12/8/97

Five-star slum

    Have you supped lately at the Diplomat? Taken a whirl in the ballroom, laved under the gold-plated taps, rubbed shoulders with big shots in the glittering foyer?
    Jerusalemites who knew which flower to put in a lapel didn't have too many places to strut in the ג€˜70s. Haim Shiff's five-star Diplomat was one of them.
    It had that comfy opulence to lure ministers, millionaires and, of course, diplomats. Bedroom furniture imported from Italy, nicely offset by restored antiques. Original art everywhere. Gold-tipped tap fixtures smartly complemented by black Italian marble. Chandeliers in the public bathrooms -- "our calling card," Shiff called them.
    Built in 1972, just as the capital was stirring after a 2,000-year slumber, the Diplomat was maybe not as haute as the King David, but it was up there.
    The dinner theater in the Embassy Ballroom was quite something, eh?
    Oh, which restaurant to choose -- there were three, no four....
    I mean, the place had its own TV studio!
    Massive murals everywhere. In the stairwell, a nine-story-high illuminated curtain made up of 5,000 stained-glass panels.
    But wait! You think this is splendrous? We have big, big plans: health club, gym, sauna, tennis courts, kosher Chinese restaurant (remember, this was a long time ago), sports club, a second swimming pool.
    All this may be too much for Serozhin to comprehend.
    Where the regal doorman used to be, obese, retarded Serozhin now stoops, lolling torpidly. Here in the elegant lobby, where the bejewelled 'moiselles sashayed, a toothless old woman waits motionlessly for the inevitable, staring at grubby walls.
    They live in the biggest, ugliest slum in the city, the mockingly-named Diplomat Hotel.
    "Every story here is a tragedy of sorts," said one kindly volunteer. She meant the people, not the building.
    The Diplomat's fall from grace occurred parallel to Shiff's slide into insignificance. Here's a man who, in 1982, announced his intention to buy El Al; in his prime he was one of the country's great magnates. He loved a good fight, and got plenty of them: in '63 he opened Jerusalem's first mixed swimming pool, taking on the rabbinical authorities; before '67 he thumbed his nose at Jordan, extending a smaller hotel on the same site into No-Man's Land; he scuffled with health authorities (who condemned his kitchen as unsanitary, but he ignored them), the municipality (he built the hotel without a permit, and operated it without a license, but he ignored them too), his waiters (they walked off the job in disgust and frustration; Shiff just shrugged), the fire department (the place was deemed a fire hazard; Shiff ignored them), tax authorities (he didn't ignore them -- he threatened to kill them), even Zionist organizations (he hosted a convention of The Way International, which was described as an antisemitic cult that denies the Holocaust).
    He piled up debts in the tens of millions, battled receivership and bankruptcy, watched as his Diplomat was shut down in the late-'80s and then appropriated by the Absorption Ministry in 1989 for the Soviet immigrants.
    Yet somehow, Shiff still owns the place. And he's raking it in -- an estimated million shekels a month. (Several years ago, he was reported in the Post to be earning NIS 17 million annually.)
    His guests are no longer the socialites, but people with severe social, emotional and health problems; the mentally disturbed, blind, deaf, alcoholic, the disabled, the aged, the poor. People, almost entirely from the Soviet Union, who cannot integrate into Israeli society. With nowhere to go, they are at the mercy of a benevolent staff on the one hand, and Shiff's apparent indifference on the other.
    The 450 residents -- including 40 children -- practically worship Kira Freidus who, says one of her 20 staffers, "made order out of chaos" when she assumed the task of managing the place. "It was dirty, smelly, sad and rundown before Freidus came here," the volunteer said. It must have been unimaginably worse than it is now, because it's still sad and rundown.
    The real difference, the volunteer said, is that "even if our people can't say they love the place, at least they know we care about them."
    As far back as 1991, when it was still classified as an absorption center (it's now more like a welfare hostel), the authorities were on the verge of evacuating it because of "substandard conditions."
    Three years later, a contingent of ministers toured the Diplomat and were "appalled" at the conditions. "When is the last time it was cleaned?" one of them wondered indignantly.
     One staffer charged that Shiff puts no money into maintenance or upkeep -- except for the ballroom (which is off-limits to residents) and the pool, both of which he still uses for entertaining.
    "He gets NIS 2,000 per month rent for each of the 500 rooms, whether they're occupied or not," the staffer claimed. "The residents who can afford it, pay up to NIS 1,000 a month for their room, but some pay as little as NIS 25." Who makes up the rest? The staffer smiled. "We're heavily subsidized."
    According to one news report, Shiff wouldn't even provide storage space unless he was paid extra.
    In the past few weeks, matters threatened to go from intolerable to worse. The Absorption Ministry said they were going to slash the operating budget, paltry as it is. It then partially relented; at this point it is not yet known what more these people will have to do without.
    It is a miserable place to live, especially for the old and infirm. There are no laundry services and almost no food facilities. There are no shops nearby, and the closest bus stop is far away and up a steep incline. Egged has consented to send a bus in once a day, and Freidus initiated a minibus service, but that is one of the "luxuries" due to be eliminated.
    Some of the budget cuts seem ludicrous: the costs are negligible, while the results will be increased isolation and alienation. Many of the activities such as choir and exercise -- important for people with no life outside this strange place -- may be stopped. The staff, whose salaries are so low you have to believe they're working here out of love and loyalty, is due to be reduced.

IN A HAPPILY perverse way, there is an upbeat side to this woeful story. The Diplomat may be squalid, most of its residents pitiable, but each exists for each other.
    The building is a ghostly reminder of its own heyday: some of the bedroom furniture is still there, a quarter-century later, now tattered and seedy. A sign at the creaking old elevator -- "Coffee shop, Floor C; Shopping arcade, Floor 3" -- remains in place, derisively reminiscent of the glory days. The flooring, the walls, even the reception desk and that nine-story glass sculpture, are still there, unchanged except for a magnitude of wear and tear you'd expect to find in an archeological dig. 
    The gold, the chandeliers, the antiques, even most of the functional light bulbs, it seems, left when Shiff stopped caring.
    The building and the people are metaphors for each other.
    Faina Krestun, a respected Leningrad medical doctor, now has time to slow-cook a pot of gefilte fish, with which to lure a chance passerby for some conversation.
    Frieda Muchnik, a great-grandmother, still remembers the reverence she earned as a Moscow ballerina married to an atomic physicist. Today, she teaches dance steps to the Diplomat children. "We have a good social life," she says with a kind of sad exuberance. "We gossip, watch TV, look at old photos."
    Chaya Braginsky, 75, came here as a Chernobyl refugee. She was a Kiev neurologist; today she runs a tiny library for the locals, says she "finds it difficult to live together with mentally ill, disruptive people."
    And the two cantors. For 30 years they competed ferociously, each claiming to be the best cantor at the Leningrad Synagogue. Both immigrated, both ended up at the Diplomat. And on Hanukka, for eight days, they competed ferociously over who should light the little candles.