48 inches tall – an Israeli star takes the stage

The Annual Spiro Tribute Lecture celebrates the work of Robin Spiro, who together with his wife Nitza made a significant contribution to Jewish cultural life in Britain for more than four decades.

Nitza has shaped this year’s tribute around a principle that defined her late husband’s work: “You don’t stop the struggle if the struggle is right.”

“Robin never stopped in his determination to establish a centre for Jewish education,” says Nitza. “Even when others doubted there was a point — or quietly hoped it would fail.”

That is why this year’s tribute features I Am Bat-El – a one-woman show by Israeli performer, actress and lecturer Bat-El Borenstein that uncannily mirrors the spirit of the evening because Bat-El, 37, is just 48 inches tall — and has never let that hold her back.

“I’ve always been craving attention,” Bat-El says, without apology. “I was very young when I first studied theatre, ballet and voice development and was acting professionally at eleven.” Her first professional role still makes her laugh. “ I was Beggar number 4 in Oliver Twist and my only line was, ‘Donation! Give me a donation!’ That role changed my life.”

Bat-El grew up near Haifa, but ambition pulled her south. “Every day after school I’d take the train for two hours to Tel Aviv to rehearse until 10pm, then go back home,” she recalls.  “It was a lot of travel for an eleven-year-old, but it was fabulous. I saw people I’d never seen in the suburbs – all this colour. I thought: this is it. This is what I want. This is what I need.” Her parents never discouraged her.

“ My mum saw how much I loved it,”says Bat-El who went on to study at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio where one of her teachers was Adit, one of Nitza Spiro’s daughters. “She’s a great teacher. Even now — twelve years later before every show, I still do her practical work.”

Bat-El volunteered for the IDF despite being eligible for dispensation. “Because of my height,” she says. “But I wanted to do it. I thought, I cannot miss the experience.” She is candid about another motivation. “I also really wanted to meet a hot soldier,” she laughs. “They’re very good-looking, you know?”

Bat-El wanted to join Lehakat Tzahal, the IDF entertainment troupe but was instead placed as a social worker for the paratroopers. “I wasn’t good at it because I wanted to give them whatever they asked for,” she says. “Then I would cry because I couldn’t.”

Clearly unsuitable, she found her footing at Galei Tzahal, the IDF’s  national radio station, where she eventually got to ‘perform’ as the host of a show taking song requests from soldiers and allowing them to speak to their mothers.

“That was good, but army radio is not like other parts of the military,” she says “It’s not on a base, so you don’t have a place to sleep.” Living in the north while the station was based in Jaffa meant punishing hours. “Shifts from 5am to 11pm — so I slept on a mattress in the radio station.”

Hardy is one way to describe the diminutive star who now hosts TED talks and attributes her stoicism to a strict Russian upbringing that never framed her physicality as a disadvantage. “It was never about being different,” she says. “It was about being unique.”

That belief continues to shape her work. “Even today, I don’t feel different to others. I feel fabulous. My physicality is the base of my fabulousness and how I earn my bread and butter. What I’ve made of my life is very much based on how I look.”

Her show is not political, she says, but it is explicit about who she is. “You understand from the show who I am, what I stand for, that I’m Israeli. and proud of serving in the IDF. That I believe in God.”

She laughs at how language has been distorted. “The word ‘Zionist’ cracks me up — how it’s become so negative, Nazi-like, when all it means is that you love your country. Zion is a word for Israel in the Bible. So yes, I’m a Zionist. I have no problem with that.”

Bat-El has no patience for performative politics. “Artists, models, musicians who talk about political stuff when they don’t know anything about it and have never set foot in Israel or the Middle East?” She taps the table. “Are they so bored that all they can talk about is Israel?”

I Am Bat-El is also a musical piece, with three self-penned songs — including a ballad “about my deepest dreams and aspirations” — and a fourth song “which I sang at my Oliver audition, but it’s a surprise, so I can’t tell you.”

The show, which Bat-El describes as inspirational stand-up, is drawn from the most painful parts of her life. “But when I read them back, they were hilarious and had the most meat. From pain you grow and prosper. Pain is what builds us — what we overcome.”

Bat-El says the past 25 years have brought a shift in attitudes toward what Israel calls little people, and it has been some time since anyone over the age of five has been rude to her. “If anything, it’s become too politically correct,” she says. “Some little people refer to themselves as dwarves — but not me. That’s the N word.”

Having performed the show for twelve years, it has evolved as she has. “I started out single, talking about wanting to find love, and now I talk about my husband and children.”

She has two sons — David, six, and Yonatan, almost two — and her husband, as it turns out, was the hot soldier. They first met when she was fourteen at a theatre summer camp, crossing paths repeatedly over the years as timing failed them. “Every time I saw him, he had another girlfriend.”

In 2015, Bat-El celebrated the 100th performance of her show. Neil was in the audience. “He came up to me and said, ‘Wow, it was fabulous,’” she recalls. “He gave me a kiss — and he was holding the hand of a new girlfriend.”

A year later, they met for a drink. “He was single for a change,” she says. “So I jumped like a cheetah on a gazelle.”

Neil is now her manager, and their trip to London for the show is their first without the children. “I’m going on holiday with my husband,” she says. “No babies. No laundry. No lunches. No early mornings.”

For an evening dedicated to the idea that you don’t abandon a struggle simply because it is difficult, Bat-El’s presence feels inevitable — as does the introduction by Annalie Huberman-Hertz, who refuses to allow Down syndrome to define her. Her life, like that of Bat-El’s and Robin Spiro is proof that when the struggle is right, persistence becomes purpose.

Annual Spiro Tribute tickets https://jw3.org.uk