Men scream invocations while flames roar upward, consuming temples erected for the sole purpose of their own annihilation. This is not art. This is not cultural expression. This is not a secular celebration of creativity. This is Midburn, Israel’s official offshoot of Burning Man, and it is the literal resurrection of the fertility cults of Canaan, revived not in secret but with pride, ritual, and ceremony.

Midburn takes place in the very wilderness where Yahweh once thundered His commandments from Sinai. It is hosted on the same soil where Israel once trembled in the presence of divine fire. Only now the fire has changed hands. Instead of blood on the doorposts, there is neon paint and synthetic ecstasy. Instead of covenant, there is carnality. Instead of worship, there is mass fornication under a sky of shooting stars and acid hallucinations. The “temples” are built and burned as acts of liberation, but the liberation is from Yahweh — not from bondage. These are altars, not art installations. The festival’s climax is not entertainment. It is a ritual. The fires are not metaphors. They are offerings.

Beneath the surface — and increasingly, above it — Israel is being ritually rededicated not to the God of Abraham, but to the very deities He once condemned by name. The gods of the Amorites, the spirits of Babylon, the demons of the wilderness — they have returned.