War and Puppets

Leading up to the Eurovision Song Contest in May, each country determines which performer and song they will send. Some countries go the opaque route and opt for “internal selection,” which means that a committee decides behind closed doors. But some countries undertake an elaborate national final in the form of a televised talent competition like American Idol or The Voice.

Israel’s national final, HaKokhav Haba (the next star), just concluded, and they selected the performer they will be sending to Eurovision 2025. Even though I only started following the competition a week ago, I quickly became invested, nearly to the point of obsession, because I found out that one of the four finalists to represent Israel at Eurovision was a puppet band a la Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem. The puppets, Red Band, had teamed up with human singer Moran Aharoni for the competition.

My first reaction to imagining the Israeli puppet musicians on the Eurovision stage was horror and humiliation. As if it weren’t bad enough that Israel had committed war crimes against Palestinians, they were now going to commit an art crime by sending puppets to perform on Europe’s largest stage.

Even if Israel were to fully disengage from the Palestinian territories and negotiate a two-state solution tomorrow, their reputation would still be poor. Throwing puppets into the shit stew seemed inadvisable.

However, by the end of my week of following this competition, I was firmly, unambiguously pro-puppet. Puppets are unserious and absurd, which is exactly what this catastrophic post-war moment calls for. We need a break from the trauma, grief, and solemnity, sure, but what feels even more apt about the absurdity of puppets is that witnessing the violence of war can cause a person to throw up their hands and embrace nihilism.

As I was processing the possibility of Israel sending puppets to Eurovision, I was thinking about the Dada art movement, which emerged in response to the horrors of World War I. The Dadaists rejected logical thought because logic was what had led to the war. They embraced nonsense and irreverence and intended to challenge prevailing notions of intelligence and decorum.

Dadaism was a genuine countercultural movement that delivered a shock to society, which is not what’s happening here. A puppet band performing a pop song is not the same as Marcel Duchamp presenting a urinal and calling it high art. But watching a puppet band compete with human singers on a survival show was far enough outside of the norm to make me stop and think. It was not business as usual, and there was something profound about that.

I did not think the puppets were going to win HaKokhav Haba, and I was right: the winner was Yuval Raphael, a beautiful young woman with a beautiful voice who wants to sing a ballad at Eurovision. (Yawn.)

There is also a political angle to her victory. She survived the October 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival, and she considers herself an activist, sharing her experience openly and publicly.

I am disappointed at this choice of representative, and judging by the comments on HaKokhav Haba’s Instagram posts, Israel agrees with me. We wanted Moran and Red, but Yuval is who we’ve got.

Last year’s Eurovision was awful. It was volatile and mired in scandal, with Israel at the center. Given Israel’s aggressiveness in the war, the delegations from other participating countries did not want them there. Israel was a pariah, and there were rumors that their delegation and television commentators antagonized other participants and made things even worse.

We desperately needed puppets this year. But instead it looks like we’re going to see Israel dig in its heels and again try to prove to the world that its actions in Gaza were justified.

I wonder what we American Jews can learn from the dichotomy between the puppet band and Yuval Raphael. I, for one, strive to be more like the puppets. When all else is futile, absurdity might be the answer.

I also think there’s a lot to be said for bringing joy to your own community, which Moran and Red would have done, rather than worrying about gaining everyone else’s respect.