Well, I guess I should explain my long absence from my glorious blog. In 3 words: I got hitched!

Still weird to think I’m actually a married woman. Anyway, turns out that getting married kinda takes every last minute of your spare time and causes writing up literally a thousand to-do lists, so I didn’t get around to blogging. But! it was all worth it ’cause my dress was drop-dead-gorgeous (I think I heard some people suggesting to stop manufacturing wedding dresses as utter perfection was obviously already achieved), the ceremony was filled with happy tears and everyone had a good time (not much alcohol left at the end of the day). Oh, and there’s also the matter of being married to my husband, who is seriously just an epic human being. Examples: he feeds me Reese’s, he tells me I’m pretty all the time and he’s taking me to watch Radiohead in Rome this June. Total marital bliss.

Anyway, now that we’ve established my relationship status, I want to tell you about a very special concert I attended this week. The concert was performed by “The Street Philharmonic”, an ensemble of 12 street musicians who work and live in Tel-Aviv. The street musicians are all immigrants from different countries who moved to Israel, experienced a hard integration process, and decided to keep playing the instrument they love in the street, to make a living. The concert was organized by the “ZE.ZE” organization, a social innovation group who I’m proud to say was founded by my sister and her friends. The concert held this week hosted Danny Sanderson and Ehud Banai, two of Israel’s top musicians, and the atmosphere in the club was very happy and loving.

I think this concert is so special because it’s very moving to see the street musicians finally getting the stage and audience they deserve, and seeing how genuinely excited they are to see that hundreds of people came especially to see them. This poses a dramatic contradiction compared to their day-to-day life, watching people pass them by in the street, barely noticing the man playing his trumpet on the sidewalk, or the man playing his violin near the entrance to the grocery store. This was the Street Philharmonic’s 2nd sold-out concert. I hope this unique project continues to thrive and provide a stable income for the street musicians, who said yesterday “The reason we play in the street is that we need the music, more than the music needs us”.