Uri Geller, with his spoon bending trick, was the first Israeli to popularize this entertainment specialty. Today many mentalists start their careers in Israel, where they are trained and where they first perform.
Israeli mentalists were the subject of a feature article last month in The Wall Street Journal, focusing on Ehud Segev, one of three Israelis performing acts of mental manipulation this month. Segev refers to himself as "The Mentalizer," and is in demand at corporate events around the world.
Reporting in the Wall Street Journal, Marshall Heyman writes:
...the Mentalizer explained that he had been interested in mysticism and the supernatural from a very young age. At the age of 12, for a Bar Mitzvah gift, his grandfather sent him to magic school in Tel Aviv. After that, he started doing "birthday parties for kids in my village showing the power of the mind."
A few years later, he was asked by a newspaper to predict the outcome of mayoral elections 11 days prior to them, based on photographs of candidates. "I read their personas and I was 100% right," Mr. Segev recalled. That's when the media, he said, started calling him the "mental analyzer," which was shortened to "Mentalizer."
He was asked if being a mentalist hindered his romantic relationships.
"I used to come home and say, 'No sex tonight. You have a headache,'" Mr. Segev joked. Whether it's true or not, he said, "I cannot read my girlfriends' minds. I can maybe read the girl once or twice, but once I get emotionally attached, I'm blocked. I think it's a shield to protect me from getting hurt."
In the following video, Ehud Segev shows how you can fool your friends into thinking that you can slice an unpeeled banana with the force of your mind. Enjoy!
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So -- because I like my banana slices thin, poor Ehud will be sewing all day long!
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