The Protestant God of TheMarker: When Will the Redeemer Come

The Bitch reviews TheMarker Weekend, once a worthy competitor to Haaretz's supplement, and today - a victim of lack of competitiveness, of Haaretz's monopoly, of Rolnik's obsessive centralization, of pyramids of false consciousness, and perhaps also of the unions - which do not allow for proper turnover of interviewers. Will TheMarker become competitive again, and reflect the variety of stories and approaches in the economic world? On the improper connections between bon ton and newspaper

If only we were more Protestant and less Jewish - then according to Weber we would be richer - and what's more important to Jews than money? (Source)

TheMarker Weekend is a supplement that has experienced both rise and fall in recent years, and therefore instinctively the Bitch still holds hopes for it, like an ex who can still return to the kennel of lovers. But as with the ex, until you dissect her into parts, you won't be able to understand the flaws that will cause not only her to return - but also the entire miserable relationship between you. Yes, TheMarker disappoints me. Yes, it could have been (and for a certain period almost was) the most interesting part of the newspaper. No, it won't happen anymore, and not because there's no interest or desire. Why? Well.



In a kind of bad habit, TheMarker always starts badly - with opinion pages that are actually orthodox indoctrination pages (=the correct opinion). The mechanism is simple, and well remembered from the Ulpana [religious girls' high school]: no matter what ever happens in the weekly Torah portion - Bibi and Tibi, war and peace, Balaam and the donkey, Korah and his congregation - to force it into the terrifyingly fixed agenda (and quite righteous, by the way, it doesn't matter) of the writer.

There is a basic flaw in journalistic writing here. Even if you've identified the most significant thing in your eyes in the entire universe since forever (already a problem of mental fixation!), your very formulaic nature makes you unreadable, an ideological mechanism, a person not curious about completely different angles, or new trends unrelated (important!) to your idée fixe (yes I know everything everything is related to it), or heaven forbid contradictory ideas. You become the fixed sermon of an uninspired rabbi when he needs to fill the time before evening prayers, when the only question hanging in the stifled air is how he will connect his only vort [brief Torah insight] in life to the spies' story, or to Hanukkah.

Here Nehemia Shtrasler has an agenda, but also variety. Maybe that's why he's not there. His mechanism is broken. So yes, you learned somewhere that you need to attack the hidden power mechanisms in capitalism (and especially the structural ones! - wow, how sophisticated) and this makes you righteous, brave, and endlessly repetitive in your own eyes. When will the redeemer come? I think we need to dismantle Rolnik's centralization! (But I promise not to write this every week).



Then there's TheMarker's regular interview, which I'm very sad to write about. I wish I had criticized it two years ago, then I could have praised it as one of the rising and most successful columns in the entire newspaper (and the best in TheMarker), competing with Ayelet Shani and gradually surpassing her. Since then, the fall has been sharp even relative to the degeneration of Haaretz. At first, the interviewing skills of the excellent interviewers still managed to save boring interviewees from becoming boring interviews. But there's nothing to be done - the most important thing in any interview is the idea - who to interview? In the past year, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of interviewees, most of whom shouldn't have been there at all. It seems as if they've run out of ideas, and this is exactly the time to change direction, take a break, or close shop (yes, that's allowed too! Although I wish they would go to academia and dig up more interviewees from all disciplines. There's still a lot of potential there and less banal, unlike another social/bureaucratic entrepreneur speaking in clichés). By the way, unlike Ayelet Shani who deteriorated in both parameters, the interview work itself is still excellent - but sometimes there's simply no material to work with (it's a pity you can't invent answers! Especially when the interviewers are more interesting than the interviewees). In short, our hope is not yet lost. So when will the redeemer come?



Naturally, in the article section of TheMarker, the level is very uneven. In general, social activists tend to be particularly banal, and no agenda will help (in fact, it's exactly the agenda that doesn't help). In contrast, business entrepreneurs, especially start-upists or anyone who has an ideational dimension to their material success (yes, the spirit is important), they (and the companies they founded) constitute the most interesting human-journalistic material. TheMarker certainly identified this in traffic patterns, and on Independence Day produces an entire entrepreneurship issue. People who have some inclination towards the economic field like to read success stories to learn from them, and also enjoy failure stories (another sub-genre, less interesting, and always leaves a sour taste of settling scores on the way down the stairs - and schadenfreude on the part of the newspaper).

In fact, these stories are constructed in TheMarker as moral tales, reinforcing the newspaper's economic agenda, which is built on highly Protestant assumptions. On one hand, the rising and successful entrepreneurs are presented as role models and as exemplary figures who fulfill the commandments of the Start-up Nation god, arousing admiration and strengthening the Israeli start-up ethos through the myth of the cheeky and original entrepreneur who made a ton of money from it (most important! Because in doing so he proved that he received God's blessing). These are stories of righteous people, and there are always miracles in them, but also some Jewish cunning that is celebrated with joy. On the other hand, when that same chutzpah and cunning themselves bring down some tycoon into the pit, especially if he comes from the old or classic industries, then it's a moral tale of a villain who sinned, exploited, corrupted, or at least pursued greed and suffered severe hubris, and now is being punished by TheMarker's Protestant god. That these two stories - about sin and punishment - are the same story (sometimes with a difference of a decade or two) is hidden from the eyes of TheMarker's Protestant god (and therefore from the reader).

For the Protestant god, sins must be structural, there's no such thing as just a business mistake, in content, but only a mistake of deep structure. There are no failures - only flaws. That's why he's such a fair god, he doesn't blame you if you made a mistake, only if you weren't fair. He just forgets that there's something very unfair about the ability to turn every mistake into unfairness, and every problem into a structural problem, into a structure of sin. At the individual level - the god plays both roles. On one hand, he shows how easy it is to start a billion-dollar company, look even a bitch can do it, and even a woman or an Arab God forbid - if they just stick to the right path of creative Jewish entrepreneurship (about luck, about taking unreasonable risks, about prices, about gambling - we don't hear). Thus, the god tempts generations of Israelis to abandon their jobs (families pay too, of course) and set out on the chase after the gold rush. This is known to be profitable for the Start-up Nation economy, though probably less so for the individual, and it's the human fuel in its engines (not the one who became a billionaire - but the thousand who failed).

On the other hand, if you fell, if you failed, and heaven forbid if you were tempted, out of that same idolatry of the golden calf and the coveted discourse of greed, then TheMarker's Protestant god will tar and feather you in the town square, and your fall will always be a moral fall (which will distance from consciousness the possibility that it will happen to you, because you are extremely moral, right?). Even if you didn't really murder and inherit - your sin will be found and demanded (hubris? gambling? borderline fairness? cutting corners? everything that brought you there in the first place?). And the masses? They are tempted, as we know, to the lottery of Silicon Valley and the quick exit. On the basic assumptions - there is no discussion. It's clear that Israel's ultimate goal is purely economic (yes, even the economic left believes in this). The good ones - to start-up. We gave up on the book and the sword long ago (in fact, along with the sword). Light unto the nations means gold from the nations, and the people of the book was actually Facebook's previous name.

In terms of the newspaper, there is no confrontation between the assumptions of "Culture and Literature" and "Books" and those of "TheMarker". As if these were two separate worlds dichotomously, which just happen to be in the same newspaper, and therefore there will never be a meeting in writing between them and an in-depth discussion. This is the same Protestant - and completely anti-Jewish - cognitive separation between religion and state, and between spirit and matter, which is a main belief in Haaretz, which tries to combine economic capitalism without seeing any contradiction - and also no connection - to culture. This is how they produce an economic sphere devoid of culture, and a culture lacking economic understanding (the average cultural figure in Israel has the economic perception of a five-year-old child. Why not take from the rich and give to the poor, he will cry out). Where is this and where are the Medicis, or any other economic-cultural complex that created masterpieces in some golden age (yes, golden. Money is not an end in itself, in societies that have an ethos of cultured people). When will the redeemer come?



The back side of TheMarker is a reflection of the harmful, ugly, and so distracting obsession of Israelis with real estate. Sometimes there will be an interesting article about architecture or urban planning, especially in the world. The rest of the time it's a consumer supplement, and as such it's perfectly fine (meaning an inferior product and produces a false consciousness of wow what a kitchen they have and I wish I had a penthouse). This is the bulletin of Israel's real estate pyramid, and the shofar of a bubble that one day - God willing - will burst with a loud blast, and then it will really be possible to buy a kennel in this country. When oh when will the redeemer come?