"Adoption is part of my story, but it is not all that I am"
Only after his death did Hodaya Barkan realize the privilege she was given to grow up alongside one of Israel's greatest actors, Yehuda Barkan, who adopted her in her childhood. Today, as she embraces his legacy and performs in a play based on the legendary film he starred in, "Charlie and a Half," she recalls the bullying she endured in childhood, talks about the fear of opening the adoption file, and explains why she does not hesitate to use the family name to open doors.
Hodaya Barkan grew up in the home of one of Israel's most well-known and beloved actors, and yet, she had a complex relationship with him. Her adoptive father is the legendary actor Yehuda Barkan, and she spent most of her childhood trying to hide his identity and distance herself from the family lineage. Now she is closing a circle as she acts in the play "Charlie and a Half," based on the legendary film he starred in, and imagines what he would have said to her if he were alive.
"I saw that there were auditions and I thought I wanted to try. I wrote to the director Doron Mor, introduced myself, and he invited me to an audition."
Did he understand who you are?
"Yes. I understand the interest surrounding such casting, but in the end, I have been acting in the play for months, and if I weren't good, I probably wouldn't have stayed. I play two characters: Lily, Miko's sister, and the waitress in the restaurant."
Did you have a fear that they would say you got the role because of your father, and not because of yourself?
"A very big fear, but it is something I wanted to do and aimed for, and when this opportunity arrived, I decided that I would take it with both hands, do it, and from there I would continue and promote myself on my own merits. This is closing a circle for me, and I feel first of all that I am giving respect to my father, and also fulfilling myself along the way."
Were your fears justified? Were there reactions?
"Yes, there were many comparisons and reactions in the style of 'she doesn't fit,' but it went in one ear and out the other. I don't let these reactions affect me, because I know that the finger is light on the keyboard."
You have an opportunity now to answer the critics. What do you want to say?
"That I am here on my own merits, and it is true that it opens a door when you are the daughter of, but from the moment the door opens, it is on you. If I weren't good at what I do, I assume it wouldn't matter whose daughter I am, I wouldn't be there. It may be that at first it started as a gimmick of Doron's, and I am sure that in some place he accepted me because I am the daughter of, but we are already at the 50th performance and I don't think I would have stayed if I were just a gimmick."
"I let the background noise affect me"
Barkan (26) grew up in the religious moshav Beit Gamliel. She arrived at her adoptive family as a baby years after Yehuda (of blessed memory) and Ilana, his third wife, became religious. "I only remember Yehuda and Ilana as my parents. I never opened the adoption file to know more."
Is this something that burns in you?
"It interests me, but I am a bit afraid to open a wound from the past and discover things I am not ready for, to discover parts of me that don't fit with who I am today. I know it could do me good, close some circle for me, and I assume I will do it sometime, but right now I feel that it is not my story. I am telling you this now and I am a bit detached from the situation, but I assume I will mature and do it sometime."
What do you remember?
"I know that at first I was in a foster family with Yehuda and Ilana, I was supposed to return to my mother who wrote me letters that she was waiting for me to return, but she didn't manage to rehabilitate herself and be in a condition to accept me. I don't remember my father at all. Welfare intervened at this stage, there was a trial, and after it, Yehuda and Ilana officially adopted me. They are my parents as far as I am concerned."
How are your relations with Yehuda's children from his previous marriages?
"He has four children, Roi, Ido, Dana, and another daughter in Brazil, and we are in good contact. It is clear that when my father was alive, I would see them more because they would come for meals and there were regular meetings, now we meet less, but we are still in good contact. They always accepted me and I always felt like an inseparable part of the family. They call me sister."
Did they come to see the play?
"They were very happy and supported me. They haven't come to see it yet because they are annoying, but they will come."
When did you understand that you were adopted?
"I don't remember the moment my mother told me I was adopted because I was small, but I do remember that at a certain stage children used it against me. I have a kind of trauma around this. I remember that the children at school would laugh at me because of this and because my father was old, so I would be ashamed of it and ashamed of my father, he wouldn't come to school or to parent meetings, only my mother."
Why?
"I was a little girl who was bullied and I thought I needed to hide the reason I was being bullied. The other children pointed out the age gap between us, the fact that my father was famous, and other things, and when you are a child you just want to be like everyone else, so you try to hide what makes others point at you. It is not because you are really ashamed of the person you love, but because you are trying to protect yourself. I asked that they not see him, not out of bad intentions, I was just terribly afraid. In retrospect, I understand that my mistake was that I didn't share with my parents what I was going through. I dealt with everything alone, and at that age you don't really have the tools to deal with it. It is important for me to say that no child should be ashamed of their family. Children sometimes don't understand how much power words have, and one sentence can stay with you years later."
"I am not telling my story from a place of misery, but exactly the opposite," Barkan asks to clarify. "Adoption is part of my story, but it is really not all that I am. If anything, it taught me what resilience, sensitivity, and faith are, that a family is built from love and not just from blood ties. I don't want it to come out of the article that I was ashamed of my father, that was really not the story. My father was my best friend and we had an amazing connection. I loved him very much and was proud to be his daughter, what was hard for me as a child was the reactions from the environment. It was never towards him, but towards how the world looked at me at that time."
As an adult, what do you feel towards this?
"Pride for the privilege I had to grow up alongside such a father, but I don't say it all the time because it feels like arrogance to me. If they ask me, then I say, but I don't flaunt it. I only regret that as a child I let the background noise affect me, even if it didn't change my love for him even for a moment."
Today do you feel like a strong person?
"I have been through a lot in life, and yes, today I think I am a very strong girl. It is important to me that children who are bullied read this article and maybe it will awaken something in them, that they will understand that first of all, they need to talk about it with those close to them. I dealt with it alone as I always do, and it wasn't smart. I would go to school and come home broken. I felt like an outsider but was ashamed to share, again, that pride. I thought about everyone around and how they would feel, and not about myself."
Is this something you feel still accompanies you even today, in your adult life, or did it stay in the past?
"I am a very social person, but it does accompany me. I have mild social anxiety and I am silent in new places I don't know. I haven't cracked it yet. It is not seen from the outside, I just look restrained and like something is unresolved in me."
We didn't watch father's movies at home
Barkan studied in a religious school, and an acting career was not her direction at all. "Only when I reached the theater department in high school did I understand that this is my place, that there I can express myself. After high school, I left it, I said I didn't want to touch it anymore, I lived in such a house and I know how unstable a profession it is, but it was stronger than me and I understood that this is what gives me satisfaction in life."
When did you start leaving religion?
"When my father passed away. I don't know how to say why exactly, but I felt that I had been through too many things in life and something there didn't add up for me. I am a big believer in God but it is hard for me to lean on it, so right now I choose not to. I assume that in my home there will be Kiddush and tradition, but right now I am not there."
How did the family react to this?
"My mother had a bit of a hard time at first, but she accepts me as I am and understands that I am the one who needs to examine and choose my path."
After significant national service, she studied for three years at the Beit Zvi acting school, and then continued to study acting in front of a camera. She was signed to Roberto Ben-Shoshan's agency, started going to auditions, and then the opportunity for the role in "Charlie and a Half" arrived.
"When I was in 12th grade, we had a final production of the theater department and father came to see me without me knowing. He sat in the first row and I was very excited. There I understood how much I am proud of him, and I also saw how all the 'hero' children who bullied me were suddenly excited by his presence. It felt like a victory, you bullied me because of my father, and here he is here and you are enthusiastic."
When did you understand the magnitude of his influence on Israeli culture?
"I always understood, but there was no situation where we all sat together at home and watched his old movies. It wasn't a thing at our house."
Did he get to know your dream of becoming an actress?
"Not really. When he saw me in the production at the end of 12th grade, he told me that I must do something with it, but then I didn't want to. In the end, I listened to him, but he didn't get to see it."
What did he tell you about the field?
"He didn't have to talk for me to understand that it is a world with ups and downs. He always said that it is an unstable profession, but he also said that I have talent and that I can do with it whatever I want. In the end, I started studying acting only after he passed away."
Were you treated differently at the acting school because of the family lineage?
"No. It is a very competitive place and there are a lot of people there, no one attached importance to the fact that I am the daughter of."
Today is your mother in favor of your acting career?
"At first she was very afraid and preferred that I not enter it because it is an unstable world, especially after she experienced it at home herself, but in the end, she understood that it is something I love. Today she supports me, she has already come to about five performances of 'Charlie and a Half' and every time she is excited anew. I think father would also have enjoyed the play very much. Before he passed away, he told me, 'I want Aviv Alush to play me.' He did an advertisement with him and really fell in love with him. Maybe it will still happen."
Is there an acting role that is a fantasy for you?
"I really love television, I think I can play a lot of characters in terms of typecast, but my dream is to be in 'Fauda'. I haven't tried, but maybe in the future it will still happen."
Will you use father's name if needed?
"I am not ashamed to use his name if it helps me open doors, because I know that from that moment the burden of proof is on me."
They say I am a bunker
Throughout most of the interview, Hodaya sits embarrassed. She is not verbose and does not cry even when we touch on the most painful topics. "When I sit with people I don't know, it's hard to grasp me. It's hard for me to express myself, especially when I need to tell my life story," she tries to explain. "I myself am not yet formed regarding this story, so telling it to someone else, it's hard for me. The adoption, my father who passed away, these are things I haven't fully dealt with and closed with myself, I am not yet at peace with them, so it's hard for me to talk about them. I am in very big denial. I am aware that I am talking about it as if I am telling a story that happened to someone else, but it is because I am afraid to break down if I tell it as my story."
Do you break down sometimes?
"Yes, but in front of others, I prefer to be restrained. I don't want to come out as a victim, I want to come out strong, so it won't feel like I am leaning on my story and saying, 'Oh, I went through this and that.' This is what it is, nothing to do, it is part of who I am, and here now I feel that it is coming up (at this stage her voice starts to tremble. She stops, drinks water, pulls herself together and returns to control — ed.). Everyone who doesn't know me and meets me for the first time says that I am mysterious, that I keep things to myself, a bunker, but this is my personality. When they get to know me, I open up and talk comfortably about everything."
This restraint repeats itself even when she talks about her father's death, who passed away about six years ago at the age of 75 after he fell ill with the coronavirus. "We warned him because we knew he was a hugger, everyone would always approach him and he would never say no to someone. He caught the coronavirus before Yom Kippur, he had no background diseases, so we didn't worry. Very quickly the situation deteriorated and he was sedated and ventilated, but I didn't know about it at all. On Friday I went to him and didn't know it was to say goodbye. Suddenly I saw him sedated and ventilated, I cried and asked him to wake up. That night he passed away. It is a hole in the heart, until today it is very hard for me to digest it."
How much has life changed since then?
"From end to end, unequivocally. It closed me completely, before that I was a very restless person, a hyperactive one who jumps from thing to thing, and suddenly there is a fear of death, a fear that people close to me will die, that my family will be hurt, thoughts I didn't have before. I am dealing right now mainly through denial and cynicism because I am a very cynical person, but it is hard for me, and it also caused me a kind of trauma."
How much is father still present in your and mother's daily life?
"Really present. We are constantly remembering things he would do, stories he would tell, commemorating him in every little thing. He would write words of Torah on notes, there are a lot of his notes scattered around the house and now we are publishing a book with all his stories that appear on them."
If he were here, what do you think he would say to you?
"He would tease me that I am so shy. He loved to tease me, we had the same humor, such a black humor. He would also probably be very proud of me. It's a pity he is not here to see me."
Photo: Bat-Shahar Nisan | Styling: Yuval Zar-Aviv | Makeup: Yuval Galron | Hair: Emmanuel Ross | Production: Tal Politi
