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Messiah will come from Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv residents constantly engaged in searching, asking questions, and this makes it the true holy city

The salvation will come from Tel Aviv. Not from Jerusalem, Safed or Brooklyn. It will come from our true holy city.

 

Underneath the various images of this city, such as: Sodom and Gomorrah, the city of sins, a city of café and pub dwellers, or just a city of traffic jams, smog and dog poop, lies something that can be defined by one word - the question of all questions: "Ayeka?" ("Where art thou?").

 

Tel Aviv is the mother base of those who ask questions, and the concentration of those who search for a hidden truth forms an atmosphere of constant renewal.

 

If we ask people on the street (Sheinkin, Rothschild and Dizzengof) what they do, we’ll hear tales of experimental dance shows, of plays that combine video art and recycled energy, and of performances that examine the primal careen inside us.

 

Because in Tel Aviv everybody is either an actor or a director, a playwright or a dancer, a singer, musician, poet, choreographer, sculptor, painter and of course there are those who are all of the above put together.

 

And true, I admit that it is quite likely that in a few years'-time we'll find most of them working in hi-tech or practicing law. But we can't dismiss the fact that the time they have spent in Tel Aviv was a time of creation, their creation, their search. Because this is what artists do – search and ask questions.

 

And that's why Tel Aviv is the holy city.

 

Holiness is created at a place where questions are being asked. A place of soul-searching and wondering. Holiness is to become anew and reborn with each moment that passes.

 

A person who's searching is a more open person, more accepting, more curious. A person who's trying to find himself will not be shy to attend a Shabbat eve Kiddush and then go out to a new concert. An artist who examines the limits of the universe will find no contradiction in laying teffilin at a hung-over morning after a crazy night of partying.

 

People on a search are people who seek to find something new to fill their world each morning.

 

More and more people are combining between old and new, the Torah and modern culture. More and more artists get rid of their fears and inhibition and create new forms of art, an art of questioning, of genuine searching.

 

And a place so dense with questions and rejuvenation is also dense with holiness.

 

And when the Messiah comes (very soon), he will come from the question, not the answer; he will come from the new, not the old. He will come, I believe, from Tel Aviv.

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.16.09, 18:32
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