NIA MAGOULIANITI-MCGREGOR
Harry met his Jewish BFF Ady at university 25 years ago.
“Hi, I’m Ady, are you Greek?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you know my accountant George? He’s also Greek and drives a white 325i?”
That was the start of a beautiful friendship where Harry and Ady put the fun back into dysfunctional. It’s also how Harry – Haralambos in Greek – was given a third name: “Ha”.
This was just the beginning of Ha’s Jewish journey. The Whole Megillah is an account of Harry’s discovery of a secret world, where a Jewish mommies WhatsApp group rules Johannesburg, where names are always shortened – Laura is La, Caron is Ca – and where no-one orders exactly off the menu. “Add avo, no bagel, no egg yolk just whites…”
When Harry cracks his first Shabbos dinner invite – and to Shtetl Central, Glenhazel, doll, – well, of course, he nearly platzes!
It might have been then, he let slip his first “oy”. Voops, vaps: The Good Greek Boy has morphed into the Shabbos Goy.
Realising he is going to be the only “oulos” in a sea of “itzes”, that he doesn’t know his kvetch from his klutz, he almost commits social suicide by mixing up the dairy and meat plates. He needs that like a loch in kop.
It’s then that Harry must dig deep to find the answer to life’s big questions, including the one he asks Ady’s son Josh who witnesses his crime: “And how does one make kasher this yellow Mr Price plate…” (When Ady learns of this, she’s furious. She. Does. Not. Do. Mr Price!)
Before you can say, “schlemiel”, Harry has become the Greek Larry David, trying to understand the joys of gefilte fish and what to do with that matzah ball sliding around his soup plate.
He learns to “mmmmm” until wassing is over, even though he’s now hungry as a Greek who is used to being fed meze on the way to the dinner table. “My body felt as though it was experiencing some sort of glaecemic meltdown.”
Even then he has to wait to speak – never mind eat – until someone says a blessing for the challah.
In all this, he realises the Greek and Jewish communities are “connected” – at least by Club Street, anyway.
“You guys have an old age home. A radio station. Publications. Fertility funds. Feeding schemes. We as Greeks do too. But there’s one magic trick that you can pull out the kippah that we can’t match… your own medical services. In a community with more eminent doctors than the Oxford College of Surgeons: Hatzolah. Genius!”
And, of course, says Harry, “more unites us than divides us”. Especially “mother’s guilt”.
Like Jewish mothers, Greek mothers will make you feel guilty about everything, because calling her daily is just not enough contact – after all, she carried you for nine months and gave up her life for you!
Harry says the two sets of moms should really get together to write a self-help book: Tough Love: How to cultivate greatness in your kids, through the power of guilt.
The coup de grace of the show, shows Harry trying to leave Ady’s house – with a missing remote, a deactivated gate beam, a sleeping domestic and Ady not being able to hit the buzzer this being Friday night – with a “gentle” 400 metre sprint to the car.
Okay, I’ll admit it: You’d be meshuggah to miss it. Mazeltov Ha.
*The Whole Megillah, the Oys and Joys of being a Good Greek Shabbos Goy, runs until June 18 in the Pop-Up Theatre in Melrose Estate. Cnr Glenhove and 5th Avenue.
Book via quicket.co.za or tickets at the door.
