This Must be the Place - Tel Aviv as a Beacon of Hope amidst the Chaos
While I lambasted the Chicago scene earlier, I have no reason to fear not having a home. It was it Tel Aviv all along.
The traffic was at standstill as we pulled into Tel Aviv. I was desperate to get to the hostel, but I couldn't tell where we were. The GPS was jamming on my phone (probably because of the war) and it felt so uncertain on when we would arrive.
We had just come from the National Military Cemetery. I had learned about the Michael Levin story, which I was shocked that I didn’t know from when I was growing up in my Jewish community in the Chicago suburbs. I leave the link with you to discover, but I was amazed with his commitment to the Jewish people in a time when this was not a common practice to serve in the IDF as an American. He ultimately died in combat during the Lebanon War of 2006. In that moment, I felt an overwhelming connection to Israel. It was something that I could not take for granted given his ultimate sacrifice.
His story feels especially impactful in the midst of the alienation I feel within my own community in America. If you read my first Substack post, you'd come to understand the rocky landscape for an American (zionist) Jew within the Chicago music scene. The brief and lively exposure to Tel Aviv's nightlife would help make me feel more at home than I did in Chicago despite being thousands of miles away.
My first stop in the city was by chance. Not feeling the club music at this juncture, I ventured to a gritty basement that was reminiscent of Berlin in many respects. Covered in graffiti, I was eager to hear the underground metal band take the stage. These basement shows were something I was very familiar with back in Chicago, but they did leave a sour taste in my mouth after my run in with the "from the river to the sea" gig I had to play. This event in Tel Aviv cleansed my spirit and evoked the same emotion that I had listening to System of a Down back in the early 2000s. I headed upstairs and grabbed a Fernet and Coke in honor of my Argentinian metalhead friend who taught me about the drink.
I headed out to follow the rest of the group and test out the house music scene in the city. We headed up to a sleek lounge where the DJ played safe Afro House songs. As our group began to dance, he shifted into a harder hitting set of tech house bangers. Eventually, ownership asked him to step off the decks. Never fear, the resilient DJ guided us to another club.
We headed to another club where he was welcomed along with our group. The wandering Birthright group found a new home as the DJ picked up right where he left off. The cap the night off he played the Marco Lys remix of Brighter Days. A song so synonymous with Chicago House music that I was genuinely impressed. I led in the monosyllable hook of “ooooh ooooo ahhh eeeee” as the kick drum thumped. Just like I sang Oseh Shalom at the Western Wall, it was so relieving to hear one of the great anthems of Chicago House music play out in Tel Aviv. I thought to myself, “wow, this might be the place after all”.
Finally, we headed back to the hostel to close out the night. Here, I was most impressed with the diversity of musical tastes of the group. The Israelis danced to Salsa music and another couple from Texas chose country music. I was impressed with the diversity of interests on display. It was a pretty sweet evening.
I finally embraced the glow of the Bauhaus inspired building. An architectural style that was banned from Nazi Germany and eventually came to Israel. Tel Aviv has the highest concentration of these buildings in the world. The resiliency, diversity and creativity of the Jewish people blew me away after this evening. I felt that we could accomplish anything as long as we stuck together and told our story.