Dan Sieradski: American Cultural Envoy
Kol HaIr
Friday, April 29, 2005

Inset: American Idol. Dan Sieradski is a cultural energizer, who squeezes at least 25 different activities into one day. We tried to keep up. An intense report on an intense man.

Caption: A one man campaign, Dan Sieradski.

Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the people of Israel, the jewel in the crown of the land of Israel, and all that, but to move anything here you need an American or two — and Dan (Mobius) Sieradski moves things like a rocket powered bulldozer. He came here less than a year ago, motivated by a sense of mission and the desire to contribute to Jerusalem culture. Which is just like it sounds. He seems to draw his inner strength specifically from his treasure trove of internal contradictions: he's a technological geek who's a scion of a family of rabbis, and a radical leftist who's the grandson of a Betarist grandfather. Sometimes he's an inquisitive and cynical intellectual, and sometimes an innocent American tourist. He loves Jerusalem and Israel with all his heart, but he's ready at any given moment to criticize the government, the army, policies, mentalities, and basically anything else. And none of that, by the way, gets in the way of his online arguments with anti-Semites, haters of Israel, distorters of history, and the plain old narrow minded who surf to one of the websites that he designs and runs devotedly. His blog, "Orthodox Anarchist," describes his adventures in the Holy Land and has hundreds of entries. From organizing poetry reading nights, hip-hop events, and lectures covering media and politics, through involvement with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and ending with the show he hosts on Radio Kol HaShalom (Radio All the Peace), whose studios are in Jerusalem and whose offices are in Ramallah, Mobius is a one man campaign. Always moving, always in the middle of something. Whoops, here he is in Tzefat, on a tour with Jewish scientists; hey, here he is meeting with Etgar Keret or A.B. Yehoshua, and from there rushing to go spin Indie Rock, old school rap, soft techno and hard house in some tiny bar in Feingold's Field. The next morning he gets up early. He needs to debate a little with the boys in his Yeshiva, needs to go photograph the house demolitions in Anata, to design another t-shirt/bumper sticker/poster and to write another article against George W. Bush and the American-Israeli conspiracy to destroy Iran. In one of the photographs he staged, he's seen laying Tefillin and putting a note in the wall, which is revealed as part of the separation fence.

It's always amazing to discover that it takes someone who comes from the biggest, most teeming, most bustling, and most opportunity-filled city in the world, to find here, between the mossy and damp alleys of Nakhlaot, next to the beer taps of off-off Yaffo Street, an open horizon of potential projects, of initiatives that have not yet been tried, of cultural paths that have not been treaded. It turns out that in the streets of Jerusalem, as in the political process, whoever wants to move things needs to look in the direction of the Americans. In that sense Dan Sieradski is the special envoy to the region, on a cultural mission of the highest importance. At least, that's what he believes. And faith, now more than ever, is the most in-demand commodity in the holy city.