Arik Sinai: the Cohen Ranger

Jerusalemites have shouldered more than enough sorrow to justify the sense of fatalism that often seems to hang over the city, but that fatalism, fostered by years of conflict and strife, is of a peculiar sort; instead of inspiring apathy, it seems to fire city residents' desire to live for and fully appreciate the moment. Jerusalemites may resign themselves to the possibility of lives being cruelly stolen away, but they steadfastly refuse to resign themselves to the possibility of lives misspent. It's that aspect of the Jerusalem character, more than any physical defense, that keeps the city alive and ensures it remains the place we love. So when tragedy strikes, as it did this week, perhaps the best way to respond is in the Jerusalemite manner: honor the dead by honoring life. This weekend, thousands of city residents will go out and celebrate the simple fact of being alive in the Holy City. Join them.

Among your many options this week for celebration:

• Tonight marks the beginning of the free Summer Nights concert and performance series, taking place all over the city. Everything's kicking off with a performance by the Kolben Dance Company twirling through 18th century waltzes pumped out by the Israeli Camerata Orchestra.

• If waltzing ain't your thing, you can catch Yaron Peer at the Confederation House, playing an eclectic set of pan-Middle Eastern acoustic music.

• Summer Nights continues, in a contradictory fashion, on Friday afternoon with a series of free rock shows at the Yellow Submarine by a number of Israelis bands. After all, the best way to acknowledge American Independence Day is to revel in the country's greatest gift to the world: rock 'n' roll.

• Friday afternoon also plays host to the Arabesque Dance Troupe, performing authentic midriff-baring Middle Eastern dance routines at Beit Shmuel.

• On Saturday, entertain (and secretly educate) the kids with Where Is Mrs. Gabbai?, a musical tour through Yemin Moshe brought to you by the Train Theater.

• After the close of Shabbat on Saturday night, you can witness a unique instance of international (and inter-Jewish) cultural exchange when aged Israeli rock god Arik Sinai runs through a set of Leonard Cohen covers at the Yellow Submarine. Can he out-Cohen Jeff Buckley? Only one way to find out.

• If Cohen's moody oeuvre doesn't do anything for you, perhaps you'd feel more comfortable with Barbra and Bette - or at least, their songs (and others') as interpreted by Adina Feldman and her band. Wine and cheese included.

• Catch Restless, a recent Israeli/French collaborative film, in a special screening at the Jerusalem Theatre Sunday evening which will be attended by the film's director and cast.

• If you have a moment on Monday, swing by artist Noa Nahari's exhibit "Side Walk," which has to do with sidewalk installations as they relate to socio-political meta-narratives, or something. No, really.

• If you like having your mind totally blown, man, stop by the Jerusalem Theatre on Tuesday for Glow, a blacklight theatre comedy that promises to help you find yourself. Don't forget to eat some mushroom...um, pizza before going.

• With a one-time run starting on Tuesday (and continuing through Thursday), an American-European-Israeli production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic The Sound of Music has arrived in Jerusalem - but will Israelis have much sympathy for the plight of a family whose greatest loss to the Nazis was a nice house and an audience?

• For those of you on the avant garde tip, don't miss Hazira's The Mill Owner and the Miller on Wednesday night, a modern dance take on a European Jewish fable.
  

And if that's not enough for you, there's lot more to see in the Events section.

Just in time to relieve the crashed-out university students and university student wannabes who had celebrated all night at the enormous Laila Lavan event, Flag-carrying Orthodox Jews from across the land kept the party going into the late afternoon yesterday. To the tune of live bands on a Zion Square stage doing their best to connect scriptural references to Jerusalem to the military victory the city witnessed in 1967, thousands made their way from various starting points, through the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall and to the Western Wall (Kotel).

Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim) might be officially over, but today the celebrations continue, with Shiri Maimon, Subliminal, President Shimon Peres and many others capping off a parade through our major streets with some major pop action over at Teddy Stadium.

Photo of Jerusalem's own Hadag Nachash rocking Laila Lavan last night (top) courtesy of gellerj from flickr under a creative commons license; marching youth spilling through the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall yesterday afternoon (middle) by Ben Jacobson for Jerusalemite; street musicians and families join in on the flag-oriented fun (above left) by Ben Jacobson for Jerusalemite; Shiri Maimon resting up prior to her Teddy Stadium gig tonight (above right) courtesy Helicon Records.

Start things off in a relaxed manner on the 1st by visiting the Israel Draws Jerusalem exhibition at Mamilla and then heading to Safra Square to take in Rolling Flags, in which some people will ride some bikes across the square and then give Israeli flags to the mayor before seminal Israeli fusion rock act Ethnix goes on. But don't worry, the fun ramps up from there, and you'll be glad you saved your energy by the time night falls and the real party begins.

Dominating Monday night celebrations is Laila Lavan, this year's rebranded Student Day festival, which, taking a page from the beer-and-self-righteousness-soaked playbook of those debauched Tel Avivis, lasts all night and into the morning, filling up the time with a bevy of cultural activities, copious big-name concerts and discounted breakfast all over town. Considering that Jerusalem is usually a veritable crypt by 2 AM, an all-night festival is a strange and terrifying occurrence, and it remains to be seen what sorts of bizarreness will transpire when thousands of normally early-retiring Jerusalemites keep the party going well into Monday. They may well be so confused and disoriented that they participate for a change in the traditionally knit yarmulke-dominated Jerusalem Day march to the Western Wall.

And with all those boisterous young people with their hip-hop music and salsa dancing exhausted and hungover by the time Tuesday rolls around, our thoroughfares will be safe for families, labor unions and politicians, who will take to the streets Tuesday evening for a float-filled march to the Teddy Stadium, where Subliminal will regale the assembled masses with his unique brand of pro-establishment yet somehow brazenly rebellious rapping.

And while all this wackiness is going on, Jerusalem's theaters and concert halls are hosting a series of more thoughtful and edifying entertainment events as part of the ongoing Israel Festival.

Oh, and punctuating every day of celebrations will be - of course - fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks. Because how will you know you're having fun unless the sky is filled with exploding colors?

Photo of Laila Lavan main stage co-headliner Efrat Gosh at a recent Jerusalem gig courtesy of smadars from flickr under a creative commons license; Student Day revelers throwing their hands in the air like they care for Jerusalem very much courtesy of Student Union spokesperson's office.

Every spring, Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim) afternoon draws some of the biggest crowds that the city's streets see all year long, and the vast majority of the people making up the swarm of activity are all from a single demographic. Nationalist-religious youth movements and schools from around the country bring their charges in by the bus-load, and blue-and-white-clad teens celebrate the right to walk from the city center to the Western Wall by exercising that right en masse.

It's a passage that's only been open to people of all faiths since 1967, which means that a year ago was the gala 40th Jerusalem Day march, drawing bigger crowds than usual - increased representations from international and secular Jerusalem lovers among them.

The 2008 celebrations are being marketed by City Hall as "The Closing of the 40th," which sounds far more grand than 41, with four days of events to include entertainment options for all tastes (Jerusalemite's coverage to continue in the coming days). A completely separate Jerusalem Day parade, complete with socialist-themed floats and culminating with a concert at Teddy Stadium, is also in the works, so it will be interesting to see if the pluralistic momentum to the traditional afternoon march will continue on Monday, June 2, at about 15:00.

Photo of thousands of marchers down Jaffa Rd. on Jerusalem Day courtesy of epublicist from flickr under a creative commons license.

Despite 41's status as one of those unexciting prime numbers, Jerusalem is going beyond all-out to celebrate Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim) this year over the course of the first four days in June. If you thought last year's 40th anniversary parade approached a blue-and-white Mardi Gras at times, you ain't seen nothing yet - and by "nothing," Jerusalemite means "the 12-foot-tall, mildly-disappointed-looking wheeled head of David Ben-Gurion." This year, nationalist-religious pride, socialist-idealist nostalgia and monsters of pop are coming together for a special June 3 party.

Once a holiday celebrated primarily by members of the nationalist-religious camp, Jerusalem Day has become an increasingly secularized display of Israeli pride in recent years, entering the list of dates used as excuses to stage cultural events and throw parties - nothing wrong with that. Yet on another level, Jerusalem Day celebrations have for a long time had little to do with theology, with socialist throwback-themed floats snaking their way through the city's streets in an annual parade, this year scheduled to take place on the day after Jerusalem Day.

(For our complete coverage of the float parade and stadium gala, click here.)

Jerusalem has been stimulating the souls of artists since the first paeans to her beauty in the Hebrew Bible, and with nearly 41 years gone since reunification and 60 gone since becoming the capital of the new state of Israel, the city begs for a new round of artistic commemorations. And right on cue, the Municipality, in conjunction with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and the Alrov company, is rolling out Israel Draws Jerusalem, a large art display going up in the Mamilla Mall on June 1, in honor of Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim).

The initiative gathered 70 artists from all over Israel, hailing from nearly every major sector of society - Israeli natives, new immigrants, secular Jews, religious Jews, Charedi Jews and Arabs - and plunked them down in front of the Valley of the Deer, a broad valley in the heart of Jerusalem, near the Begin expressway, that has been allowed to retain its green character and serve as home to a small herd of eponymous mammals. Each artist produced a drawing or painting of the valley, committing to canvas his or her own unique viewpoint, aesthetic sensibilities and feelings for Jerusalem.

The paintings will be displayed starting from 18:00 on June 1 in the Mamilla Mall's Open Gallery. The exhibition, free and open to the public, will remain throughout the entire month of June.

Drawing by Dudu Panso, courtesy of the Department of the Arts, Municipality of Jerusalem.

There are plenty of historical and mystical reasons for Jews to party on Lag B'omer, which begins tonight.

The Omer itself, the seven-ish weeks between Passover and Shavuot, is traditionally a time of mourning and introspection, but the 33rd day of the Omer (33 is lamed-gimel to numerologists, two letters which can be enunciated together as "lag"), is a time for bonfires and revelry.

On Lag B'omer, the Jewish rebels who fought the Romans following the destruction of the Second Temple are said to have done some serious damage, and a plague that had been killing off the students of Rabbi Akiva is said to have disappeared, paving the way for Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai to begin studying under Rabbi Akiva's wing.

"Bar Yochai," as the ubiquitous Lag B'omer chant affectionately nicknames him, went on to canonize The Zohar, the central text of Kabbala, on this day, and he is said to have passed away on its anniversary as well.

Lag B'omer heralds a return to dogmatically sanctioned live music performances, weddings, haircuts and other festivities, but Lag B'omer is a harbinger of festivity for Jerusalemites who don't plan their lives around dogma as well.

Perhaps because of its superstitious, folky appeal, Lag B'omer is unlike many other religious observances in that its central lofty yet visceral ritual – namely, pyromania – has been adopted by the Israeli masses. Nearly as much smoke emanates from Sacher Park on Lag B'omer as the amounts that rise on Independence Day, arguably the most secular of holidays.

Just make sure to close your windows before you go to sleep so as to avoid waking up to a layer of soot on every surface in your home.

Photo of a child mesmerized by the Lag B'omer flames surrounding him courtesy of lev_cap from flickr under a creative commons license.

Jerusalem might have a delicious root named after it, but the city is also the namesake for a griddled chicken innards dish.

World Vegetarian Week, which started yesterday, is certainly a much bigger deal in other cities, where restaurants jump on the activism bandwagon, but here in Jerusalem, where green living is on the rise, there are still plenty of options for vegetarian dining, including local favorites Te'enim and the Village Green - that is, should one choose to go that way.

Beyond places that market themselves as strictly vegetarian, our city is also loaded with a cornucopia of options for meatless dining, thanks to the popularity of kosher certification, which dictates that if you serve dairy, dead flesh in the kitchen is a nischt-nischt.

For those of us who grew up in North America in the 80s, strolling through downtown Jerusalem yesterday might have conjured up a few Red Dawn nightmares. Men in uniform proudly waving red flags emblazoned with hammers and sickles were marching down Jaffa Rd., probably seeking to do unthinkable things with the precious bodily fluids of young capitalists.

Being the good tolerant pluralist that I am, I asked what was going on. The first gentleman I spoke to, an older man adorned in medals of Red honor, seemed to only speak Russian and Yiddish, which didn't help. The second did the same. Could they really have won? The third, a younger man with the two, reassured my Commie-paranoia and responded in Hebrew. "It's a parade to honor the veterans of the Second World War," he told me.

"The guys who fought the Germans?" I asked. With the mention of the Germans they all nodded yes. Usually celebrated on May 9, (ah yes...VE Day!), the Jerusalem parade was rescheduled for yesterday so as to be on a local weekday.

Walking amongst the old vets meant joining in on the pride they exhibited as they stood up straight in different colored uniforms, wearing countless medals and even singing old war songs in Russian.

The official statement released by City Hall claimed that some 800 vets participated in the march – accompanied by the Police Band, youth group delegations, Members of Knesset, flowers and refreshments – but from the sidewalk, it certainly didn't feel like it was such a big production.

With the war is so far behind us, it takes increasingly greater efforts to rile up the aging fighters. But we owe them all a great debt of gratitude, so hopefully more celebrations of their accomplishments are in the works.

The smell of grilled meat permeated the air throughout the day as Jerusalemites celebrating Israel's 60th Independence Day (Yom Haatzmaut) descended upon Sacher Park to partake is one of Israel's national pastimes: roasting animal flesh for hours on end on rapidly fanned charcoal fires in crowded places.

Photos of Sacher Park by Maoz Golomb (second from top) and Ben Jacobson.