Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

WATCH: When David Bowie Rocked Tel Aviv

The world is mourning the death of rock legend David Bowie after news of his passing January 10 following an 18-month battle with cancer.

We at the Forward remember as well with these videos from his 1996 concert in Israel when the musician shared the stage with British band Massive Attack.

Bowie was all smiles walking out of the plane at Ben Gurion Airport to the sound of applause from fans and reporters. When asked if he was concerned for his personal security coming to Israel, Bowie answered with his classic witty charm, “Last week I was in Iceland and I went out to see some cliffs, and there were some geysers there, and I nearly lost my foot. That’s the nearest to fatality, it can happen 24 hours, who gives a damn?” and promised to give a good show to his fans.

And it was. Introducing the song “Scary Monsters” and greeting the crowd with a perfect Hebrew accent “Shalom, erev tov,” he said, “this is scary Tel Aviv.”

Thanks to the magic of the Internet you can watch the concert below:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.