Here’s Barbra Streisand performing at the Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv, June 20, 2013.
She arrived in Israel with an entourage of 145, for a week-long visit that included two concerts at the stadium and a private performance for Shimon I.
During her stay here she said some pretty annoying, even enraging things. In many ways she represents the worst in Jewish-American politics: bereft of knowledge and understanding, she preached to us, here in Israel, on how to improve our obvious shortcomings. Citing the worst, most one-sided reports on the Women of the Kotel, she told us how to best change our erring ways regarding women’s equality.
I’ve been experiencing this two-tiered thing with Streisand for years. Her politics is driving me nuts, and then she sings, or acts, and I’m in love again. No one in the world has her pure voice that combines her remarkable, practically limitless technical skills with an incomparable intelligence.
I even loved her movies. I’m crazy for What’s Up Doc, but I even watched lovingly her newest film, which flopped, The Guilt Trip, with Seth Rogen. What can I do? I’m a fan.
I have the same problem with Joan Baez, don’t ask…