Samuel Avital Interview

by IJHC Editor

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IJHC interview with an extraordinary, gifted teacher who helps people develop spiritual and personal insights through mime, movement and the Kabbalah.

Beginnings

DB: I’m delighted to be able to interview you, Samuel. I truly admire what I’ve read and heard about your work in helping people open to inner awareness through movement and mime.
I think it would be helpful to start with a thumbnail sketch of where you were born and raised and how you got to where you are now.

SA: An outline? That could fill books! I’ll try.

  I was born in Morocco, in a simple religious Jewish family with traditional, old-ways. Part of my mother’s and father’s families are descended from Castile, from refugees to Morocco after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. We grew up in Morocco in a very humble way, in the Sephardi Jewish tradition.

  The way I remember my childhood, it was beautiful, but there was one dark cloud around it. At that time all the boys in Jewish schools had a black and red uniform as a sign of mourning. We grew up during the Holocaust. Our Rabbi hinted at things, such as, “A lot of our people are being burned right now in Europe.” That’s why before we began class we had to pray a special prayer. I remember that very well.

DB: In what grade was that?

SA: I was born in 1933 and by that time it was 1940-41, so I was about 8 or 9. The uniforms were still required when I reached my Bar Mizvah at 13. In 1948, I just ran away in a clandestine way to Israel. I smuggled myself out of Morocco disguised as an Arab prince, past the check point that was there to prevent the Jewish people from traveling from city to city. As a teenager that was a very big, big risk. But anyway, it was a little miracle because if they caught any Jewish teenagers, they simply disappeared or were sold into slavery. As they said in those days, they would end up as shish-kebab in the Casbah market.

  From there, I made my way to Marseilles, France, and stayed in Camp David, a collecting point for people who wanted to go to Israel. I arrived in Israel in March of ‘49. I went first to a youth camp, in preparation for living for a year in a beautiful, beautiful Kibbutz called Ayelet Hashahar in the high Galilee. I tell you about this only briefly because if I dwell on every station along my way, I could tell you a lot of stories….

  I served my mandatory two years in the Israeli army, and then moved to Jerusalem. I got a job in a University of Jerusalem laboratory, preparing medical instruments, blowing glass, and the like. This was in 1956.

  I was active in a theater group and was chosen to represent the theater youth of Israel in the Festival d’Avignon in Southern France, in 1958. I went again as a representative to that beautiful theater festival the following year, and from there I went to Paris to study with Etienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau, shifting and focusing my life work to the theater.

  I spent a few years touring Europe with the Company de Mime of Maximilien Decroux. Like many aspiring actors, I was not permitted to work in France but found a part-time job in the Israeli Embassy to put bread on the table. I had my first Mime performance in Club des Quatre vents, a stage with international recognition, right in the heart of the Latin Quarter. After that performance I was inspired to tour the streets of Europe with my little suitcase. I performed in front of the café-terasses to earn enough to eat and survive.

  I then returned to Israel in ’64, intending to contribute to the Israeli acting community. I was rejected by most of the Israeli theaters; I was shown the door, quietly and politely but ever so firmly and consistently. 

  A friend of mine, Moni Yakim who had studied with me in Paris , invited me to work in the theater in New York. I came to the USA without knowing English. It was the same when I left Morocco – I didn’t know anything about where I was going. I knew from the maps about the sea and the ocean and all that, but I had never seen the shores, which were my destination.

  I stayed in New York seven plus years. In ’65, I did my first performance there in the avant-garde theater called Café LaMama on Second Avenue in New York. Later I was invited for a year as artist-in-residence at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, of all places! You know, people who knew me then in New York couldn’t imagine or even believe that I would go to a Methodist University. So they said, “Oh no! You in Dallas? No!” I replied, “Hey, I’m not a President, so don’t worry.”

  You might ask, “How did I know about Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas - me, an immigrant from Morocco, France and Israel?” It’s interesting how the pieces of my life have fit together. Before I left Paris I slept one night in the studio of a painter-friend of mine. He had a tiny TV and that’s how I saw the assassination of Kennedy. So I still remember it. I didn’t know anything much about America, I only knew that it was a big country, like ancient Rome, that I know of as a piece of history, with stories about the Romans who were powerful and killed their Caesar. So, though I did not know much about America, people thought that I was very versed in American history when I said, “I’m not a president, don’t worry!”

  Anyway, from there I was invited to do some workshops in Growth Centers in Denver . I visited Boulder and liked it immediately because it looks exactly like my birthplace, Sefrou near Fez, surrounded by beautiful mountains. And so, I have come to my third mountain peak: First, the Atlas Mountains, then, the Galilee Mountains, and now, the Rocky Mountains.


BodySpeak™

DB: And what about your acting career?

SA: I began to perform at the university. I toured the country from coast to coast. I went to Europe, Canada, Guatemala, and other countries. Then I established the school here, which I call the Le Centre du Silence Mime School, and developed my method of bodywork, called BodySpeak. This year we celebrate our 35th anniversary.

  The other day they called me from the Chamber of Commerce to ask if I’m still alive, to update my page on their website. I said, “Yes, I’m still alive.” And they asked how did I sustain myself there for 35 years in this artistic business? I answered that it’s because students come every year from all over the world, and because I never asked for any grants from any institution on this planet, and I still refuse to get grants from anyone. I’m not a nonprofit. There are very few mime schools like ours, which have survived this way. Most of them get grants from curious sources. You know, all these years, in a modest way, I have proved more and more, that you don’t need to be big, with a huge budget and fancy trappings. Through word of mouth our school has grown organically, sustaining itself from within and keeping the integrity of individual freedom of expression.

  I have not promoted my work in the usual way, other than through my books (listed at the end of this interview) and offering workshops, both locally and internationally. Word of mouth is a great way to promote this work, In a world that has abused the word to such a high degree, I keep saying, “I’m not a potato seller.” There are lots of ’potato sellers’ in the business of doing workshops and they can market themselves in any way they wish, but what I ’sell’ is intangible, timeless and lasting. You can’t touch it, you can feel it, it’s literally intangible. It’s simply invisible, but visible to those who study it carefully and practice the principles to make it their own.

  Recently, I finally declared in an interview with the Intermountain Jewish News, “I’m not a scholar, and I’m happy I’m not a scholar.” In the ‘80s, some people came to interview me and they were startled when I said to them, “I’m not a human being.” There was a long silence. There and a sense of wonder, I continued, “I’m not a human being, I’m a human becoming!” Well, they titled their article with that quote.

  So, here we are, my dear Daniel, two people with the name Ben-Or, and I’m glad that we met through my good friend Ken Cohen.

DB: How did you come to the name Ben-Or?

SA: Aha, well that’s my inner name that I didn’t use for many years.

  I came to the name because or, in Hebrew is light, and speaks of the essence, according to Kabbalah. Kabbalah is the science and the art of exploring the inner light. The Kabbalah has much to say about light, and in Hebrew it is not just light, it’s more than that. So Ben-Or means offspring of light, and I use the name to honor my tradition. I have had that name for many years but I couldn’t use it until certain realizations were experienced and achieved. You earn a name like that, and you must be aware of the power of the inner meaning and living it with pure consciousness. We both have a name with Or. The Essenes spoke about the offsprings of darkness and offsprings of light, right?

DB: Where does that light come from?

SA: That light is the light of the Neshama (Soul), the light of being, but it’s not the light that we humans understand and think. It’s not light of the sun. It’s not light of electricity. It’s a light beyond our ordinary perceptions.

  In my teachings, this is an approach, an exploration to understand yourself and the universe in a kinesthetic way first. We have ten principles that I developed in BodySpeak. In the first session the students learn how to literally make that which is invisible become visible right there in the classroom. In other words, to experience the process I call “The Journey from thought to action..” This is Kabbalah in action but without using the classic Kabbalistic terms.

  So, these ten principles of BodySpeak actually produce the sense of a light beyond the light that we know. And that’s according to what I think the true artist understands. I’m speaking here of the genuine and authentic artist, not the commercial artists. Most of the Hollywood or Broadway ’artists’ are contaminated with impurities because they do what they do for money and not for the love of art. They go to study some branch of creative arts or engineering, or whatever, to make money. In their reality you have a job; you have to make a living.

  It’s hard for me to ’make a living..” You don’t make a living through art, the living makes you. That is an insult to the exactness of speech and the right way to use the language. So, it’s like ’making love.”.’ You don’t make love; love makes you.

  The nature of the conscious human as an evolved and enlightened artist is light. So, we need to express that light through the life that is lived; in this case, as I teach it, to express it beyond words. This is the filtering of Kabbalistic ideas into BodySpeak, and I teach this in very specific ways. In my recent book, the BodySpeak Manual, there are specific exercises that bring people into awareness and the experience of these lessons.

DB: Why did you choose mime?

SA: Again, I did not chose Mime, Mime chose me. I think it was from the lessons of my childhood. I didn’t talk that much. My grandfather used to tell me that when we are born we are given a certain number of words to use in our life, like a bank account that we can draw from. I call it the word bank. So, the more words you use, the more you draw the words, the fewer words remain in your bank. And so, I became aware how many words I use because if I finish my amount of words that I was given, I may become mute, hence the carefulness of speech and the necessary use of language. My grandfather’s words influenced me profoundly when I was a young boy. I learned from him to be careful of what I say; in other words, to conserve and use my quota of words wisely. And what is beautiful about this is a beautiful fact from my childhood: my grandfather and father and mother only spoke a word when it was absolutely necessary.

  And so, I think my childhood lessons have greatly influenced me as I continue to explore and experience certain things. I find that most people actually just blah blah blah blah, abusing the word. Most people do that. So, to somewhere in me I say, “Hmmmm, I’m not going to abuse words like that because, you know, in Hebrew, when you study the sacred tongue, and the Letters, you don’t just utter things. You don’t have a conversation just like that, “Hello, how are you?” “See you!” and all that small talk. Now, people have said, “Oh, come on, Samuel, small talk can be a means to connect with people.” I do that without words, through my work.

  There’s a difference in Hebrew words, to say, to utter and to talk. This subtle difference in Hebrew doesn’t exist in the other languages.

DB: Your grandfather was a very strong influence in your life.

SA: My grandfather was a very, very strong influence. I used to run after school to be with him. Whatever he told me to do I would do. Not far from where he lived, he had a work place where he produced perfumed soaps and also made house wine. I used to dance with him in a barrel on the grapes, singing and stomping the grapes. After we get tired, we sat on a little rock and he’d read to me from the Zohar, the classical Kabbalistic text, and he would tell me stories and sayings.

  One time, there was a big flood and the first floor of his house was all flooded, and he was still sitting in his place, reading the Zohar. The water was rising up to his neck. People come and said, “Come, come, come…. “ He answered, “I didn’t finish this chapter in the sacred Zohar, I didn’t finish this yet.” I think our grandfathers have some kind of magnificent connection to deep wisdom, and knew how to transmit it by simply being it.

  Let me tell you another story about my grandfather. One day we learned in my school that Solomon had a dream, in which he was asked by God, “Which do you choose: fame, wealth, or wisdom?” He immediately chose wisdom. Because he chose wisdom, God gave him all of them.

  I asked my grandfather: “Why did Solomon choose only wisdom? And why can only Solomon have that privilege? Why not me? I want to choose wisdom too.”

  My grandfather taught that according to the Kabbalah, our ancestors – King Solomon, Moses, and Abraham and Jacob and Joseph – all of them, are stages of divine and human spiritual evolution that we aspire to. Moses was the epitome of the highest evolution of humility. My father’s name is Moses and he was also known for being very humble. I learned from all of them, from my father, and my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother. All of them almost didn’t

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