My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  Chupi says he had to be persistent. He had to put youngsters and club owners alike through a rigorous education, to get the dance crowd used to the new thing. He had to create his own crowd by himself, the house music crowd. And then connect the people to the music, and then connect the people to one another with the music. His goal was to make Allenby 58 the mecca of house music. He went to Europe and met the leading DJs and brought back the newest tracks, and along with a few others he created a music scene here that rivals those of London, Amsterdam, or Paris. It worked. So anybody who is anybody in hard-house or club-trance knows that Tel Aviv is now one of the best. Israel is awesome. No one knows exactly why the crowd here is so special. Perhaps it’s the wars, the pressure. Perhaps it’s the sea, the weather. The atmosphere, the attitude toward life. But what is clear is that the Israeli crowd has an amazing hunger like no other crowd anywhere.

  His real name is Sharon Friedlich. He is the son of middle-class German Jews who gave him an education in classical music. He is short and burly, his hair cut short and oxidized. By the mid-1990s he had become a mega-DJ. “When you are a mega-DJ,” Chupi tells me, “you have megapower. When you take your place in the elevated booth behind the glass, you know that if you just press one button, it’s as if you are pressing some point in the heads of a thousand people simultaneously. This is power. Total, sexy power. Because now they are really in your hands. You control them. And if you want to, you can send them to heaven. You can make them horny. The energy of the dance floor is sexual energy. And what they beg you for is climax. You get to decide whether you’ll give them what they are now desperate for. They are totally dependent on you. But if you are good, you wait. You don’t hit peak after peak. You play with them. You arouse them, but you don’t yet give it to them. It drives them crazy. And they shout louder, ‘Give it to us.’ And then, finally, when you give it to them, the club is like a ball of fire. Like an atomic blast. God is a DJ; DJ is God. It’s as if you’ve touched a thousand people in every part of their body. And you see all the blood rushing through them, the sweat dripping from them. And they are yours, utterly yours. They thank you and worship you because you gave them something powerful and total. Something that nothing else in life gives them. Something you cannot find in the real life, outdoors.”

  Shirazi says a real revolution has taken place in Israel. It’s not the Israel he grew up in anymore. In these last five years, everything has turned upside down. And his scene, the gay scene, is the perfect example. Until he launched his Friday night extravaganzas at Allenby 58, the gay scene was really on the fringe. It was tucked away, in places that were dim and secret. Only a few hundred people knew about them, and they didn’t want to be seen going in or coming out. Israel of the 1970s and the 1980s didn’t tolerate homosexuality. Israel was totally straight. It was a conformist society, hailing old-fashioned masculinity and sticking to strict conventional norms. But when Allenby 58 opened in 1994, Shirazi persuaded the owner, Ori Stark, to let him have Friday nights. They called it the Playroom. And they sent out invitations. At first, they were afraid. They didn’t know how straight Tel Aviv would react. They didn’t know if Tel Aviv’s gays would dare come to such a big place in the middle of town. But it turned out that Tel Aviv was not that straight anymore. It turned out that the gays dared. They came in droves, in their colorful coats and their wild outfits and their extravagant attitude. They came without any shame. On the contrary, they came with chutzpah and pride. “Standing there, at the entrance of Allenby 58 and watching that amazing gay crowd congregate, I actually had tears in my eyes,” Shirazi says. “I knew something big had happened. Something huge. We were liberated at last. The gays of Tel Aviv were liberated, and Tel Aviv was liberated. Israel was a new Israel.

  “The gays are the scene leaders,” Shirazi says. “Because what the gays have is totality. Gays are very total people, that’s what makes our parties so over the top. If it’s costumes, then it’s costumes all the way. And if it’s drugs, then it’s drugs all the way. And if it’s sex, then it’s sex all the way. Anyone who comes to our Friday night parties sees it immediately. Everything is up-front. Everything is on offer. There is no such thing as busting your ass all evening so that at the end maybe she’ll give you her phone number and go with you to the cinema. With us it all goes down in seconds. We look each other in the eye, walk off to the side, find the toilets, and fuck. And all around you the temperature keeps rising. There are go-go dancers, strippers, drag queens. Flickering lights, the beat of house music. It’s intense as can be.

  “But it’s not only the gays,” Shirazi continues. “Every night that Allenby 58 opens its doors, you get this feeling that something is happening, here and now. You can’t stand calmly at the bar. You can’t just sip a drink. The music, the strobe lights, the meeting of flesh. Chupi’s guys stripping off their shirts. And the frenzy. The sexual directness. The desire for an outlet. This hyperenergized Israel that suddenly appeared in the mid-1990s insists on partying. Insists on devouring life.”

  Shirazi was born not far from here, on Sheinkin Street. But it was a different Sheinkin then, Shirazi says. A quaint, quiet neighborhood, with Orthodox neighbors and a small park, a neighborhood that no one ever thought would become Tel Aviv’s SoHo. He brought himself up, worked his way up from nothing, until with hard work and perseverance, he acquired his present status as a scene leader. As king of the gays. And every week he has to surprise them. Every Friday night, he must invent some new, ever intensifying thrill. One week it’s a sailor party, the next it’s a Eurovision song contest party. One Friday it’s a Fascist uniform party, another it’s cross-dressing. And every two months, he holds his flagship after-party at Hauman 17, which calls for a dawn pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

  Time after time he tells me that he is a patriot. He loves Israel absolutely. He feels so proud when any Israeli wins anything abroad. When the blue-and-white flag is raised up high in any sports stadium, it actually gives him chills. But he was especially proud when the transsexual Israeli Dana International won the Eurovision contest in 1998. That was like an official seal of proof that Israel had changed, that Israel had adopted a new identity. “And now they say that Allenby 58 is perhaps the fifth most important club in the world,” he tells me. “There is a very strong international spotlight on the Tel Aviv scene. People realize our scene is world-class. DJs and drag queens from all over Europe want to come here. Because the truth is that although life is demanding here, life here is so much fun. Israelis really love fun. We are addicted to fun. We must have a good time all the time. We must party on and on. Perhaps it’s everything we’ve been through, perhaps it’s because of all of the troubles we still have, but we have this deep need to release all this pent-up energy. So what comes out at the end, in the Tel Aviv night, is some sort of unique warmth you won’t find anywhere else. This is what erupted here in the 1990s, in Allenby 58 and in Tel Aviv and in much of the country. This is what came out of the Israeli closet, when people suddenly opened up and started living. And this is the incredible thing you see here on the dance floor at two A.M., when everybody is sweating and calling out to the DJ, and guys are taking off their shirts and touching each other and feeling each other and becoming one body of flesh.”

  Michal Nadel says it feels like a tribe. When it really happens and the vibe is good and the rhythm is good and bodies are moving together, then everyone becomes one. She thinks it’s all very primitive and wonderful. When she gets into it and closes her eyes and moves her head from side to side, she can actually hear in the music the beating drums of ancient African tribes, the hooves of wild horses. “There is something very sensual about it, rhythmic and deep and sweeping,” she says. “And everybody is together in this sexy, insane thing. So you can get close to people. You can touch them. That doesn’t mean anything will come of it, though something could come of it. But mainly it’s these sort of little caresses. Very gentle. Because the feeling is that people have no barriers. But they are not aggressive. They don’
t threaten one another. You feel close even to people you don’t know. And when you smile at someone, he smiles back. Because we are all together here, brothers and sisters. We are all one in this incredible happening.”

  Michal’s father was a three-star general in the Israeli army. Her brother is a combat pilot. But Michal’s Israeliness now manifests itself in new ways. Every Thursday at midnight, she stands at the door of Allenby 58. In an extravagant getup, with her provocative mannerisms, she tells the bouncers who to let in and who to turn away, all the while looking for the guy she’ll have fun with at dawn. Selection is power, Michal tells me. It is the power to fish people out of the ocean, to decide who shall be accepted and who shall be rejected. “Because Allenby 58 is for 1990s Tel Aviv what Studio 54 was for 1970s Manhattan,” Michal says. “Something glittery, trashy, gaudy. Everybody wants to get in. Sometimes thousands crowd the doors. Guys in leather pants, girls with their breasts half bare. Because everyone knows that I will only let in the gorgeous ones. I will let in those who are not just pretty and handsome and rich, but those who come with an open mind and an open heart, and are willing to kill for it. Those who are ready to devote themselves to the alternative reality we create here, the reality that’s not Old Israel but New Israel, that’s not real life but much better than real life. Full of house music and house sex and house drugs. Full of this roar of an ecstatic tribe.”

  Ori Stark is Allenby 58’s thirty-eight-year-old owner, and the tall, blond, and charming Ravid Zilberman is its twenty-five-year-old barwoman. He is Tel Aviv’s acknowledged Prince of the Night, and she’s his girl. They’ve been going out together for a while now, and they love to talk about the scene they’ve created.

  Ravid says that if you enter Allenby 58 in the daytime you see that there is nothing to it. What was once a cinema house is just an ugly gutted hall with cement walls and a bit of a stench. But as soon as it gets dark and the evening begins and people start streaming in and the lights start to flicker and the music erupts, then all at once everything is electrified. Your skin starts to tingle, because you know something will happen. You enter something that is not quite real, a dream that makes your head spin. And all your barriers fall away. All your inhibitions. You are transformed. Even a nice middle-class girl like Ravid is transformed. After coming to Allenby 58 for a while she has become a totally different person.

  “Sex and drugs are an important part of it,” Ravid says. “There’s no question about it. When people are high they get turned on. And they don’t give a damn. But it’s not only sex and drugs. In the Tel Aviv clubs, Ecstasy isn’t only in the blood, it’s in the air. Everybody gets into the high. Everybody is vibrating. And it’s not some animal thing. There is a sort of code that makes you feel safe, protected. You can cut loose precisely because you feel protected.

  “There are all sorts of people,” Ravid says. “There are the uptown girls who come to be seen with their rich beaux, but they’re not interesting. And there are the tough Oriental downtown guys who are much more real and are just grateful to be let in. Then there are the Chupi freaks, who go wild on the dance floor, half naked and sweaty and crowded together. Hugging, flailing, grinding, creating a whirlpool of energy so strong that it sweeps up all the others, too. And on Saturday nights the soldiers come. It’s incredible to watch the soldiers. Water and oranges, that’s all they have—they don’t even drink alcohol. But even so, from midnight to six A.M. they never stop. They give everything they have on the dance floor. And when the night is over they go straight from Allenby 58 to the buses that will take them to Lebanon or to the territories or to some godforsaken skirmish. Really, Israel is such a crazy place. And when these kid soldiers kiss their girls goodbye and put on their uniforms and go, I can’t help but get emotional. It really breaks my heart.

  “We are five girls at the bar,” Ravid says. “Our role is to play the game. We only pour beer for people, but they really admire us. To be a barwoman at Allenby 58 is to be the best of the best. You’re a goddess. When you wear a short, tight skirt and a little halter top, with your back bare and two hundred hungry guys crowding around your bar, you have to know how to play it. How to flirt with them in the right way. Gently. And all in all they respect you. Because at Allenby 58 you are allowed to try but not to intimidate. If you get the sign, okay. You take it upstairs to the gallery, to a dark corner, or a dark room. Anything goes here. But if you don’t get the sign you move on. You don’t make a fuss. Because at Allenby 58 we have this code. Actually, it’s a kind of culture, a pretty defined world. But it’s a different world. It’s the world of today’s Israel, the world of the new Israeli generation.”

  Ori tells me that they are now a movement. They brought out tens of thousands to Barak’s victory celebration in Rabin Square, and they brought out two hundred thousand to the Tel Aviv Love Parade. “Who else in the country can bring two hundred thousand people to the streets?” he says. “Perhaps Deri’s political party Shas, but no one else. True, it’s not a political movement. It has no platform, and it’s not saying anything. It’s not the sixties now. Che Guevara is dead, Janis Joplin is dead, Woodstock is dead, and there are no more revolutions. There is no innocence, either. No one thinks he can change the world. There is no new idea here, no new message. And yet the government and the parliament and the establishment should pay attention to what is happening here. Because this nation is all about war and death. Even our religion is very sad, with its Yom Kippur and all, always telling you to suffer and sacrifice. But here we have something very powerful that says ‘Fuck it.’ We don’t have to suffer and sacrifice anymore. Because now we are a fifty-year-old nation, and the armies of the surrounding Arab nations won’t invade us. No one will conquer and destroy us. So we can breathe. We must breathe. And not only breathe, we even have to smile, laugh, go wild.

  “We deserve it,” Stark continues. “Of all the people in the world, we deserve it. So let us live. Peace has already happened, and if it hasn’t, it will. In a short time, we will have a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and it will be all right. So how much longer can we go on carrying this weight, this baggage we’ve been lugging around for five decades? The government and the parliament and the establishment don’t get it yet because they were all brought up on Ben Gurion, who sent everyone to the Negev. But now there is a huge divide here. You can see it at Allenby 58, young people saying, ‘Enough, it’s time for fun.’ There is a new generation in Israel and it’s demanding happiness.”

  Ori Stark is the son of a Labor official and an actress. In the Tel Aviv suburb where he grew up, he was a good Labor boy: boy scouts, high school, active army service. But he always suffered a bit from the stifling atmosphere of Old Israel. So in 1982, after the Lebanon War, he got himself discharged from the military on psychological grounds. He went to London and studied the club scene, and when he came back he was ready. He became known as Ori the Handsome, the young lover of a top fashion designer, the new prince of Tel Aviv’s nightlife. By 1983 he had produced his first big party, which featured 8 mm blue movies and attracted thousands. Then, for a decade, he opened and closed a dozen bars and clubs, until one day, at the end of 1993, immediately after Oslo, he walked into the enormous, neglected hall of the Allenby movie theater and knew this was it. The next big thing. Here he would establish his kingdom of happiness. He would make the empty cinema a shrine to happiness. For Ori hates sadness. And in this out-of-this-world venue he would make himself and others happy and celebrate to the very end.

  Does he read the papers? Does he follow politics? Does he have an ideology? I ask him. “Sure,” he answers. He supports the Left, always has. For a while, he even went to peace demonstrations. But today he believes that the party-now scene is more relevant than the Peace Now movement. “Allenby 58 is where it’s at, where politics is really happening,” he says. “In the past, Tel Aviv clubs celebrated machismo and senior officers and military heroes. But now no one cares about that hierarchy. If the commander of an elite commando
unit comes in—fine, but who the fuck cares who he is. The heroes here are singers and actors and people who make other people feel good. And this is what the next Israeli century and the next global millennium is going to be about. Not that I will be mayor and Shirazi will be my lieutenant, not that it’s all going to be one big love parade. But fun will take center stage. It will happen. It’s already happening. The young don’t read the papers anymore, but they dance like crazy. They will not go down to the desert, or build kibbutzim, or be army heroes, but they will wildly pursue pleasure and fun.

  “In the sixties and early seventies, people wanted meaning in life and in music,” Ori says. “Then came disco. But disco was ashamed of having no message. Now there is no shame, no pretense, no pressure to say anything. You don’t sing about love, you have sex. Sex now, sex right now, sex in the toilets. And this new physical authenticity is what’s real, this need for stimuli and pleasure and excitement. This is what Israel is now about. Forget the Zionist crap. Forget the Jewish bullshit. It’s party time all the time.

  “You can see it here,” Ori says. “Look around you. No more poses, no more pretenses. The sound system is so loud you can’t even talk. So you can’t ask her what kind of wine she likes and who did she vote for in the last elections. There is no foreplay. It’s all instant, quick. What’s your name? Let’s go. These kids live on the Internet. They click and buy. So their love is Internet love, too. They have no patience. Satisfaction is needed on the spot. And when they leave the toilets after a quarter of an hour, I watch them: there is no embrace, no affection, no tenderness. He goes this way, she goes that way. That’s it. We came, we came, we went.”