Motti Reif Opens Up: “I Cry Like a Man”

Video: Motti Reif in an interview on the “Walla Personal” podcast with Maor Ben Harush / Stills: Reuven Castro

Motti Reif began his career in the industry at just 16, as a young boy who grew up in Haifa. A few years later, he moved to the big city and gradually made his way to the other side of that same industry. Over the years, he became one of Israel’s best-known producers and entrepreneurs, always at the heart of the country’s cultural and fashion worlds. In a special interview with “Walla Personal,” Reif spoke about the long road he traveled to fulfill his dreams, growing up in the closet and only coming out at 39, the days when he prayed his attraction to men would go away, the shared parenting that began when he became a father at just 28, his planned wedding to partner Seymour Luzon, the behind-the-scenes secrets of the “Miss Israel” pageant and the fashion week he founded, the values he has always wanted to promote, why he is not going into politics, and the big dream he still has left to achieve. Watch the full interview at the top of the article.

How are you?

Overall, it’s a complicated period, there’s uncertainty, but all in all I’m okay.

As a producer, it must have already affected one or two productions during the rounds of war.

I have the production of my life next week, my daughter is getting married.

Was there some fear?

Yes. But I believe He is watching over us. It’s hard for everyone, but the first people to be hit are certainly those in culture and production.

Of course, but even in times like these I have to admit that this seclusion at home always opens up the possibility of creation, of writing, even in these situations I find creativity. During the war I wrote a book. You sit at home and don’t go out, you have time, you don’t have thousands of meetings, you don’t have phone calls, you sit and I actually wrote a book. And even in this war, when I have no advantage and nothing to help with, you sit and creativity flourishes.

Let’s go back a bit. As a kid who grew up like you in Haifa, when you moved to Tel Aviv, the big city, everyone still knew Motti Reif as “the model from Haifa who is now taking on the big city.” How did that happen?

It always makes me laugh that this reference to me being a model exists at all, because in my forty years of career, and this year I’m finishing forty years of career since I left Haifa, I was a model for one year. And it always makes me laugh that this reference comes up at all. I finished the army, I was a dreamer, my dream was more Hollywood, Los Angeles, so Tel Aviv was like a step on the way. And it’s very difficult, because for those of us from Haifa, we look at Tel Aviv as the big city, as America. And you arrive right after the army, not knowing anyone here. But it’s a very beautiful period.

How did you get into modeling anyway? Did a scout see you in the street?

No, in Haifa I was already a model, we had this group of models and female models, I was the only male model. I came here and through connections, through contacts. I was only a model for one year, which means I very quickly moved to the other side. What did you do?

When I moved to Tel Aviv, on the first day, Ofer Refaeli, who was then a very successful model, we were childhood friends and he arranged for me to sleep אצל, with, one of the biggest stylists there was, his name was Nimrod Dror, and he arranged for me to stay with him until I found work. I remember arriving with my bag, the whole way from Haifa to Tel Aviv there were cassettes then, and I remember putting music on, music has always accompanied me in different ways in life. I put one song on repeat, I recorded Almaz’s “Kama Rotziti Shetehi Sheli” (“How much I wanted you to be mine”). I listened to it the whole way from Haifa to Tel Aviv and the whole way I cried. I remember my father said to me, “If you move to Tel Aviv, you won’t get a penny from me, Tel Aviv is gays and drugs.” And I remember that the whole way from Haifa to Tel Aviv I cried, I said, “What did I do?” In Haifa I was very popular as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, I was very involved from a very young age. I was a model in Haifa and the organizer of fashion shows in Haifa told me, “You have no reason to move to Tel Aviv, you can’t stand there among all the big names,” and there was Yaron Pink and all the big models. He said to me, “You’ll lose everything you have here, they’ll take your place and you’ll come back with your tail between your legs and you won’t have anywhere to return to.” All my life that’s what drove me, just let them say I can’t.

And you arrive in Tel Aviv and you don’t know anyone. On the first night at Nimrod’s, he, Ofer Nissim and two other gays sat in the kitchen playing cards and speaking in feminine language, and I went into the room and started crying, crying even more, what did I do, what is this, it scared me terribly.

So you knew you were gay?

I knew from a very young age, but I come from a generation where that wasn’t a thing, certainly not in Haifa. In Tel Aviv there was Zalman Shoshi, who was in Tel Baruch, scandals, fights, we saw her on the news. And that was basically the figure you were supposed to identify with, and it was terribly frightening. And in Haifa there was “Koni the homo,” he had an eyeglasses store. I remember that just the words “Koni the homo” always attracted me, I used to buy glasses once a week. Then you get to Koni and you see he is a lovely man, I spoke to him not long ago, I found his phone number and called him because I really wanted to share my feelings with him.

Was it because you were afraid you’d be like him?

You’re terribly afraid. At home, my father was a wonderful man and everything, but in the end, another generation. My first encounter that I remember was when we were at the home of my parents’ friends, Deborah and Alex, in Kiryat Yam, and there was a Pride parade on the news, they called it a parade of gays and lesbians. And I remember my father saying terrible things. Now, as a child, you feel something, you feel some kind of connection to this thing. I asked what gays and lesbians were and Deborah said, “Those are people attracted to their own sex.” My father said, “Their own sex, they should be taken away,” it was awful. I remember that night when I came home, I remember the moment I got into bed and said, “Those people are so unfortunate, they don’t have a father like mine who loves them like that.” And I remember thinking that when I grow up, and God forbid I turn out like that, then I’ll decide I’m not like that. That’s a child’s thought.

And did you try not to be?

I grew up in a house where, in my father’s eyes, a real man is one who sleeps with as many women as possible. And you want to prove to your father that you’re a man.

And you did it.

I worked at it, I believed him. When I grew a little older, from the age of 13, every girl in the class wanted me. In the end I had nothing to hide, nobody called me gay, nobody called me feminine, never. On the contrary, sometimes I say that if I had been more feminine it would have been easier for me. God bless women, when they want something they get it, and I really worked at it. I also believed my father that it could pass.

When did you come to terms with the fact that it wouldn’t pass?

At 39. As a child I used to hold the Bible from school and pray that He would take it away from me, that it would go away from me. Later I always thanked my father, because in that period, at the end of the 1970s and 1980s, the AIDS epidemic broke out and everyone who partied died, and it was terrible suffering. So later I thanked my father for saving me. There was no such concept as gay either.

And what happened at 39?

Much earlier, with myself, I didn’t want to. I would stand in front of the mirror and say, “Tell me, I am gay,” and I couldn’t say it. For many, many years I lived a double life.

You probably know fashion designer Shlomi Dadon, who made the other change, he was always the feminine gay everyone knew as a designer and he married a woman.

First of all, may he have luck and blessing. I saw it and was moved for him. Each of us, every one of us, has different needs. And in the end, the decision to live with whomever you choose, everything is not based on sexuality, because in the end a relationship over the years is measured in friendship, appreciation, support. But he said that “it passed for him.” We can only wish him success and good fortune. Each of us comes from a different culture, a different society, a different family. In the end, everyone has different needs.

The question always comes up why there needs to be a Pride parade, why there needs to be a Pride Month. The reason we need a Pride parade is because there are still children like me and you who did not live their truth for many years because of the environment they lived in, because I understood it was a great sin. We know many stories of boys and girls, teenagers, who get to the point of suicide, depression, anxiety. So this parade is intended for those boys and girls today who are in religious and Arab societies. So why not make this education daily? Some will say, why do you need a parade now, do whatever you want with whoever you want. We need to separate the issue of sexuality in this community from living your truth. In my view, this parade is meant so that one more boy or one more girl today, in various places in closed societies and societies where the prohibition of this is truly at a very high and severe level, will gain the courage to live their truth.

Don’t you think it needs to be integrated, in schools, on television?

Of course, absolutely, and IGY and many other organizations and council members in Israel are working on it. I come from a generation where talking about your truth was simply impossible. And today when you see teenagers, and figures like Assi Azar and Ivri Lider, we didn’t have that, and yes, Assi Azar speaks to that same boy or girl and gives them some strength to live their truth, and that has supreme value. People like Assi Azar and others like him, Miki Boganim and all of them, we didn’t have that. We lived in secret, in suffering, and it was immense pain. And today I deal a lot with the issue of violence against women, sexual violence, in the end in these closed societies the numbers are the highest for sexual violence and sexual assaults.

At what age did you become a father?

Close to 30.

Which is very young for someone who is conquering the world and at some kind of peak.

The peaks had not even started yet. Your name was already known and you did shared parenting, which is something I’m not sure existed then.

Noa and Omri were born out of immense love for their mother, Penina Barik, who was in the band “Sexta.” She worked with me for many years and we were very close, and this was after I separated from Pinchi (Mor), and Penina took all the responsibility for the office. Penina reached a relatively late age, and I didn’t want her to continue her life without experiencing the experience of being a mother, because she is so maternal and such an amazing woman. It’s crazy that someone who is 28 thinks about that at all. I had been through many relationships before, children were not even on my radar, I was a child myself. But it was only because I really wanted her to experience being a mother, and Penina is an exemplary mother.

And how did people react? Today shared parenting is very legitimate. Back then it was strange, no?

I never cared what people said. I never did what was customary, never. But what about gossip and the media columns, how did they deal with it?

Penina gave birth at a relatively late age then, close to 48. And we were blessed with twins, a girl and a boy, so it was perfect. She is an exemplary mother.

You didn’t live in the same house.

Never.

Did you want more children later on?

Yes, with Penina, but simply because with Penina it could no longer happen, so it was less relevant. And today my Babaluli has two children, so they are like my children.

How long have you been engaged?

We’ve been together for almost eight years. I proposed after half a year, maybe even less. We were supposed to get married before the coronavirus, but Babaluli didn’t want to get married because he had already been married, and I had not experienced a wedding. And I started making a list and got to 600 people and I was at letter G. So we dropped it. I told him I would get married, if you come, great, if not, all good. But you can do something small. I’ve been working for 40 years, I’m almost 62, I’m connected to so many people, we have a very close relationship with many circles of people I want to celebrate with and who will celebrate with me. I always said I wanted to get married at the Sea of Galilee. I said, if Jesus walked on water, I also want to walk to the canopy over the water. As a child I always knew I wanted to get married at the Sea of Galilee. And before the coronavirus we booked three days at Kibbutz Ginosar, taking over the entire guesthouse, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I believe it will happen too. Babaluli.

As someone who crowned the most famous names among the most well-known girls as beauty queens, what do you think about the fact that this competition no longer exists?

We are living in a completely different era now. The whole issue of defining beauty by height, size, age, gender, and color is wrong. It is not only wrong, it also caused immense damage. I’m not biting the hand that fed me, but I experienced it, I was part of it, I was never a designer, I was a producer, so you see the damage the fashion industry did over the years, בעיקר to women. Because you look at a model that you were not born that way. The absurdity is that girls who were six feet tall lived in misery, were called camels and giraffes, and suffered terribly. And every woman who sees a tall woman says, “That’s my dream.” Less than 1 percent of the world’s population is that height, and then the issue of size was added too. The beauty model has changed over the years. If we go back to earlier times, the influencers were the women the painters painted, full-figured, big busts. But in the world it still happens, the Miss Universe and Miss World competitions. And that is very sad. That is why I founded Fashion Week. You won’t see a contestant at Miss Universe who is above a certain size, I’m not talking about size 40, not even 38, maybe. This has to change.

I know from my small corner that Fashion Week does not allow any designer to present with models of only one beauty standard. By contract, they must have at least one third age, size, and height diversity. In every show you will have full-figured, tall, short models, of every religion, that is the reason I started Fashion Week and that has become the main reason today. It is a must. A designer today who does not participate in Fashion Week, you should know that he did not agree. And there were כאלה?

Of course. Most of them. Most of the designers, by the way, the men, and some of the women too, think that a perfect model is a tall, thin model, six feet, size 32. That is not acceptable. At the end of the day there are plenty of beautiful women, and you see that the definition of beauty is absolutely not measured by age, height, and size.

How many years did you produce the Miss Israel pageant?

Not many. I was a kid who knew what he felt inside. I remember walking around the Hadar neighborhood in Haifa, and there used to be those round bulletin boards and there were posters for beauty queens, and I remember it said “Director: Tzedi Tzarfati” in huge letters. I remember standing in front of that and seeing the name Motti Reif under it. When I came to Tel Aviv it was a kind of dream come true. In the first year, Ofer brought me to an audition to be an escort for beauty queens, a male escort for the contestants, it was at Yad Eliyahu then, it was not a television broadcast. Ofer and I stood there on the stage and I said to him, “Can you believe that both of us from Bat Galim are here on this big stage?” We felt on top of the world. Tzedi told me, “You’re a star.” And from there Tzedi took me to a clip with Yardena Arazi to sing “Ma Natata Li” (“What Have You Given Me”) and made me the star of the clip. He separated me from the other models. I remember that he and Chaim Sela said, “You’re going to be a big star.” By the way, I wanted them to start with me, because it was buried deep inside, but nothing, absolutely nothing.

The Miss Israel story was a kind of fulfillment for a boy in the closet. I loved the stage, I loved creating the world. It was always very important to me to have added value in it, so the sets were different too, the whole production was different. There were Gal Gadot, Linor Abargil, Rana Raslan, Ilanit Levy, each of them brought something different. Ilanit Levy, nobody wanted her because she was short, she was under 1.70, she was 1.69 and not the right size. The choice of Ilanit was because who decided that a beauty queen has to be size 36 to 38? Rana Raslan too, the first Arab Miss Israel winner, it was a few years after Rabin’s assassination, we were in a different period and there was some desire for peace and I really wanted it to say the next day, “History: first Arab beauty queen.” Nobody thought she was supposed to win, but I thought it was much bigger than that. A person’s beauty comes not only from how they look, but largely from personality. Rana also replaced Linor (Abargil), who was a very big symbol of what Linor brought. Each of these women brought added value to the crown. Gal Gadot was also chosen because of her personality, absolutely. Gal has not changed to this day, her personality and her humility.

On the morning of Titi (Aynahu)’s competition, I woke up and saw an awful headline on Facebook that hundreds of blood donations from Ethiopians had been thrown away. I remember the shivers and I said, “Tonight an Ethiopian beauty queen will be chosen,” because it is important for us on this platform to give the Ethiopian girls’ community a chance to hold their heads high. And it happened. Titi is one of the activists, one of the women activists. Titi is a gift from this system.

You are a city council member in Tel Aviv. Do you want to be mayor of Tel Aviv?

No. Jobs like that carry a lot of responsibility, a huge burden. I do these things every day in my life. Why do I need the obligation? If anything, I would want to be Minister of Welfare.

Have you ever been offered to run for politics?

Of course. But I really enjoy what I do, my world is very broad, diverse, and creative. And alongside that, 50 percent of my life today is public, volunteer work. I am in the role by choice.

Do you already know who you’re going to vote for in the next elections?

I am a man of the field, we have an amazing people. My lectures from north to south, I live and breathe the people, mainly in front of an audience of women. And I wish that one leader would emerge who would really look us in the eye and see our people’s need, the need for education, welfare, health. Unfortunately, today I cannot point to anyone. Nobody sees these invisible people, nobody really does. And it doesn’t matter which side.

I’m a city council member, I came in as a council member and set myself a number of goals that I will judge myself by in terms of success. From such a seat you can change people’s world. You can fix people’s lives if a person wants to be fixed, you can. And you don’t see anyone coming and saying, “I want to deal with violence now.” We used to talk only about violence against women, today it is violence in the street everywhere. Where does that come from? Look at your government, all of it. The language, this violence, is seeping and trickling down today into elementary schools. Where is such a thing heard of? Who takes responsibility for the whole issue of health? Have you ever been with someone close to you who was hospitalized and you weren’t a celebrity? Go and look. Education, health, welfare, there are people here who have nothing to eat in our country, so is it any wonder that crime and violence are soaring?

So why don’t you want to run for office?

I am very involved, I help as much as I can. And the saddest thing is that today this world is mostly run by the wrong kind of men. Today there is some change, but men grow up and operate from a completely different place.

Do you remember being told, “Don’t cry”? Do you remember being told, “Don’t act like a girl”? “Don’t run like a woman”? The worst sentence they ever said to us, and still say to us, is “Be a man.” I remember my father saying to me, “Why are you crying like a girl?” What is crying like a girl? I cry like a man. These sentences, to each of us boys, create an emotional block, they block our emotion at a very young age. This emotional block creates anger, and anger in certain societies creates violence. Think how distorted that is. Why do I need to cry like a woman, like a girl? I cry like a boy.

Do you cry a lot?

I love to cry. Today less, but I used to love crying in front of the mirror. Girls have the opposite expressions, girls are expected to be delicate, soft, quiet. A woman who has opinions is called “strong,” “a bitch,” “bitchy.” All of this distorted our entire system of equality as human beings. And this is one of my biggest pursuits, also as the holder of the gender equality portfolio in the Tel Aviv municipality and all my work, and also Fashion Week itself, where you change the definitions we grew up with.

Let’s talk about something that came out of Fashion Week, the wedding of Yuval Kaspi. You officiated their wedding, and it sparked a storm online. What do you think about it?

A storm in a teacup. In my view, Yuval and Nimrod are an example of a new-generation relationship. A generation unlike our parents’, not a generation where the man controls his woman and she is in the kitchen, taking care of the children, making food, and some of them also get hit here and there. In my opinion, Nimrod and Yuval represent a new generation of equal, moving relationships that support each other with 100 percent respect and appreciation, it’s lovely. I have never listened to what people have to say, I have always followed my own path. So what if they said.

It’s an amazing feeling to sanctify two people. Anyone can come to me and say they are more religious than I am. To be a religious person is to be a good person.

Will your daughter have a wedding with a rabbi?

No way, no. Babaluli will marry them. Each person will do what is right for them. I don’t think all of these commandments and rules speak to us, to me. The commandments I keep, let one religious person come and do one-tenth of what I do in a day. Who is going to tell me what it means to be a believer, or religious, or a good person, or someone who does for others? A skullcap on the head, with all due respect, and tzitzit do not make me a religious person. I am a very believing person, I believe in compassion, respect, values, morality. A skullcap on the head does not make a person religious, and certainly not good.

What other dream have you not fulfilled?

You were a model, a producer, an author, everything, everything you wanted you touched. What not?

A lot. I want to publish books, want to turn them into plays, my dream is to write an opera. Many things. In the end, all my work comes down to one goal, that everything I do should have meaning. Meaning for some kind of repair from your small place, how can I fix other people’s lives. And in every such endeavor there is something like that, and it is very nice to wake up in the morning knowing that you are succeeding in influencing and succeeding in fixing things for people, especially women. All this story of an equal world, that is my calling in life. To see how we manage to lead our society today, and you are already beginning to see sprouts among the young generation of girls who understand that they are no less equal than boys, and that is what we are working on.

We established the Authority for Resilience and Gender Equality in the Tel Aviv municipality, and you see amazing changes in the sports field, tens of percent of girls participating in sports activities, something that did not exist at all. The Mothers Fund that I established together with the Tel Aviv Foundation is a fund that today finances all the classes for the children of hundreds of single mothers who experienced violence in southern Tel Aviv. Do you know what it means to wake up in the morning and know that you are giving to girls and boys? I didn’t have money for classes. I would imagine, I would invent it for myself. As a child I swore that one day, if I had it, I would give to other children.

God willing we will live in an equal world where what is allowed for him is allowed for her. Because I did not grow up in such a house. Neither did you. You asked me what my dream is, so as much action as possible in favor of this issue of a meaningful world that creates equality.