Last night Habad sponsored a concert in Tel Aviv to celebrate the Rebbe's birthday. Friends of ours invited us to join them in attending the concert, and against our better judgement with Pesah quickly approaching, we decided to say yes and go.
Due to our friend's great navigational skills, we ended up getting their pretty late.. We caught most of Lipa's performance, and he was pretty good. For every 8 minutes of singing there was about 25 minutes of speeches and "Yehi"'s.
The crowd was pretty full, but not packed. There were a number of empty seats that I saw in my area..
I did not like the way they set up the grounds. The stage was so far away from the crowd that even with good seats we could not see the performances directly but had to watch on the screen. Also the lighting was pretty funky. They had some very bright lights flashing off the stage sporadically and the lights were blinding the crowd so at those times wee could not even see the screen...
But aside from that and the length of the speeches it was pretty good. MBD came up next. I thought he was a bit flat and unexciting. He sang a few songs and then sang one with Gideon Levine.
After some more speeches with some interesting gematriyas proving how great the Rebbe is, and a public kiddush levana, the star of the night came out.
Shweckey.
I was surprised that he got bigger billing than MBD. I remember MBD being the star and everybody else was his warm up act. Now MBD is a bit of a has-been whose time has passed, and he is warming up for the younger, more energetic stars of today. Shweckey was really the star of the night and he was great. He was exciting. He was vibrant. And the crowd loved him.
One more picture - at some point this guy started walking around the area I was sitting in and passing out drinks of vodka.. he got mobbed pretty quickly and his bottle was knocked off..
concerts are fun, and I wish i could go to more of them. However i have 2 problems: 1 - i dont like the modern Jewish music and only appreciate the american jewish bands (blue fringe, soulfarm, moshav, etc) 2 - there aren't enough around.
ReplyDeleteBesides that, knowing you i know you had no problem going to a concert celebrating the birthday of someone who died some time ago, but you didn't have the slightest inclination/doubt/hesitation that something isn't exactly correct in that sect of Judaism?
that is blasphemy of you to claim he died. I was there last night and 18,000 people were celebrating his birthday! How can you, one person, claim to know better than 18,000 people who were there???
ReplyDeletehaha that was so funny last night, there I was laying in a ditch on the side of the road hiking up to chomesh and rafi texts me that he is at the concert, so i told him he's a lubavitcher!
ReplyDeleteMa zaroh b'chayim, gam hu b'chayim..
Lets not get into the whole alive / dead machlokes.. of tzadikim lo mes and chayei tzadikim heim chayei ruchnim..
I can quote you a hundred svoros untill we both scream "teku!"
As a general rule I dont like when people get bashed bnecause everyone has his or her own shitas and shtik and nu elu v'elu divrey elokim chayim.
Maybe they go too far, but to start saying that their shitas are asur is going too far..
elchonon - of the two of us, you were clearly engaged in the more important activity at the time...
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