Round about Succot

There are hundreds of festivals, one-time events, concerts and trips going on in practically every part of the country.

By BARRY DAVIS
Tamar Festival 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Tamar Festival 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
If you’re looking for something cultural, informative, entertaining, wholesome or just plain fun to do over the holiday period, you should be spoiled for choice, particularly on Succot.
As always, the Tamar Festival down by the Dead Sea is jam packed with big names such as Shalom Hanoch, Yehudit Ravitz, Ehud Banai, Barry Saharoff, Alma Zohar and Aviv Geffen, as well as veteran Turkishborn US-resident Sufi musician Omar Farouk Tekbilek. The Tamar Festival concerts will take place from October 15 to October 19 in a number of desert beauty spots, including the Ein Gedi Botanical Gardens, Nahal Zohar and Masada. In addition to the highdecibel rock acts, there will be an ethnic music-based show featuring Tekbilek alongside Yemen Blues, Dudu Tasa and veteran cross-cultural music frontman Shlomo Bar. The festival will close with an electronic music tour de force spearheaded by Knessiyat Hasechel with video visual enhancement, followed by rave group Infected Mushroom. Besides the musical entertainment there will be the traditional hands-on – or feeton – slot of a moonlit trek along Nahal Tzin on the evening of October 16.
For more information: www.tamarfestival.com
Click for full Jpost coverage
Click for full Jpost coverage
Meanwhile, over in Holon, the Mediatheque Center is offering a rich range of entertainment and activities of stories, movies, comics and animated exhibits and creative workshops for kids of all ages. There is also a fascinating ongoing exhibition of works at the Israeli Cartoon Museum by legendary American comics artist Joe Kubert and his sons Adam and Andy. And there is plenty of artistic endeavor on offer from some of our own leading animators and comics designers, including the New Heroes, New Starts workshop courtesy of Ofer Zanzouri and Eran Aviani, which will show children aged nine and up how to portray superheroes, while Amos Alanbogen will entertain 4-6 year-olds and their parents at the Illustrated Storytime slot.
For more information: www.cartoon.org.il and (03) 652-1849
The Muzot Festival in Shoham is taking place for the 11th year running (October 17-18), with headliners including Kobi Oz, with his Guide for the Perplexed show, and a host of star pop and rock acts such as Dana Berger, Asaf Amdursky and Yeremy Kaplan. Veteran vocalist Gidi Gov should also pack ‘em in with his Magical Mystery Tour Beatles-based concert, which also includes guest performer Rona Keinan. There will also be some holiday-relevant entertainment from Etti Ankri, who will join forces with Yehudah Katz for a show at the Biblical Succa venue.
As always, the Muzot program takes in theatrical pursuits too, with the Children’s Succa housing a performance of David Shilman’s Kacha Lo Bonim Succa (That’s No Way to Build a Succa) and Marak Kaftorim (Button Soup) by the Orna Porat Theater group.
For more information: www.shoham.muni.il and (09) 972- 3001
Science fiction fans will, no doubt, be delighted to learn that their annual bash based mainly at Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the Icon Festival, has grown to a 12-day event, starting on October 15 and ending on October 27. The program includes hundreds of screenings and events and will, for the first time, offer sci-fi fun and dialogue outside Tel Aviv, at venues in Jerusalem, Herzliya and Holon. The Icon agenda features more than 100 movies, panel discussions, conferences and a chance to meet and listen to some of the leading members of the sci-fi community from across the globe, including America-Canadian science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson and Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Besides the on-screen items at the different venues, the festival will host several leading figures from the worlds of philosophy, religion, the arts and culture, including hesder yeshiva head Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, theorist and geneticist Prof. Eva Jablonka, and writers and journalists Irit Linor and Rubik Rosenthal. The visiting and local celebrities will take part in panel discussions and talk about a range of associated fields, such as the gray areas between technology and society, science, Judaism and fantasy.
For more information: www.icon.org.il
The Boidem (Attic) event, which takes place at the Bikurei Ha’itim Center in Tel Aviv from October 16 to October 18, is an art festival with a difference. As the name suggests, the festival unveils to the public early works of veteran and renowned artists who come from a wide range of disciplines.
The roster of artists, whose hitherto cloistered works are being proffered to the public, makes for impressive reading and include top artists such as photographers Gadi Dagon, Vardi Kahana and Michal Rovner; playwrightdirector Yehoshua Sobol; Anat Gov; Edna Mazia; and Hillel Mittelpunkt; dancers Nir Ben-Gal and Barak Marshall; as well as veteran dancer-choreographer Rina Sheinfeld; award-winning film directors Ari Folman and Dina Zvi; and artists David Vakstein and Anisa Ashkar.
The works cover a breadth of genres and disciplines, from the plastic arts to dance, photography to installations, and from video art to short movies.
Entry to the festival, daily between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., is free.
The exhibition will be followed by a symposium about the Boydem Festival and the works presented in it at Tel Aviv University.
For more information: http://www.tlvitim.co.il/ and (03) 691- 9510
One of the most impressive newcomers to the Succot events slot is the Batzir Hadash (New Grape Harvest) festival, which will take place in Yavne on October 16-18. The event organizers have set down a hefty marker for what they hope will become an annual event and have put together a very impressive multidisciplinary program over the three days.
The Yavne Municipality-sponsored festival is primarily designed to offer a stage for young artists and original groundbreaking works from Israel and abroad. The opening event, at Sanhedrin Park, features the Mime Daniel show from France and The Invasion by Slovenian street theater group LJUD. On the Israeli side of the program, the Orto-Da Theater group will present its long-running Stones production, which has been performed over 300 times in more than 30 countries to date, and the thoughtprovoking Zitzland on the Street show by Moshe Malka, Eran Peled and Tidhar Cohen.
Batzir Hadash also includes concerts, including the Hamoshav rock outfit, productions by young theater groups - such as Gush Lecha by graduates of the Nissav Natic School of Acting – an acrobatics show by The Smendrik group, and the Babel dance-theater production by Amir Kolban. There will also be a couple of literary events and a musical-theatrical show called Songs in Ashdodit.For more information: www.yavnecity.co.il and (08) 932-0000
The annual Storytellers Festival has been one of the regulars in the Succot cultural lineup for 18 years now. This year’s festival will be held at the Givtayaim Theater from October 13 to October 20 and will feature more than 800 storytellers from a wide range of professions and all walks and stations of life. As always, the festival items draw on a mosaic of cultural and personal backgrounds, with the tale tellers including the likes of nonagenarian former Israeli president Yitzhak Navon, veteran actress Lia Kenig, singercomedian Tomer Sharon, conductorcomposer comedian-actor Ze’ev Revach, Gil Shohat and media stars Yoav Ganai and Gadi Sukenik. As always, Iraqi-born raconteur Yossi Alfi will be at the helm to guide storytellers and audiences alike, and, no doubt, to add a few of his own anecdotes betwixt and between.
On the musical, drama and comic entertainment side of the program, there will be a tribute to late diva Shoshana Damari and an ethnic musicbased show called Gemar Hatuna Shelee – Wedding Stories.

For more information and tickets: www.yossi-alfi.co.il or (03) 573-0661; (03) 604-5000 or *8965Tell us your story
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