Tribhuvanatha Prabhu in Israel, by Vibhisana Dasa

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Tribhuvanatha Prabhu in Israel
by Vibhisana dasa

All Glories to Sri Guru and Gauranga!

It was October 1995. Tribhuvanatha Prabhu was in London and was arranging an East African festival tour featuring the Bhaktivedanta Players.

His original plan included one or two performances in Cairo. The government of Egypt does not tolerate the propagation of Krishna consciousness, but Tribhuvanatha tactfully arranged the programs in cooperation with the cultural department of the Indian embassy, to be promoted as an Indian cultural event.

So the itinerary was decided and the tickets were booked for the entire tour. Seventeen devotees in total were ready to set out along with all paraphernalia for the dramatic production, including a large colorful pandal.

Then, due to unforeseen circumstances, the Indian embassy in Cairo had a change of heart and no longer wanted to have anything to do with the program. To stage such a production in Egypt without their support would have been impossible, Tribhuvanatha was left to consider how to make the best use of the new gap in the schedule.

Knowing that regular buses ran from Cairo to Israel, he sent Trinabhi das ahead to Tel Aviv with several large promotional posters, in hopes that some venue could be made available there. I was managing a small preaching center in Tel Aviv at the time.

Trinabhi Prabhu was able to secure the use of a large hall belonging to the municipality of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. The devotees would perform for two nights, Friday and Saturday, returning on Sunday to Cairo for the flight to the next destination. Everything looked very favorable and the Israeli devotees eagerly prepared and waited.

Then, just hours before the program was to take place, one of the assistants to the mayor (a big man in the municipality who happened to be a very religious Jew) noticed the posters of Krishna that Trinabhi Prabhu had put up all over Ramat Gan the night before. Understanding this to be an enthusiastic preaching attempt by the Hare Krishna devotees, he persuaded the municipality to revoke their permission for the use of the hall....and the program was cancelled.

Undeterred, Tribhuvanatha and party set out in search of another venue, and with no time to spare they located two more halls, one for Friday and one for Saturday.

The Friday night program was a wonderful success. The audience was made up mostly of the friends and family of the Israeli yatra. Everyone enjoyed kirtan and prasada and delighted in the exciting presentation of Mahabharata and Ramayana pastimes, with impressive costumes and pyrotechnics.

The hall for the next day’s program was a very strange place. It was actually a large dance club, and everything inside was painted black. "It looked like hell, but when the devotees set up their colorful pandal in the middle of the floor it was transformed into Vaikuntha."

Saturday night’s program was also a great success, attracting the general public. Tribhuvanatha Prabhu briefly explained the Krishna conscious philosophy, there was a huge kirtana, and everyone received prasadam.

Later it was learned that the Israeli Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin, was assassinated while the kirtan was in progress less than one kilometer away.

I was most impressed by how very dear Tribhuvannatha was to the other devotees in the party.

Each night they would sit around him for hours drinking the nectar of his Krishna katha, which mainly consisted of his ecstatic traveling sankirtana tales of east Africa.

One night, all of the devotees were gathered at my apartment. I suggested that they all go to the temple, which was nearby. "We cannot perform kirtan there because the neighbors complain..." he explained,"..but the deities are there"

Tribhuvannatha replied, " It is not a good idea to go to a place where kirtana can not be performed as loudly as possible." He then proceeded to lead a sensational kirtan that "made the whole building shake."

In my opinion, the entire world has now become "very poor" in the absence of His Grace Tribhuvanatha Prabhu.