Yom HaStudent: Student Day

Israeli universities have this concept of Yom HaStudent, or Students’ Day, where everybody gets a day off with parties, concerts, or both. I am proud I attended both nights of this “day” in Haifa. Here’s what happened:

First of all, the “Festival HaStudent” (Student Festival) was sponsored jointly by the student unions at University of Haifa and the more science-y Technion nearby. And by “nearby,” I mean a 10-minute drive down the mountain. In any case, Festival was more like a carnival: vendors and concerts and parties all over the place! And there were so many people there!

The first night (Wednesday), we got there in the middle of Moshe Peretz performing. For those of you who are not familiar with Moshe, he reminds me of a Hebrew-speaking, tight shirt-wearing, diva-esque ex-Backstreet boy with a following of arsim (see link for explanation). Nonetheless, he was a great performer with music that was enjoyable even though I wasn’t familiar with his music. Thanks to a really tall and enthusiastic friend, we were able to worm our way close to the stage. Here are some photos:Moshe Peretz singing his heart out:

Me “with” Moshe Peretz:

You see why I say ‘90s boy band?

After his concert, we walked around through the food vendors, bought some churros, and settled in to see Ivri Lider perform.

Since most of his songs are ballad-like, it was harder to get into his music at that type of concert, but it was still nice for listening.

It may have been 11 PM on a Wednesday night, but there were still so many people there! (Granted, the Israelis didn’t have class the next day (for Yom HaStudent), but the International School still did!

When we got back to the University, we could still clearly hear the music from the Technion. It was THAT loud!

Day 2

The next day, I left my internship a little early so we could get to the Technion more quickly (we learned from our mistakes!). We arrived during the performance by Tislam (or T-Slam), who had an upbeat, dance-able set. We stood near the middle of the main crowd, and I got to watch the sound and lights guys, who were very good.

After their concert ended, we walked up to the vendors again and I got a deep-fried spiral-cut potato. Sounds gross, but it’s like a giant curly French fry on a stick. Fantastic.

We wandered around to the smaller venue, “Stage in the Forest,” and I got pretty close to the unknown cover band that was playing.

Chabad even had a stand:

By that time, Shlomo Artzi had already begun playing. I hadn’t heard of him before that day, but I learned that he is a big star in terms of Israel’s music scene. Many of the people our age had grown up on his love songs. We couldn’t get very close to the stage, but that was fine. We stood further up on the hill (mountain?) and could see just fine. At one point, we even heard a familiar voice over the speakers: Merav and some other friends had gotten to the front of the stage, and Shlomo walked around with his microphone for audience members to fill in the words. Of course Merav knew all the lyrics, so she sang and we heard her!

Crowds for Shlomo Artzi:

His performance was so epic (and also lasted for over an hour) that fireworks even were a part of his set:

It was then that I began to recognize the guitar player who was rocking out on a solo—Singolda (the best guitarist in Israel)! Of course, if I had been listening to what Shlomo Artzi was saying, I would have figured it out sooner, but I was nonetheless excited! As it turns out, I had met Singolda years ago when he came to visit one of the counselors (his son) at JCC camp: this guy has even heard me play guitar…how cool is that? I was standing pretty far back in the crowd, but here are some photos of him playing:

The excitement just went on from there. After Shlomo Artzi’s set ended, they announced that the next band would be Shabak Samech! While they are virtually unknown to many in the US, I had randomly been given their CD in middle school from one of my Hebrew school teachers. It’s not necessarily the type of music I generally listen to, but I recognized some of the songs and it was so fun to be able to sing along with the words!

You can’t see the band, but you can see how excited I was that they were there:

After that, we ended up going to yet another stage where there was a giant dance party going on. Eventually, we migrated over to the big stage because the main concerts had ended, and then we realized it was 2:30 AM.

The biggest dance party I’ve ever seen:

We then got on the bus and went home. It was a good thing, too! I was waking up early the next morning to go to Akko for the day. More on that later. L’hitraot!