Tea Time Festival: Singing Their Voices

The Tea Time Festival was created out of a desire to preserve a living, joyful memory of the female observers and operations-room coordinators who fell at the Nahal Oz outpost on October 7, 2023.

This year, the Tea Time Festival will take place on Friday, October 23, at Hangar 11 in the Tel Aviv Port.

• Tea Time begins: 12:00
• First performance begins: 13:30

What’s at the Festival?

The Tea Time Festival offers a wealth of diverse content.

Music

This year’s festival will feature singers Noa Kirel and Yasmin Moallem, each with her own performance. Everyone will receive two performances for the price of one ticket!

Food

Tea Time at Nahal Oz revolved around food. This year’s festival food stalls will offer Tea Time delicacies, prepared as the girls in Nahal Oz used to make them, with a culinary twist by one of Israel’s leading chefs.

Installations

The festival will feature several installations inspired by the Tea Time experience at Nahal Oz:

• The Tea Time table, as it appeared every Friday
• A live graffiti wall featuring lines from the Nahal Oz songbook
• A dance and audience-participation installation

Our Audience

The Tea Time Festival is intended for the whole family, with an artistic focus on audiences aged 15–45.

Our Story

They were soldiers who loved life. They lived together 24/7 at a frontline outpost in an intensive role that brought together a wonderful group of female soldiers with a rich culture of togetherness.

They were very different from one another, but what united them was their love of music and singing together—songs they created themselves, reflecting their pride in their role. Over the years, these songs became a magical songbook that they made sure to sing every Friday evening. It was always a moment of joy at the outpost. Joyful singing.

On Friday afternoons, they would stand together and cook their shared dinner, naturally singing as they worked. The soldiers gave their mealtime a name: Tea Time—a name that conveyed how, despite being at an army outpost less than 800 meters from Gaza, they managed to create a home for themselves that felt as grand as a palace.

The Tea Time of the Nahal Oz observers was famous throughout the Gaza sector: a magnificent table, excellent food, and songs by soldiers who loved their role and were deeply connected to one another.

On the evening of October 6, the Nahal Oz observers held their final Tea Time, and it was an upgraded one. Why? When a soldier was about to be discharged, her final Friday in service was marked with a Tea Time featuring a special food concept and meticulous design.

October 6 was the final weekend of service for the late Shachaf Nisani, and the chosen concept was “The Last Disco”—in retrospect, a name of immense significance. Ten hours later, the attack began.

As is well known, the Nahal Oz operations room was completely burned down. Yet, in an inexplicable turn of events, the Tea Time songbook survived—scorched and charred, but their tradition survived.

We chose to continue their path by creating a tradition based on theirs. That is how a new music festival was born, called:

Tea Time: Remembering with Joy!

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