Israelis to 'Burn the Man' for the First Time This Summer

An Israeli version of the Burning Man festival will take place in the Negev desert from June 3 to 7, marking a culmination of two years of preparing and building up a community around the event.

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The original, American Burning Man, which is held in a Nevada desert each summer, is a now-wildly popular festival of art, music, and alternative culture. Burning Man’s principle of “radical self-expression,” together with its principles of giving freely from your provisions, its public art installations and the use of bartering in the temporary city of up to 50,000 imbue the festival with an element of survival, which makes it unusual in the festival world. Granted, participants bring to the desert all the food and equipment their vehicles can carry.

The Israeli version, put on by a registered non-profit that's the Israeli branch of the American organization, began taking shape in recent years. It has previously held small-scale events in the spirit of Burning Man, fostered by a community of volunteers and artists. Israel's five-day long Midburn (a play on midbar, the Hebrew word for “desert”) this year, will be run according to the principles of the American original. The festival is now sold out with all 2,000 tickets claimed.