Hanoch Levin, born 1943, is one of Israel's best known and most widely performed playwrights, and the author of some 20 strikingly morbid plays (as well as numerous short stories and many beautiful lyrics). Levin's drama has proved to be both an artistic and a commercial success. His political cabaret shows You, I and the Next War (1968) and Queen of the Bathtub (1970), ridiculed the self-righteous complacency of Israeli society after the overwhelming victory of the Six Day War in 1967. Levin, like the slave in triumphal processions of ancient Rome, stood behind hubrisridden Israel, whispering ‘memento mori’, and so, quite naturally, caused a local scandal. Levin mocks highly esteemed army generals, and he uses (or abuses) the sacred myth of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, when he is about to be offered as a sacrifice by Abraham (Genesis 22): ‘Dear father, when you stand by my grave … do not be too proud … and ask me to forgive you’, says dead Isaac, a ‘live’ metaphor for the blood spilt in vain, in Levin's sacrilegious version. The Israeli censor found it necessary to ban The Patriot (1983), a reaction to the stupidity and futility of the Lebanon War, until some modifications were entered.