Yelki Palki

What does it take to make people happy? According to what I witnessed yesterday, not much. Just play some good music in the middle of the city and the night can be unforgettable.
The nice thing about living in Jerusalem is that the city tries to entertain you. Currently, for unclear to me reason, the municipality is having free concerts in the park next to the city hall. A setup is simple: a stage, guards, speakers, microphones and plastic chairs. By the way, I am convinced that Israel cannot function without plastic chairs. If at some point, there is a boycott of imports of plastic chairs, this country will fall apart. They are a part of Israeli landscape at this point.
Anyway, at 9pm last night, the band called Yelki Palki performed their brand of Eastern European music and gathered a large audience consisting of every type of Jerusalemite imaginable. Tourists, hippies, goths, religious, children, Arabs and so on. About twenty minutes into the performance a timid dancer frayed in front of the stage. She was immediately joined by a few more free spirited people and by the time that the band was playing out their last songs, not many remained seated. Just picture hundreds dancing as if no one's watching; laughing and jumping. Most of the people were just passing by when they heard the riveting sound that attracted them like a magnet. Maybe that's the essense of Israel; this ability to totally let go of all worries any time and any place and just dance the night away. So tonight I'm off to search for that feeling again. And maybe just like yesterday, I'll get to hear the girl singing in a wonderful opera voice at midnight on the steps of the Central Post Office.