By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 19, 2006
JERUSALEM -- The space under the seats of the professional soccer stadium here houses an artist colony, and experimental theater is staged in a rail yard warehouse.
The nation's leading arts academy is returning to the city center after a long exile, and an iconic cinema complex is doubling in size. An animation studio, run by a veteran Hollywood producer, is planned to open in another warehouse in the months ahead.
A halting creative renaissance is taking place in unusual spaces around this ancient city, beset for years by political violence and stifling religious rules that pushed out many of its artists. Now, some of them are returning, while more young graduates of the nation's top art campuses located in these highlands are choosing not to leave for the galleries, theaters and freedoms of Israel's coastal plain.
"Two things are happening here: one, a very, very deep creativity, and also something very avant-garde," said Ofira Henig, the creative director of a three-year-old theater, who moved here a decade ago. "You don't have to be in Tel Aviv for this."
The story of Jerusalem's creative revival is also that of its broader recovery following the devastating years of the most recent Palestinian uprising. Suicide attacks on buses and cafes savaged business, tourism and the venues that supported cultural life -- not to mention the city's spirit. Young people, among them many artists, fled a place that for many already had grown musty with its own history.
Religious Jews with large families and little income filled in the space left behind. The city became more conservative, poor and parochial at a time when international artists and performers were avoiding Jerusalem for reasons of politics and personal safety. The secular exodus sped to Tel Aviv, whose more worldly residents have long looked up the hill to a city they view as stodgy, kitschy and a little weird.
"The main problem of Jerusalem is one of an image that does not reflect reality," said Yigal Amedi, the only one of the city's four deputy mayors who is not a rabbi. "We are determined to change that reputation."
Worried that Jerusalem had begun to feel like a museum, Amedi and others in the municipal government pushed several small programs to keep young people here, including student rent subsidies and a smoother licensing process to make it easier for entrepreneurs to open bars and nightclubs. And the city's ultra-Orthodox mayor, Uri Lupolianski, has allowed them to stay open Friday nights, the start of the Jewish Sabbath.
While support from the city has come mainly in the form of a more open mind, it is also making available unused space in the city center and in down-at-the-heels neighborhoods for theaters, galleries, studios and art school campuses, creating its own physical rejuvenation.
The city's art scene now also has an ardent advocate in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, husband of an artist, who invested heavily in cultural projects during his decade as Jerusalem's mayor. Some city officials, disappointed with an overall decline in arts spending here since the end of Olmert's tenure in 2003, plan to hold him to the pledge he made during his recent campaign to "make Israel a country that's fun to live in."
Jerusalem's image as a lovely, if frightening, relic dominated by religious leaders belies the fact that many of Israel's leading cultural institutions are here. The Israel Museum cascades over a central city hilltop, and the Musrara School of Photography is one of the finest in the region.
The Jerusalem Cinematheque, a popular movie house with a vast film archive and classrooms, will close soon for a renovation that will double the size of its complex, which sits across a narrow valley from the walls of the Old City. Graduates from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School routinely win awards at international film festivals.
The city government has also lured the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, the preeminent school of its kind in the country, back to the city center. The academy will move from Mount Scopus on the outskirts of East Jerusalem into a new building in the Russian Compound downtown. The cornerstone of the new campus is scheduled to be placed this fall, a cultural project Amedi and others hope will rejuvenate the city center.
"There is a sense that Jerusalem is not going to be redeemed just by business, but by different kinds of disciplines and cultures coming together," said Erel Margalit, managing partner of Jerusalem Venture Partners, who has invested in the city's artistic revival. "Jerusalem doesn't have to reinvent itself, but uncover itself. There are so many assets here covered in dust."
'Art Can Revive a City'Margalit, 45, is a venture capitalist who grew up on a kibbutz. As a teenager, he spent time in Detroit after his parents were sent there to teach Hebrew in the local Jewish community center.
Margalit was living in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood with his wife, a painter, and their three daughters on Sept. 11, 2001. In the months that followed, Margalit said he saw "how art can revive a city after a trauma," most notably through the Tribeca Film Festival. Soon after, during trips to Israel, Margalit began formulating plans to do something similar here.
What emerged three years ago was The Lab, a theater and subsidized refuge for young artists in an abandoned warehouse near Jerusalem's old train station. The government owns the land and worked with Margalit to turn it into a bar that has taken on a distinctly Bohemian cast. It has become a venue for some of the more interesting and challenging productions being staged in Israel today.
"It's a kind of oxygen," said Amit Drori, 26, another native son and recent graduate of Jerusalem's School of Visual Theater. "It was my last chance to live and work in Jerusalem."
Earlier this month, before a sellout crowd that filled The Lab's oval theater, Drori's theatrical project, "Terminal," premiered. Nearly two years incubating in The Lab's studios, the work explores astrophysicist Stephen Hawking's thoughts on the universe, employing computers, puppetry, film, music, lighting effects and acting to tell a story of human transformation over time.
"We're trying to take what's been developing underground here and bring it on stage," said Henig, 45, who, over coffee and cigarettes with Drori before a recent rehearsal, explained why she accepted Margalit's offer to become creative director.
Raised near Tel Aviv, Henig said that a decade ago she found herself uninspired by the Mediterranean city despite its galleries, theaters and rich cultural life.
"It was only one side of a mirror -- on culture, on society, even on politics," said Henig, who describes herself as a "political artist."
So she moved to Jerusalem, astonishing her friends, and served as creative director of the Israel Festival and the prestigious Khan Theater.
In coming to The Lab two years ago, Henig set out two objectives for an experimental theater working at the center of a city divided between Arabs and Jews: multimedia and multiculturalism, specifically bringing Palestinians and Israelis together in each production.
"I'm sure my art is influenced by the dialogue I have with my society," Henig said. "History is here, it's okay, we smell it. But it shouldn't be a burden."
Jerusalem has long been a place more famous for festivals than the artists behind them.
The Israel Festival is an annual event that draws leading film, theater and other art from around the world, although it has emphasized Israeli talent since the intifada began in the fall of 2000. That has been one of the rare benefits the violent uprising has brought Jerusalem's arts community.
As international artists and acts stayed away in protest of the Israeli occupation or out of fear, Israeli talent took center stage, albeit on a dwindling number of stages. Several Israeli club DJs who emerged during that time -- notably Infected Mushroom -- are now among the most sought-after in the world.
"The big groups stopped coming, but the demand stayed the same," said Avi Goldberger, who wrote about Jerusalem cultural life for the well-read weekly Kol Hair and now owns two popular bars. "This was great for Israelis who no longer had to compete with the big names."
Those acts have been nurtured by people like Asaf Rachmani, the 28-year-old owner of an independent music distribution business called The Eighth Note that has driven his corporate competitors mad.
Rachmani's company works out of a cramped suite of well-postered offices in downtown Jerusalem. Four years ago, he said in his speed-of-light clip, he began distributing what he calls "original Jewish music." The genre varies -- from rap to classical -- but all of the work is influenced by Jewish scripture.
"We saw a lot of creativity in this area that no one was serving," said Rachmani, who pulls his brown hair back in a ponytail and refuses to carry a cellphone.
The breakthrough came two years later when Rachmani heard that the popular Israeli band Friends of Natasha was in a legal dispute with its distributor over sales proceeds. He approached the group and soon after signed it to a distribution deal.
He has since signed other big Israeli acts, including Dudi Levy, Arik Einstein and Rafi Persky, whose strong sales have allowed him to take on smaller, experimental bands that otherwise wouldn't have a chance. He now produces their music as well.
The populist approach has increased his stable of clients to more than 200, while prompting chain stores such as Tower Records to boycott his artists because he demands their CDs be sold for no more than $12. With some of his clients achieving double-platinum status -- 80,000 copies sold in Israel -- Rachmani likely has the upper hand. He now owns five stores of his own.
"We think the musician should make money from his CDs, not just from performances," Rachmani said. "And they should be involved in the music's production every step along the way."
This year Margalit announced the launching of the International Center for Arts and Media in Jerusalem, a for-profit project he describes as "the next-generation Pixar." The main tenant will be Animation Lab, run by a former Hollywood producer. The architectural firm that designed Pixar Animation Studios in California is supervising the renovation of a warehouse next to The Lab.
'This Is a Garden'In another neighborhood, though, a promising idea is languishing.
Beneath the 23,000-seat Teddy Kollek Stadium, a dozen artist studios open onto a small gallery space. The gray concrete floor matches the gray stepped ceiling formed by the stands overhead.
"This is a garden where you grow seeds," said Hedva Shemesh, 62, the unpaid director of the New Gallery Artists' Studios and an established painter and sculptor.
The studios are subsidized by the city and give young artists a few years to establish themselves commercially. It is the kind of diverse artistic community that many artists require to thrive creatively, something Tel Aviv has had for years.
Many are recent Bezalel graduates who would otherwise head to Tel Aviv for more plentiful opportunities, a trend Shemesh says is still too prevalent. In Studio 2, Jerusalem native Noa Charuvi paints. In Studio 3, a new Russian immigrant named Masha Tresman designs jewelry. Next door, in Studio 4, Palestinian artist Hannan Abu Hussein works on sculpture and video.
"This place, Jerusalem, is a very, very hard place to live," Shemesh said.
"But for an artist here you have black, white, new immigrants, native Israelis, religious people, Arabs -- none of them under glass, but alive."
Yet Shemesh said the gallery and studios are not a priority for the city government, which has turned down her requests to add another floor of studios that could double its capacity.
Those inside them now, however, say the project is vital.
"It's the difference between not being able to live as an artist and being able to do so," said Jonathan Hirschfeld, a painter.
"Jerusalem has the chance to be at the heart of an artistic renaissance in Israel. I'm going to stay."
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