBT Center, from the House of Ariela podcast network.
