Timati takes FTV to TLV and JLM

Russian rapper and actor Timati, or Timur Ildarovich Yunusov, likes to stay in Jerusalem’s Leonardo Plaza, close to the Old City, but parties in Tel Aviv. Or so it appears in a two-minute-plus video just released by FashionTV, which filmed his recent trip to Israel.

Timati, whose mother is Jewish and father is Tatar, lives in Moscow but was recently on an international tour, and made the stop in Israel between performances in the US, Europe and Dubai. His “Welcome to Saint Tropez” was a Top Ten hit across Europe and beyond last year.

Before partying on the Mediterranean with a bevy of bikinied Israelis, Timati took the time to wrap himself in tefillin at the Western Wall, as seen in his Instagram photo which he tweeted, writing: “Jerusalem, the holy city of paradox, combines all the Orthodox religions, Judaism and Islam. Today I went to the Wailing Wall, to the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, the walls of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and I don’t feel the ‘innocence’ in any of those places. A paternal Muslim [Tatars are mostly Muslim), a Jew on my mother’s side, I grew up in an Orthodox country. I fear: the Koran, the Torah and the Bible. But God is for me one 1.”