This year’s Israel Festival, for the first time in its 64 years of existence as a summer cultural program, will follow up nine days of events in Jerusalem with four days in the Upper Galilee and Golan Heights, and then three in the Western Negev.

Jerusalem, along with the northern towns of Kiryat Shmona, Tel Hai, Kfar Blum and Majdal Shams, and Ofakim, Kibbutz Urim and Kibbutz Tze’elim in the south, will host the festival’s unique mix of performance art and music, theater and dance.

“This year’s festival stems from what is happening around us and within us,” directors Itay Mautner and Michal Vaknin said in a statement.

Last year’s festival was delayed till September, and was held in Jerusalem and in the Western Negev, the epicenter of the October 7 Hamas massacre, where terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza.

Mautner and Vaknin, who have been directing the annual event for four years, commented that this year’s festival offers a perspective on the country’s current circumstances.

“Perhaps it’s still too soon to speak of recovery,” they wrote. “Recovery begins where the war ends, and we are still caught in a vortex that pulls us, time and again, to opposite extremes. Reality stings, splinters, and shatters us. Our hearts are broken and our eyes are still far from dry. And amidst all this, life asks us to infuse it with meaning; to make it worthy of the weight it carries. To observe, respond, and act, rather than standing by.”

This year’s events include more than one event referring directly to the tragedies and traumas of the last 20 months of war. The festival also does not include any visiting performers, once a regular feature that was seen as an opportunity for Israelis to access European and American entertainers.

In “Speeches Against Despair” on July 3, actor Guri Alfi and Eli Haviv work with actress Noa Koler, musician Noga Erez, actor Norman Issa, actress Maya Landsmann, screenwriter Galit........

© The Times of Israel