The Sun and the Sword, The Moon and the Mirror

The Sun and the Sword,
The Moon and the Mirror

by Erel Shalit

Besides the more commonly accounted for masculine, solar aspect of the hero’s journey, we may refer to a feminine, lunar attribute as well. They represent different attitudes vis-à-vis the unconscious.

The sun-hero has a dual relationship to the Great Mother, as exemplified by Heracles; his name means Glory of Hera, yet the goddess drives him to madness. He sets out on the mission to break free from the bonds of the Great Mother, to face her magnitude, ready to draw his sword in combat with her however awesome she seems to be, and to enhance his ego-consciousness. The sun-hero, while not always able to fulfill the entire mission of his journey, works towards replacing id and the unconscious with ego. He must abandon the comfort and the security of the kingdom of childhood, about which Jung writes:

For him who looks backwards the whole world, even the starry sky, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides ... As such a condition must be terminated, and as it is at the same time an object of regressive longing, it must be sacrificed in order that discriminated entities - i.e., conscious contents - may come into being.(1)

On his way to consciousness the hero encounters monstrous and malicious obstacles that, as Jung says, rise in his path and hamper his ascent, wearing “the shadowy features of the Terrible Mother, who saps his strength with the poison of secret doubt and retrospective longing.”(2) He risks being devoured by the Earth Mother, destroyed by the gods, to burn in the flames of passion set afire by the nymphs, or die in battle with his competing Martian warriors. His world is patriarchal, goal-directed and lawful, thus he may lose direction and plunge into unconsciousness, teased and tantalized by the feminine seductress intruding from afar, as became the tragic fate of Samson.

It is the sun-hero’s undertaking to break away, to free himself from the archetypal world.

Cover image by @ Susan Bostrom-Wong

Simultaneously, as part of his mission, he must gather the strength required to bring the very same archetypal energy into the ego and human consciousness. Thus, the hero has one foot in divinity, one in the world of mortals. It is the hero’s task to dismember the archetypal energies and transpose them as increasingly human complexes into the personal world and the realm of the ego. This is what Prometheus does when he brings fire to man. His name means forethinker; the Promethean fire is the capacity to plan the use of that natural transformative energy, fire, for the benefit of mankind, to create consciousness and acculturation, heating and cooking, creating new materials and fresh ideas.(3) But also when the complex has become autonomous, split-off from consciousness and detracting energy from the ego, the hero is called for. The man who compulsively clung to a job far below his capabilities because of his fear of losing it was constantly threatened by dismissal until he gathered his strength to fight the complex that nearly destroyed him.

The sun-hero may be the obstinate two-year-old who repeatedly says no and no to being dressed, “I dress.” Or the five-year-old who pulls the hero’s phallic sword with which he fights the beasts within—as they are projected upon the little kindergarten-brutes of the real world without. The sun-hero is unmistakably masculine, a He, whether a boy or a girl.

The solar hero brings something new, something formerly unknown into the consciousness of the individual or that of society. By means of the adventures of the sun-hero, man has, for instance, accomplished scientific achievements and expanded geographical boundaries. The solar aspect of the hero pertains to patriarchal consciousness. With his sword, the hero cuts and divides, which is structurally essential for the establishment and expansion of consciousness.

But there is a lunar aspect or phase of the hero’s journey as well, which may likewise unfold when the hero abandons the conventions of the royal throne and the safe rule of ego, when he stands up against and turns away from collective consciousness. This is the case, for instance, with Buddha, whose way is enlightened by reflection rather than by the splendor of the sword. It pertains to conceiving, rather than “deliberate doing,” and, says Neumann, “time must ripen, and with it, like the seeds sown in the earth, knowledge matures.”(4)

This is the moon-hero. He, or in fact She, because it pertains rather to the feminine, whether in man or woman, ventures into the dangerous paths, the forests and the rivers, the hills and the valleys, the labyrinths and the netherworlds, the pandemonium, the chaos and the torment outside the boundaries of collective consciousness, beyond norms and conventions. She is maybe not the skillful goal-directed archer Apollo, but rather his twin sister Artemis, the hunter goddess roaming in the wilderness and the forest, armed with silver bow and arrows. This may be the sense of drifting around the outskirts of town, sneaking into backyards, to hike around in foreign places in the geography of the world or in the psychography of the soul, learning “how to observe nature, the way it grows and changes.”(5) It is dangerous; as happens to Artemis, by mistake, you may kill your loved one, or if you come too close you may be transformed into a stag, because it is an oscillating journey between death and rebirth, waxing and waning, appearance and disappearance, love and disaster, reflection and deflection, healing and wounding. The ground easily quakes, and on winding roads and behind thorny bushes the forces of love and madness, pain and desire, despair and anticipation struggle with savage ferocity. The lunar hero pertains to relationship and unification, but breakup and falling apart, as well.

The hero’s lunar quality refers to the mirror and reflection, rather than the sword and division. As we shall see later, Perseus is equipped with both.

In its lunar aspect, the hero does not attack the unconscious. It entails a conscious turning towards the unconscious, quietly and humbly awaiting what in the course of time arises and unfolds in the hero’s reflective mirror. As Campbell says:

The mirror, reflecting the goddess and drawing her forth from the august repose of her divine non-manifestation, is symbolic of the world, the field of the reflected image. Therein divinity is pleased to regard its own glory, and this pleasure is itself inducement to the act of manifestation or “creation.”(6)

The following is the dream of a sixty-year-old man, slowly finding his way home to himself after having “been away” for a long time, during an extraverted career:

I feel an urge to return home. I have been away for a long time. As I get home, I see that a man sits on a chair in the attic, watching the dark sky through a telescope—there is a big opening in the roof. He calls me to look, and I try to look carefully through the telescope, but I see nothing. I turn and turn the telescope, yet, I can’t see anything. He shouts and yells at me and I feel very embarrassed, and he tells me angrily to go and sit and wait next to a little girl who sits on a bench. She looks like she is in a dream state, just looking up at the sky. First I look at her, and then I lose the focus, and like her I just look at the dark sky, and then, suddenly, a very bright star shines far far away but very very clearly, and then I see the moon, so close, almost as if I could touch it.

Naturally, the lunar aspect of the hero is closely related to matriarchal consciousness, as elaborated in depth by Erich Neumann.(7) Queen Jocasta, Shining Moon, as representative of the feminine side of consciousness, has been discussed elsewhere.(8) However, Neumann is mainly concerned with matriarchal or moon-consciousness as something preceding patriarchal consciousness, pertaining to “enchantment and magic, ... inspiration and prophecy” rather than “its recurrence in the psychology of individuation, which is a reappearance at a higher level, as is always the case where, in the course of normal development, we again encounter something already experienced.”(9) I believe the lunar and the solar elements constitute complementary aspects of the hero and his/her journey, even if the one may precede or dominate the other.

In fact, as regards the lunar aspect of the hero’s journey, he naturally ventures into darkness only as the sun sets, rather than at dawn. Yet, the hero needs to be equipped with some of the day’s light to withstand the night’s depressive darkness, and with summer’s warmth for the cold loneliness of winter not to overwhelm him.

He travels at night-time, west to east, in the reflective light of the moon rather than in the unambiguous light of day. “The alchemical work starts with the descent into darkness (nigredo), i.e., the unconscious” says Jung.(10) Only thereafter “one arrives at the east and the newborn sun,” says Edinger.(11) Ayala, a forty-year-old woman, dreams:

It is midnight, midsummer night. I am barefoot, walking from the sea eastward, on a thorny field. My feet hurt, I am bleeding. Then, suddenly, a path opens up, crossing the field in the centre, dividing it in two, lit up by the light of the moon. As I walk along, still feeling the pain in my feet, a man suddenly appears from the dark and blocks my way. He is religious, completely shrouded in his Tallith [the prayer shawl], even his head is covered. He barely notices me, and he does not move to let me pass. I have to stop and wait, and listen to him reciting a prayer. I look at him as he prays, and very quietly he looks at me, in a warm and kind way. I feel his quiet prayer fills me up within, and he then blows the shofar [the ram’s horn], and I feel a wave of excitement.

While the dream was experienced during an afternoon nap, it takes place during summer’s brief night. The dreamer is guided along her path by the moon. The peripeteia occurs when her road is blocked, but she need not actively struggle with her adversary. Rather, this woman, who had experienced a deep narcissistic wound due to lack of adequate mirroring in early childhood, allows herself in the dream to be mirrored by the religious man’s chanting prayer. Jung says:

Christ, or the self, is a “mirror”: on the one hand it reflects the subjective consciousness of the disciple, making it visible to him, and on the other hand it “knows” Christ, that is to say it does not merely reflect the empirical man, it also shows him as a (transcendental) whole.(12)

The dream-ego, the I in our dreams, is our recurrent nightly hero, our messenger who ventures into dreamland, and returns home with a letter from the Self.(13) In the above dream, Ayala encounters her adversary who emerges from the shadow, not as an enemy to be fought, but as a mirroring or reflecting other. This is the hero’s lunar rather than solar attribute. It may even be that the dream ego will not really bring anything new into consciousness, but her soul becomes inspired and excited, i.e., setting the breath of life in motion. From the lunar perspective, the event, such as in this dream, needs less to be interpreted, but rather be libidinized by the moisture of the Self.

(1) C.G. Jung, CW 5, par. 646.
(2)“The Dual Mother,” CW 5, par. 611.
(3) Shalit, The Hero and His Shadow, p. 151.
(4) Erich Neumann, The Fear of the Feminine, pp. 92, 94.
(5) Verena Kast, The Mermaid in the Pond, p. 55.
(6) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 213.
(7) ‘The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness,’ in The Fear of the Feminine, pp. 64-118.
(8) Shalit, The Complex, p. 55.
(9) The Fear of the Feminine, pp. 74, 92.
(10) CW 9ii., par. 231.
(11) Edward Edinger, The Aion Lectures, p. 116.
(12) CW 11, par. 427.
(13) The Talmudic dictum says: “A dream not interpreted is like a letter not read.”

This article is an excerpt from Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path.

For a review of the book by Ann Walker in Psychological Perspectives, please see here.

Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology (ISAP). He is the author of the novella, Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, and several other publications, including The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel and The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego.

Jung's Understanding of Schizophrenia -- Is it Still Relevant in the "Era of the Brain"?

A presentation on YouTube by

Yehuda Abramovitch

M.D. Psychiatrist at Beer-Yaakov Mental Health Center and Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. Senior Analyst, Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology.

Jung understood Schizophrenia as an "Abaissement du Niveau Mental", a similar phenomenon to the one encountered in dreams, and caused by a peculiar "Faiblesse de la Volonté". He contested that complexes in Schizophrenia, in contrast with neurotic disorders, are disconnected and can either never reintegrate to the psychic totality or they can join together in remission "like a mirror broke into splinters". Accordingly, a person who does not fight for the supremacy of his ego-consciousness and for the subjugation of unconscious forces, a person who lets himself be swayed by the intrusion of alien contents arising from the unconscious (or even is fascinated by regression) exposes himself to the danger of Schizophrenia.

Watch here

Kristallnacht and the Eternal Jew

79 years ago, on the night between November 9-10, 1938, pogroms took place during the so called Kristallnacht, in which more than 90 Jews were killed, 30,000 incarcerated in concentration camps, 1,000 synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish business, schools, homes and buildings damaged and destroyed.

The Eternal Jew exhibition first opened in the Library of the German Museum in Munich on November 8, 1937, and ended on January 31, 1938, thus preceding the Kristalnight by exactly a year.. Billed as a degenerate-art exhibition, it was the largest prewar anti-Semitic exhibit thus far produced by the Nazi's. The exhibit featured photographs pointing out the typically "Jewish" features of political figures, such as Leon Trotsky, and international film star Charlie Chaplin. [who, btw, was not Jeiwsh]

The displays emphasized supposed attempts by Jews to bolshevize Germany, It did this by revealing an 'eastern' Jew - wearing a kaftan, and holding gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a map of the world, with the imprint of the hammer and sickle. The exhibition attracted 412,300 visitors, over 5,000 per day. 

Read more here, also about the film of that name produced a year later.

The following are excerpts from the novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return:

Eliezer Shimeoni recalled the words of Chaim Potok, who so poignantly gave voice to that collective concern, “To be a Jew in this century is to understand fully the possibility of the end of mankind, while at the same time believing with certain faith that we will survive.” Living in Israel was certainly living at life’s edge, at the edge of survival.

Bitter irony turned into sour cynicism, as Professor Shimeoni reflected on the word “certain.” He was convinced that an eloquent writer such as Potok had purposefully used the ambiguous word certain. “Is there a word more uncertain than certain?” he asked himself rhetorically. “Did Potok mean that we could be sure, could be certain in our faith that we will survive, or did he mean that we may have some, a bit, perhaps a certain bit of faith that we will survive?” 

Eliezer Shimeoni did indeed have a certain, a very certain faith that the Jews would survive.
.... 

"Peace in our time"

Had not the ordinary German, covering the gamut from willing collaborator to frightened compliant, been infected by years of indoctrination and selective information? “When I myself look into the mirror,” he said to himself, “it is somewhat embarrassing to admit that, perhaps, I may have wished Chamberlain success in his mission of appeasement. I have always had a soft spot for Neville Chamberlain. He pronounced himself to be ‘a man of peace to the depths of my soul,’ and I believed him, and I like to see myself as a man of peace to the depth of my soul.” ...

And Professor Shimeoni, for one, would have made his way to Heston Airport and applauded him upon his return, because he is a man of hope and peace.

Thus, he told himself, “I cannot blame the passively collaborating German, and can only admire and feel a deep love for those who dared to see and those that dared to act.” Particularly he thought of Wickard von Bredow, as the example of exceptional heroism: As County Officer (Landrat), he received the order, November 9, 1938, to burn down the synagogue in the East Prussian town of Shirwindt, just like all the synagogues in Germany that were to be destroyed during the next few hours. Von Bredow put on his German Army uniform, said goodbye to his wife, and, ...

Eli Shimeoni wondered, “Would I have dared to trespass the prohibitions, would I have dared to buy from a Jewish store? I hope so, but the honesty that fears evoke, makes me wonder. If I would have been a 1938 German, may I not have looked the other way, avoiding the shame and the guilt gazing back at me in the store owner’s eyes of shattered glass.”

And he knew very well that pathology is always stronger and more powerful than sanity, just like hatred settles into scorched ground, while love forever remains aloft, like letters written in the clouds. Does not Father Death eventually swallow every one of Life’s Children? ...

 The following is an excerpt from “My European Animus,” a brief chapter in response to Joerg Rashe’s touching chapter “My Jewish Anima,” in the book he and Tom Singer edited, The Many Souls of Europe:

“Little wonder, then, that to me Jörg represents the best of Europe – its culture and enlightenment, as well as depth, reflection and integrity. But we live lives and worlds apart. The times we live in, the geography in which we dwell, the people and the tradition, the culture and the ancestry into which we are born is our fate, says Neumann. They do shape the contours of our ‘psychography.’

            My parents never met in Germany. At thirteen, my mother was thrown out of the illusion of enlightened Mosaic assimilation. The light was turned off, crashing into the black hole of shattered glass at Kristallnacht, walking through the night in the streets of her childhood’s Hamburg. She never really arrived at morning’s light, perhaps because she didn’t meet Dr. Brod. For the rest of her life, she would wait for him, always prepared, dressed up for his arrival.

            My father, a broken link in a long chain of rabbis, crossed Nazi-Germany on his way to work on a farm. He was saved by the unknown, righteous officer at the Gestapo HQ, who saved him by that German word, which otherwise evokes such horrendous connotations – herauss, get out! And so I learned that just like evil dwells in all of us, the spark of goodness may be found in evil’s cellar.

            My father was a man who set out on his road but never arrived at his destination. Thrown into disarray by the losses, my grandmother turned into the ashes of Auschwitz, his grandmother dying in Theresienstadt’s shadows of deception, he tried to create a life for his offspring. On his way to the kibbutz in the Land of Israel, his wings had lost their wind, and his legs, stifled into clay, remained stuck in the charred earth of Europe.”

בין נפש לתרבות - סדרת הרצאות בתולעת ספרים

המכון הישראלי לפסיכולוגיה יונגיאנית מזמין לסדרת הרצאות: "בין נפש לתרבות" הגישה היונגיאנית שמה דגש על רוח האדם, על יצירה ועל משמעות ועל התפתחותו של האדם לאורך חייו האישיים ולאורך התרבות. בסידרת ההרצאות המוצעת יביאו מספר מחברי המכון מיצירותיהם ויחברו ישן עם חדש, אקטואלי עם נצחי ומיתי. ההרצאות יתקיימו בתולעת ספרים, מזא"ה 7 תל אביב  בימי חמישי בשעה 19:30. עלות ההשתתפות בסדרה כולה: 180 ₪. עלות השתתפות בהרצאה בודדת: 40₪. להרשמה: 03-5357907 תכנית ההרצאות:   21/12/17: פתיחה והצגת הסדרה:  ד"ר יהודה אברמוביץ "יוקסטה: גורלה של פנטזיית התיקון האימהית" מרצה:  פרופ' תמר קרון יוקסטה, אמו של אדיפוס, היא דמות צל במיתוס ובמחזות. בעוד שסיפור חייו וגורלו של בנה, אדיפוס, הפך למיתוס מרכזי בפסיכולוגיית המעמקים, יוקסטה מצטיירת כאם המפתה, אשר בסופו של דבר מביאה להרס בנה. בספרות הפסיכואנליטית אנו מוצאים אפילו תאור של 'תסביך יוקסטה'. בכתיבה היונגיאנית מזוהה יוקסטה עם ארכיטיפ האם הגדולה הנוראה המפתה את הבן-המאהב ומביאה עליו כליה. בהרצאה זו ננסה לתת קול לאם המוכחשת והדחויה ולתאר את תהליך האינדיבידואציה שלה: מקורבן להתעללות מינית, דרך מאבקה ללדת ועד לנסיונה לתקן את הקשר אם-ילד הפגוע שנכפה עליה.   קשר ארכיטיפי זה עלול להיות מופעל גם היום: פגיעות של טראומות קודמות, של דחייה ונטישה עלולות  לעורר את פנטזיית התיקון.   - דיון בהשתתפות הקהל - קטע ג'אז:  עילי אברמוביץ ועמית וולצקי  11/1/18:  פותחת ומנחה: בתיה ברוש-פלמוני "נמציא אויב!" מרצה: ד"ר יהודה אברמוביץ ההרצאה תעסוק בצורך ב"אחר" על מנת לסמן את גבולות ה"אני" ולאפשר תחושה של נפרדות וחיוניות. בד בבד תעסוק ההרצאה בתהליך הפסיכולוגי דרכו ה"אחר" הופך לאויב או שלחלופין נמחקת  "אחרותו". מוצע ניסיון להביט על חיי הנפש כעל דיאלוג מתמשך בין מבנים מודעים ושאינם מודעים – נפרדים אך משלימים אלה את אלה, מתוך עמדה של הדדיות ושוויון ביניהם. הרחבות מהמיתולוגיה והספרות ידגימו תהליכים אלו. -  המשורר גיא פרל יצטרף בקריאת שירה - דיון בהשתתפות הקהל   1/2/18: פותח ומנחה: יהושע זיו "על הודו בחלומותיו, ביצירותיו ובמשנתו של יונג" מרצה: נעה שוורץ-פוירשטיין לק.ג.יונג שמורה זכות ראשונים ביצירת שיח פסיכולוגי משמעותי עם המזרח בכלל ועם הודו בפרט. בתחילת דרכו חווה יונג זיקה עמוקה והערצה לחכמת הודו, והיא שימשה לו  מקור השראה לרעיונותיו פורצי הדרך. עם הזמן פינתה ההערצה את מקומה לרתיעה חשדנית, ויונג הפנה אזהרות נוקבות לבני דורו מפני אימוץ רעיונות מן המזרח, שראה בהם גוף זר בתודעת האדם המערבי. בהרצאה נתחקה אחר המפגש רב השנים של יונג עם הודו,  מופעיה של הודו בכתביו התיאורטיים וחוויותיו המכוננות במסע בהודו. נסיים בתיאור חלומותיו ה"הודיים", על סף מוות. דיון בהשתתפות הקהל קטע ג'אז:  עילי אברמוביץ   22/2/18 : פותח ומנחה: יהושע זיו "אוצרות חבויים בעולם של שקיפות ונראות" מרצה: מיכל טרודרט הרצאה זו תעסוק בייחודיותו של הטיפול האנליטי כמרחב לאינטימיות וחלימה בהקיץ. תוך דיאלוג עם הפילוסוף הצרפתי גסטון בשלאר (Gaston Bachelard) נבחן את חדר הטיפול כמיכל לסודות ולמסתורין וכפינה חבויה לנפש. נדון בתפקידו המכריע של המיכל הטיפולי בשיקום מקומו של העולם הפנימי בעידן האינטרנט, הריאליטי והסמרטפון, עידן בו האינדיבידואליות והפרטיות נרמסות על ידי הטכנולוגיה של המדיה. ההרצאה תלווה בהדגמות (וינייטות) מתוך אנליזות ומטיפול במשחק בחול.  -  דיון בהשתתפות הקהל -  קטע ג'אז:  עילי אברמוביץ   15/3/18: פותחת ומנחה: בתיה ברוש פלמוני "כל אחד והאיתקה שלו – ה'אודיסאה' כמסע הביתה בחצי השני של החיים" מרצה: ד"ר אבי באומן במחצית השנייה של חיינו מתחילה בתוך נפשנו מגמה פנימית חדשה. המסע הזה, שבו אנו מתחילים להשתחרר מהמלחמות הגדולות של ה"אני", מהקולקטיב התובעני, מהתפקידים שלקחנו על עצמנו או שהוטלו עלינו, הוא כמעין מסע הביתה אל המהות של עצמנו. הדרך הזו גובה מאתנו את הקרבת ההיבריס, את המפגש עם השאול ואת העמידה מול תוצאות מעשינו. ה"אודיסיאה", מסעו של אודיסאוס הביתה לאיתקה, ההשתחררות הקשה שלו מתוצאות המלחמה, המפגש עם הבית שזנח, עם בנו טלמכוס ועם אשתו פנלופה, משמשים  כמעין השראה למסע החשוב הזה, שמתחיל בחצי השני של החיים, לעיתים לאחר משבר, התפקחות ואפילו זעזוע. - חברת המכון המשוררת חגית חוף תקרא מספרה "ברכבת לנהריה" -  דיון בהשתתפות הקהל

22 years to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

4th of November marks twenty-two years since the assassination of 

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

A gathering is held on that day, 4th of November 2017, end of Sabbath, 

at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.

The blood-stained text of the Song for Peace
found in Rabin's pocket

For most of forty years the right-wing has ruled Israel, and the present Netanyahu government is not only the most extremist of them all, it bears far too many of the insignia of neo-fascism.

Netanyahu was one of the most visible and audible instigators prior to Rabin's assassination. Now, with a sense of safety in his position of power, he paranoically persecutes the institutes of democracy, such as the media, the legal system, and the police. In his fight to retain power in spite of allegations of severe corruption, he spares no means.

Netanyahu at an anti-Rabin demonstration

The present government is reluctant to reach out for serious negotiations with the (itself reluctant) Palestinian partner, it is a spearhead for settlements beyond the security fence, spending a fortune on what eventually will have to be dismantled or withdrawn, rather than enabling the young, creative, hard-working Israelis to attain affordable housing.

As a totalitarian inclined politician in power, he is a Prime Minister, who accuses and lashes out at big parts of the population, in the most vulgar of ways. He does not see the media as legitimate in its role as scrutinizing the regime, but adheres to media as his megaphone (the Sheldon Adelson owned Israel Hayom). Likewise, in his view, the Supreme Court should not be the independent defender of democracy, as it still remains, but be ruled by the Netanyahu regime - he is making every effort to subjugate the legislative and judicial arms of democracy to the exclusive rule of the executive arm. 

The song for Peace, Nov 4, 1995.

The vulgarity of PM Netanyahu.

Netanyahu represents another Israel than Yitzhak Rabin, who wanted to unite the people around peace and saying no to violence, while Netanyahu lashes out at big parts of the population, calling them "sourpussies," and in a peak of vulgarity takes a picture of himself with a tin of pickles (both sourpussies and pickles are hamuzim in Hebrew). In spite of Netanyahu's present rule, the large segment of the Israeli population, Ashkenazi and Sefaradic, young and old, which is hard-working, creative and contributing to Israeli society, paying for the madness of a rule that many oppose, will inevitably return to lead politically, and not only carry the economics, technology, science and culture - the very well-fare of Israeli society.
Netanyahu does not miss an opportunity to brag about Israeli hi-tech and Israel as the only democracy in the area. That is exactly the Israel that he aggressively fights against and incites against.

But the winds of change are blowing. Polls are not to be relied upon, but for the first time since the early 1990s, the center-left is gaining enough strength to possibly form a government, when Netanyahu will have to leave, possibly. His indictments are coming closer, in spite of his attempts to prevent them by absurd and esoteric laws.