Let’s start from the end. end of the world. The one that happened here seven and a half months ago and still far from over. The one that started, as Aviv Gefen sang, “when we stopped dreaming, when we stopped hoping.” The one that also happened yesterday evening in Israel outside the Yarkon Park, which saw another attack and the pursuit of a terrorist, which has a TV channel that presents a “study” according to which a left-wing supporter had a 10-fold chance of being kidnapped or murdered on October 7, and which, as of last night, also has one less voice of A sane, beautiful and possible Israeliness, the voice of Dan Toran Shandam.
There was such Israeliness last night, at least for two hours, also in Yarkon Park. 60,000 people, a host of guests on the stage and one Aviv Gefen, who allowed himself to raise his traditional rock ball as the first giant show since the end of the world. Just before he screamed with the audience the scream that started somewhere in the nineties of his career, a scream that ends perhaps the most personal song he wrote and became the scream of an entire generation and more relevant than ever, he spoke quietly for a moment.
“We are an amazing people from the right and the left,” he said, “and we just want a clean government – not a mafia organization. We don’t want combines, we want clean, we want equality, we want sane, we want decent.” And after these words, the scream of an excellent generation that has fucked it up and not only wants, but must, change.
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Before all this there was also a show. Not without mistakes, which we will get to later, but the bottom line is simply excellent. Geffen took the stage in a yellow suit, as a tribute to the 125 abductees who are still in Gaza, and gave a show that was adapted to the complex and pretty shitty times we are in but – not least with the help of a fine video art work – he also dared to soar.
There were all the individual hits that received excellent performances, but the rock ball comes for the surprise guests – and they did come. First was Boaz Sharabi with a moving performance of “Brit Olam”, followed by Brigadier General Kobi Regev, an Air Force man who accompanied Gefen on the piano in the song “Uri U’ar” dedicated to the abductees, then Amir Banyon, and Danny Sanderson with Mazi Cohen in “Mini Ihud” of Cut, and the offspring Dylan Geffen and Hillel Berkovich, the son of the legendary ex Ilana, in a duet to… well, “Oh Ilana”.
And there was also the necessary round of the nineties, which Nimrod Lev reached this time with “That’s all the magic”, Johnny Shuali who sang “now” but seemed like someone who was a bit stuck back then, Eyal Schechter from Abytypus with “Leave me room to hug you”, which at least In the opinion of the writer of these lines, it proved that there are songs that are better left embraced only in a dream, and Dr. Kasper’s rabbit show that lifted the audience with “I will dream forever”.
As someone who grew up in that decade, there is something endearing in the nostalgia that was resurrected on the stage of the park, and there is also something noble in Geffen’s cheering for his colleagues since then, but there is also something in it that evokes compassion and maybe even a kind of mild condescension, of the “look at me” variety – and you will be seen. And maybe it’s just a thought of someone who looks at himself in the evening like yesterday and would like to be 15 years old again, because judging by the smiles of Shechter and Lev and the dancing of Shuel on stage, they are totally dreaming forever.
And as for dreams, those who stood out in their absence and we were only forced to dream about them were two – the late Yonatan Gefen, Aviv’s father who for some reason none of the songs he wrote were performed on stage, and it’s a very, very bad thing, and female voices, with the exception of Mazie Cohen who came on stage only as a second voice to Danny Sanderson.
Leave for a moment the Me Too era or the PC culture, their respect is in their place, but even a decade ago, putting on a show like this without a single guest singer is quite an achievement, not to mention WTF? And it’s not that voices are lacking, Meninette who has already worked with Gefen, Derech Rita, Nega Erez, Marina Maximilian, Chava Elberstein or Neta Barzilai, and, you know what, Noa Kirel or Anna Zak. The list is endless, and one can assume that some of them would have agreed to appear alongside Aviv Gefen in Yarkon Park in front of 60,000 people.
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The moon was already high in the sky when the last guest took the stage, who in 1992, as Geffen recounted, released his Moon, one of the best-selling Israeli albums of all time, at the same time as the host’s moonlight.
“Fields of engagement”, Shlomo Artzi sang with Aviv, and it was his words that were engraved in my head and hummed all the way home, to the priceless apartment for the resident of Pardesia and to the two girls who fell asleep on the sofa with the grandmother who came to babysit. “Now on a highway, in the car you bought, I drive carefully from people, from dreams, from a racist spirit. This is not the same country, no longer the same room, just a song – like an inevitable memory.”
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