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Adam Zivo: Amid the sirens and explosions, young Israelis keep on dancing

Inside Tel Aviv's underground wartime Purim party scene

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TEL AVIV — Bomb shelter dance parties were held throughout Israel last week in celebration of Purim, a holiday that commemorates the ancient rescue of the Jewish people from a genocidal Persian official. Despite frequent missile strikes and air-raid sirens, the festivities were defiantly joyful, epitomizing the resilience of a nation that has grown accustomed to war.

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I attended one of the parties on March 2, having been invited by some strangers I met at a bomb shelter the previous evening. The impromptu event was co-ordinated on a WhatsApp group with over 500 members, with the exact location — a reinforced parking garage — announced at the last moment.

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When I arrived, the organizers lamented that their attempt to bribe a security guard had been unsuccessful. As they troubleshooted, dozens of youth trickled in. Most were from the local francophone community, with a smattering of tourists alongside them.

Purim is often likened to Halloween, as costumes are customary. There were cowboys, princesses, butterfly wings, anime villains, devil horns and so on. Drinks were poured, and lawn chairs were set up in empty parking spots. Women smoked nonchalantly, waiting for the music to begin.

Then tragedy struck: the event, being of dubious legality, was cancelled. So the youth poured onto the street to continue their aimless revelry, uncertain of where to go.

“One side you’re on war, and it’s very hard and very stressful, and the other side is like, OK, we have to celebrate,” said a young woman, seemingly of Middle Eastern descent, who has become accustomed to missile strikes after moving to Israel five years ago. “We always want to find the light, even in the darkness.”

Her friend, a young Black woman with rhinestones bedazzling her face, concurred. “We try to celebrate life, even though everything (is) very hard here,” she said. They laughed together, and said that they were excited to live and enjoy their freedom.

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A trio of rambunctious young men said that it was “incredible” that former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei had been killed in an airstrike two days earlier, and that his death made this year’s Purim particularly special. “We have to enjoy much more than before, because there is the war. If we’re not happy, we show Iran that they win,” said one, while his friend, wearing a bunny mask, repeatedly performed a magic trick by pulling a carrot from behind my ear.

Abby, a woman decked out in gold lamé and angel wings, felt that Purim allowed her to “celebrate the resilience of the Jewish people and all that we’ve been through all over the ages.” Holding a cigarette and a plastic glass of wine, she continued, unflustered: “The best message I can give to the world, I swear, like seriously, you need to live.”

At one point, a harsh buzz erupted from everyone’s phones: another siren was imminent. The revellers descended into the garage, where a group of them began to dance and sing a Hebrew folksong: “We are believers and children of believers, and we have no one else to rely on but on our father in heaven.”

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After the alarm subsided, the crowd dispersed. The organizers announced on WhatsApp that they had found an alternative venue, but it was 1 a.m. and many people had already gone home. I jogged to my Airbnb as quickly as possible, lest another siren blare while I was in an unfamiliar neighbourhood with no obvious shelter nearby.

The next night, the organizers hosted another party. They shared the address — a garage underneath a mall — just before midnight, and warned everyone to enter discreetly. An hour or two beforehand, Hezbollah launched three missiles at the city and, with Lebanon being much closer to Tel Aviv than Iran, everyone had only 90 seconds to find safety (I heard what sounded like an interception as I hurried down the stairs).

In the bowels of the garage, an enormous, submarine-like door — 30 centimetres of solid metal — sat slightly ajar. Music thumped behind it: disco, pop and rave soundscapes. Inside, cloistered away from the sterile white light bathing the main garage and amid a haze of cigarette smoke and humidity, hundreds of party-goers sporting extravagant costumes were gyrating to the music.

“We just get out of the basement and go out and have some fun,” said a young man, Rubin, who, along with his girlfriend, was dressed in a mock spacesuit. He was excited to “just have a good night for once, after the four days we just had.”

Two guys, dressed as Mario and Luigi, sat on a car. “Nobody can stop us. Even Hezbollah or Iran. We don’t care … we are not nervous because we are together. All the people here is a family,” one of them said.

Not far away, Noam, a man with golden tinsel on his head, said that while it was weird to see wartime dancing, he was determined to be happy. “Look, all of our holidays are just about Jews who were escaping and being executed and everything, and we need to remember that every generation Jewish people will be executed and they will look for us,” he said.

Sitting on a ramp was Rebecca and her friend Amelie, who was dressed as a blue parrot. They agreed that they generally felt safe because of Israel’s ubiquitous bomb shelters, and that the party was not dangerous considering its fortified location. “There is a war and everything, but we’re, like, having fun. It’s usual for us,” said Rebecca.

“Everything is for the Iranian people. We’re dancing for them. You’re gonna be freed from your f–king dictatorship,” said a laurelled, vaguely cherubic young man who was chilling out in the garage. Wrists flailing, he boasted that Israel has the best air defences in the world, and compared the Iron dome to “witchcraft.”

Elsewhere, two swarthy men sat on a concrete divider. “We need to dance, because in the darkest time, you need to have joy. Without joy, without love, there is nothing,” said one. He noted that Cyrus the Great — an exalted Persian king of antiquity — had liberated the Jews, so it was time to return the favour and liberate the Iranians from their tyrants.

His friend interrupted: “Life is too short to be sad. Honestly, what’s gonna happen is gonna happen. God is with us, and we don’t have time to be sad.”

The party ended at 3 a.m. The crowds oozed upwards, drunk and happy, indiscreetly passing through the mall and dispersing into the night. And then there was silence and a vast solitude. The streets were empty. Nothing moved. I looked at the sky and heard the roar of a jet. A few hours later, the emergency alert blared again. And then again after that. Elsewhere, often far away, rockets exploded in the air, sounds that could not be heard in the underground party bunker.

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