הכול הפוך פה - Everything is Upside Down Here: the view from an Israeli street fair

On Monday night, Naomi and I wandered down to the "Shanaba'ah" street festival on Emek Refaim to meet up with some other friends from Pardes (really, the entire Pardes student body). It was a huge street festival, celebrating Rosh Hashanah this coming weekend. A picture's worth a thousand words (shout-out to Mat, who asked for pictures! Now stop reading my blog and go do your 1L reading), especially when it comes to the absurdity of Israeli street fairs...

As we wandered down Emek Refaim, we heard some music coming out of the courtyard next to the building where the minyan Shira Chadasha meets. Katie, Matan, and I peeked into check it out, saw a couple people playing guitar on stage with a sound system, and almost turned back out to the street...and then realized that it was Shira B'tzibur (singing in community), which Sarah K. had told me I absolutely had to check out while I was in Israel. The words to Israeli folk songs (by artists like David Broza, Shalom Hanoch, Haholonot Ha'gvohim, Arik Einstein, Yonatan Gefen) were projected on a powerpoint for everyone to follow along.

The entire event was made slightly more absurd because it seems that the staging area for the whole street festival and all of the street performers was somewhere behind the stage where Shira B'tzibur was happening. As we were singing, street performers of all varieties wandered in and out, down the aisle through the audience and back to the street, including a marching band (who knew there were marching bands in Israel?) that came in and out several times. Each time, the Sousaphone and trumpet players stopped to accompany the guitar and bass players on stage. Bizarre, but great.

Shana tova u'metukah l'kulam - a good and sweet New Year to all!