Elad Schwartz, a film student from Jerusalem, is a funny man. His jokes on Tweeter and Facebook are often original and often very off-color, but he’s funny. Here’s one that can be repeated in a family newspaper: “In a restaurant, I say, ‘Excuse me, what type red wine do you have,’ so the waitress says, ‘Shiraz,’ so I say, ‘OK, Shiraz, what type wine do you have?'” Also, “I ask the public not to help the police, because this way how are they going to learn?” Like we said, the really funny ones can’t be repeated here.
Schwartz’s most recent attempt at social network humor took place on Facebook, when he posted a selfie with an elderly woman who looks to have just expired, with the message: “Somebody just got an apartment in downtown Tel Aviv!!!! Bye, Grandma, may your memory be blessed.”
Bad taste? For sure, but also a radical commentary on the state of housing in Israel, especially where everybody would like to live. Oh, and the dead grandma was a latex mannequin on the set of a documentary about the bureaucracy of death in Israel, where Schwartz was part of the crew. It was a very convincing mannequin, apparently, because shortly thereafter Schwartz’s Facebook page received more than 2,500 responses, the vast majority of which were not the loving kind.
“You are a repulsive human being, no other way to describe you, have some respect for the dead.”
“You’re sick.”
“Cold blooded Ashkenazi.”
“God will punish you.”
“May you and your apartment burn down.”
“I cried.”
And the winner: “Keep voting for Netanyahu and we’ll end up with real pictures like this one.”
Which was followed by a meme by Jesse Dor Fein that was equally dark and in bad taste and pretty funny, showing the same selfie but with an expired former president Shimon Peres, who gave the country a scare on Thursday with his heart attack, accompanied by the captions:
“Somebody just got the peace center in Jaffa!!! Bye, Shimon, may your memory…”
And:
“Bad Elad! Bad!”