Shabbat father: Thousands of Israelis contracted the love virus of Hanan Ben-Ari

24,000 people came within three days to see Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu.

There were children, adults, Ashkenazis, Orientals, religious and secular.

Everyone joined him in prayer, which despite the dome on his head felt completely non-religious.

This is probably how a world champion's performance feels, full of small victories

Living Room Fellow

02/01/2022

Sunday, 02 January 2022, 11:03 Updated: 11:19

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I have seen hundreds of music performances live. This is my profession, but mostly my love. I saw performances by artists I had been deaf to on their albums for years, but in the moment of truth, when they stood in front of me on stage, they managed to disappoint in a big way. On the other hand I also saw singers I was not particularly impressed with, until I was exposed to their unique stage work, and made me a fan. Hanan Ben - Ari's performance, like his music, and probably like the person himself (whom I do not know personally) - is a completely different matter, almost indefinable. How hard it is to write a review of such a show.

It's hard, even though the bottom line is awfully simple to sum up the event: it was a very successful performance by a very successful singer.

Much more successful than I expected.

Some catchy and good chants, performed flawlessly in front of a loving audience.

It is obvious that Ben Ari is working on his voice, and is becoming a much more impressive singer than he was in the beginning.

The familiar anthems threw the ceiling into the sky as expected, and even the less successful songs swept the elves in the stands.

Much thanks to Ben Ari's energetic charisma, which can probably no longer be called "surprising" at this point.

Even the infamous sound of the Menorah Hall managed to surprise pleasantly with an enveloping sound experience.

Some of the audience might call it private supervision, some might call it "professional sound people".

Maybe both are right.

In the end, if there is a place in Israel where it is known that without faith CSKA would not have eaten it, it is probably the place.

The audience feels his songs in their veins.

Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

But to sum up Hanan Ben-Ari's appearance as "successful" or "sweeping" would be a sin to the truth. Not because she was not successful or overwhelming, but because she is not really an "appearance", at least not in the classic sense of the word. It was an event. The kind of word we know next to other words like "heart event" or "security event," but in this case it is the most basic meaning of the word: the fulfillment of something abstract.

For two hours, 8,000 viewers could feel Ben-Ari's art flowing through their veins. Whether they are secular, religious, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, children or the elderly. It's not something that happens when listening to the radio or Spotify, it almost never happens in live shows either. Ben Ari, with a smile that seemed impossible to scratch his face even with a rake, managed to make it look light. That everyone will take the last sentence wherever they want. You are allowed to be cynical, you are also allowed to get excited. It's part of the business, and there seems to be no one in Israel today who does it better.

The Bar Mitzvah groom did not take the "right" stage. Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

The omicron panic was halted at the entrance gates to the legendary hall, and the atmosphere inside was everything but a performance by one of the most popular singers in the country. Honestly, it's really impossible to create a sense of a rock show at 11pm on a Friday. Ben Ari of course knows this, so he decided to make it something much bigger. The Israelis, as always, treated masks only as a recommendation (and recommendations, as is well known, Israelis tend to ignore) and decided to consciously contract the love virus that Hanan Ben-Ari spreads in his performances.

Even before the show, two clowns laden with balloon bouquets walked around the stairs between the stands, talking gibberish in an Italian accent. It was pretty creepy, even for someone who has not read Stephen King's horror book "It". Finally the two clowns took the stage to pass the time to the Alpine audience in the style of the Comedy del Arte. It was as weird as it was original. This is not the expected intro to Hanan Ben Ari's performance, but as mentioned, nothing in this performance was expected.

Finally, the giant screens projected Ben Ari and his band saying a few words of greeting and then taking the stage.

The band members began playing some of the biggest hits, as a kind of overture to a larger musical event than what is expected from the song of the year by most radio stations over the past few years.

16,000 eyes were turned to the festive stage, but the joyous groom of this huge bar mitzvah celebration was not there.

Finally, his voice emerged from the other side of the hall, where Hanan Ben-Ari sat armed with a giant piano at the bottom of the stand furthest from the stage, performing the song "Wikipedia" which he co-wrote with Keren Peles (a fact I learned, quite ironically, on Wikipedia).

16,000 eyes turn to the wrong place.

Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

Veterans of the Sports Hall will surely remember how Mickey Berkowitz, a great Israeli basketball player, chose to enter the farewell game through Gate 11 to honor the residents of "the cheapest stand, with the most expensive people," according to legendary announcer Rafi Ginat. It is not clear if this is a Maccabist homage to Ben Ari (who also signed a cover version of "Yellow is Maccabi"), but this thought cannot be ruled out outright. At the end of the show, when Ben Ari returned to the piano on the "cheap" side of the hall to perform "Makom" - his latest single, in which he tells how he used to play the catapult outside the synagogue in the Karnei Shomron settlement - it was hard not to understand how close Ben Ari's circle was. Amazing.

As mentioned, this is more than a show. I could write about the musical transitions, the pure pan produced by Ben Ari's humble brass band or the guitar work of Yaakov Asraf, who seems to embody the proverb "Do not look at the jar but at his finger work". Even if an alien from Mars had landed in Elijah's hand and seen this show, he would have realized that something bigger was happening here than talented people standing on stage and performing beautiful songs. Ben-Ari gave 24,000 people, within three days of sold-out performances, free access to his most hidden drawers. A kind of "life like that" for a 33-year-old boy, who spent most of his life escaping fences, and finally decided to totally dedicate himself to his art and let her speak for him. It was hard to miss his love for what he does.

The audience drifted with him into this love.

It was mutual.

Like a moment full of pure passion after years of dating.

In the innocence and naivety of lovers, in the best sense, thousands of Israelis signed a not-so-simple year and inaugurated a new year full of hope, along with a man who in a rare moment of immodesty defined himself in the past as an infinite light clothed in the body.

It is not only the right to experience the fulfillment of the fantasy of the child who dreamed of "making Nokia", but the possibility of drifting into an intimate and universal prayer.

One that does not need a dome or a tassel to get excited about.

Artist that the sectors will be burned.

Master the understanding that we all move away when we seek.

An artist who will only be in good news.

Artist knowing that none of us have yet found the answers.

Artist Artist Artist on the children.

Complete atheists also joined in the prayer.

Artist Artist Artist.

Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

If there is a basic figure that defines the "average Israeli," it is likely that she could have been found in Ben-Ari's audience. Whether it's a "beautiful Israeli" or an "ugly Israeli," he probably knows how to hum the "na na na" from "If You Will." It's pretty amazing when you think about it. A quick glance at Hanan Ben-Ari, the man behind the music, yields a character that evokes emotions from its very stereotypical appearance. Jewish, religious, combative, born and raised in the settlement, nephew of Michael Ben-Ari the priest, was himself active against the disengagement. But if you look at his audience you will not be able to identify in him any particular religious or right-wing element, simply because his music - even if partly spiritual - does not appeal to a particular sector. This is how a world champion's performance feels - full of small victories.

For two hours, Hanan Ben-Ari proved that there is no need for a bridge between the sectors because there is really no abyss between us all. There is love, there is humanity, there is intimacy and there is joy. Ben-Ari escapes representation like wildfire. He did not want to be perceived as a pet dog, as a settler who speaks fluent Tel Aviv and certainly not as a confused Reformer. It is precisely this escape, and the choice not to wear any comfortable mask, that has caused so many people to connect with it. There is no line of prophecy out of sadness or laziness, and Ben-Ari is the first prophet of the new Israel, the one who is blind to colors, forgives the sins of the past and sees light at the end of the pessimistic tunnel.

He declares between songs that he is excited, but it's hard to see it about him. Like the Bible characters he sings about in "A Dream Like Joseph," he seems to have reached his estate, and he knows it's the right place for him. Singing in front of 8,000 people is the most natural thing in the world for a girl her age.

Makes a performance in front of 8,000 people feel like the easiest thing in the world. Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

The voice apparently ran there in the DNA, and it is especially noticeable when Ben-Ari switches to a preacher's mode, and starts talking about love. I was surrounded by 70,000 Bruce Springsteen fans. An outrageous comparison, on the verge of blasphemy for me, but it's the truth. From the worlds of Mishina and the extended Banai family, but spirituality is not from Rabbi Tao's seminary, but from Rabbi Springsteen.

Like Bruce, Hanan Ben-Ari surrounds himself with the band in which he is first among equals. Of the band.It's hard to miss the love between all the members on stage.The show would not have become so successful without this all so obvious secret.

Burst out of the cage. Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

Like the artist himself, it's hard to imprison Ben - Ari's music in a cage of settings. Hebrew pop-rock, Jewish punk, Zionist solo music, oriental settlement music, Ashkenazi hip hop. He called his first album "Balance" because he was looking for that balance in his music, but the result was that he was an immature musical. The big hit "Our Life is Strawberries" did become popular, but it forcibly pushed Ben-Ari into the tape-cast of the haughty religious, the one who mocks the empty cart and full of complaints of his secular brother. He's still performing this song in a gig, and the audience is still singing with him, but it's also the only song that Ben Ari seems to be doing because he 'must'. After closing three performances at Yad Eliyahu and another performance at the Jerusalem Arena within a week, it would already be an understatement to refer to him as "one of the most popular singers in Israel." With the towel around his neck, it's hard not to understand that this is the religious version of Shlomo Artzi. As such, he no longer has to do any song he does not really want.

On the other hand, there are songs that Ben-Ari seems to perform like a prayer.

He makes a good living from his art, but it seems that he is an "artist on the kids", for example, he would also do for free.

The song, as a retaliatory act, passes between the audience as a spiritual trance.

It happens sometimes in performances.

Neil Young once demanded stickers with the caption: "Live music is better."

I did not expect to think of Neil Young in the middle of a Hanan Ben Ari performance, but perhaps this is exactly the dissonance he meant.

There is something in live music that cannot be explained, and it is unnecessary to try to describe it in words.

Unless 8,000 ecstasy balls were handed out to the audience and they forgot to give a hug, it was one of the most amazing emotional reactions I have ever seen from an audience watching a show. In simple words: for long minutes thousands of people in the audience just started hugging and singing. Singing and hugging.

Moved to the piano near the "Cheap Stand" to break with tradition.

Hanan Ben Ari in Yad Eliyahu (Photo: Tamar Hanan)

Dad hugged a girl, mom hugged a son, grandson hugged grandma - and everyone sang. No one declared it necessary to do so, but the song seemed to draw everyone to this justified and natural revelation of affection. Ben-Ari, immersed in prayer like a cantor under fire, did not notice such a rare moment held far away from him. A cancer-stricken girl sitting on the side of the hall hugged her mother, when suddenly more and more people joined in their big hug, creating a kind of bubble of love. The last brick in the wall of cynicism shattered in the face of this moving human gesture.

The cynicism returned to its natural place on the walls of the heart at the end of the show, when Ben-Ari swept the audience to a joint singing of "Shalom Aleichem" ahead of Shabbat.

But even this human defender could not stand in front of the beautiful five-year-old girl who stood to my right and said: "It seems to me that Hanan Ben-Ari misses being 'father of Shabbat' in kindergarten."

In the final terms it is charity.

To paraphrase his favorite book, Ben-Ari set out in search of donkeys and found royalty.

The dream of being a bridge between the sectors he never really dreamed of, but the dream of being a bridge between the generations he managed to fulfill, when hundreds of children took to the streets of South Tel Aviv with a new and exciting core memory of their first great music performance.

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• Hanan Ben Ari

• Yad Eliyahu