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[EmBark! Bark!][br](Dogs barking)

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[Please Bark!][br](Audience barking)

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[I can hardly hear you --[br]Please bark louder!]

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(Audience barking louder)

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[$100 prize for[br]the loudest and finest barker]

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(Audience continues to bark)

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[Just kidding, but... thanks anyway!!]

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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Mel Rosenberg:[br]Well, thank you very much for barking.

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That was a very good beginning,

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however, I can see there's a few of you

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who haven't been[br]to barking practice lately.

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If you wait a few minutes,[br]I'll give you another opportunity,

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and for those of you who feel[br]a spontaneous need to bark during my talk,

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please wait for another ten minutes.

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The thing is that young kids love to bark.

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They see it as a hoot, it's fun,

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it's spontaneous,[br]it's silly, it's wonderful,

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and if you ask them why,[br]they'll say, "Because".

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My sister Miriam, as a young child,[br]used to bark with such conviction

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that dogs would follow her[br]down the street,

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and if you ask her, she'd say, "Because".

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But as we grow up,[br]we forget the word "because".

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We become more worried[br]about words like insults,

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embarrassment,[br]snide comments, or self-conscious.

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And then we grow up.

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And as grown ups we crave one thing,[br]and that one thing is respectability.

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And if you had met me at the age of 39,[br]you would have thought I was respectable.

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And the truth is I was very respectable.

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I was a university scientist studying[br]how bacteria interact with the mouth,

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I had a bunch of papers,[br]I was up for professorship,

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I had innovations[br]and inventions in the oven.

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I was up and coming,[br]but inside, I was down and out.

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I was a wreck. A train wreck.

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I was afraid of failure,[br]but I was afraid of success.

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I was afraid of dying,[br]and I was also afraid of being alive.

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From a very young age, I had noticed[br]that once in a while my heart would go

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into some kind of Brazilian samba,[br]beating wildly in my chest.

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And once I was diagnosed,[br]or maybe I should say misdiagnosed,

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as having a very rare heart condition,

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and I spent the next 20 years[br]in mortal fear of dying.

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When I was 39, my wife said to me,[br]"Why don't you check?"

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So I did, I went to a famous cardiologist,[br]he looked at my electrocardiogram,

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and he said, "You have[br]a wacky electrocardiogram,

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but your heart is normal."

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I said, "What?"[br]He said, "Yes, you are going to live."

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And he was right.

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That was my first wake up call[br]at the age of 39.

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Because a few months later,

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I found out I had a completely separate[br]chronic medical condition

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that I have to deal with[br]on a day to day basis.

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So I cope.

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That was my second wake up call.

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And the third wake up call[br]was getting a puppy.

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Family dogs teach us[br]a lot about ourselves.

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The kids called him Elvis Presley.

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He didn't [sing], but boy,[br]did he ever have a life.

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He didn't sing, he barked.

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Elvis had a girlfriend named Camilla.

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And we didn't approve[br]of that relationship. She was a bitch.

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(Laughter)

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And we locked him up in the second floor,

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sure enough Elvis flew out of there[br]one day, over the balcony,

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to be reunited with his true love,

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and he wasn't worrying very much.

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That's what I call barking.

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And after those three wake up calls,[br]as I approached the age of 40,

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I realized that I had[br]to get myself something: a life.

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And so I began barking.

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My first port of call, as a barker,[br]was my university career

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because I had become interested[br]in something called bad breath,

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and I went to the library once,

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and I saw that nobody[br]was doing research on this subject

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which is so worrisome to all of us.

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I came home that night,

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and I said to my wife,[br]"I have found my scientific career.

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It's a scientific gold mine.[br]A stinky one."

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And at work, my colleagues made fun of me.

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They called me "Mel the Smell",

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they even coaxed me

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to leave my scientific papers[br]on bad breath out of my CV

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so that I would be promoted in the end.

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But I followed my nose.

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I wrote dozens of scientific papers.

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I smelled about 10,000 mouths,[br]more than most people.

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Now I do it only for fun.

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I wrote books, I organized[br]international meetings.

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I became the world expert on bad breath.

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And I say this to you[br]with a degree of modesty

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because there's only three of us,

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and each one claims[br]that he's the world expert.

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My second barking career[br]was writing children's books.

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I'd wanted to write[br]children's books from my 20s.

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I started in my 40s.

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My first books were albeit[br]closer to my comfort zone.

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I wrote books about bacteria,[br]I wrote books about dentistry,

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witches, dental witches,[br]toothbrushes, tooth fairies,

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but then I really began to bark.

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With the help[br]of the wonderful illustrator Rotem Omri,

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we created a whole zoo of characters.

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They all share one property.

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They are forced in their lives to cope[br]with a challenge and to overcome it.

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If you look over my left shoulder,[br]you see Tim the Porcupine.

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He wakes up one morning,[br]his quills are on backwards.

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He rubs everybody the wrong way.

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In the palm of my hand you see Kenya.

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Kenya can't hop, and that would be OK,[br]except she's a Kangaroo.

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But my favorite character is Gloomeris.

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Gloomeris is serious.[br]He has absolutely no sense of humor.

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And that might have been OK,[br]except that Gloomeris is a laughing hyena.

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Funny enough, I don't have[br]any dogs in any of my stories.

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But all my animals learn to bark.

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Finally, and perhaps most important,

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I became a professional musician[br]at the age of 47.

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It started when I was 41.

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I was at a party,[br]and there was a saxophone there.

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And I've been dying[br]to play the saxophone for years.

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I don't know why I didn't.

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But at the age of 41 I was there,[br]I was ready to change my life.

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I grabbed that beast,[br]and I put it to my lips.

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And noise came out.

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Terrible noise, but I got all excited,

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and I called my friend,[br]Chris McCulloch, in Toronto.

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And I said, "Chris, am I too old[br]to learn to play saxophone?"

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And he said something important.

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He said, "Mel, you're never too old[br]to play saxophone."

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The next thing you know,[br]before you could say maple syrup,

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Chris had bought me a saxophone,[br]shipped it from Toronto to Israel,

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and I began to play.

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Not now and then,[br]not here and there, but every day!

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I drove my family crazy.[br]The neighbors threatened me.

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I sometimes practiced[br]in the car, but I persisted.

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I had a wonderful teacher[br]who took me to a gig.

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He said, "You see that guy[br]playing saxophone, Benny Tal?

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He started when he was 35."

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I was incredulous,[br]but five years later, sure enough,

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I was gigging with my own band;[br]we've had some amazing gigs.

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We played at Shimon Peres's 80th birthday,[br]before he was president.

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Now he's president,[br]he's having a 90th birthday party,

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where they've invited some other performer[br]named Barbra Streisand.

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(Laughter)

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That's OK. I can wait another ten years.

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But what about Barbra Streisand?

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What would have happened

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if somebody insulted her[br]when she was nine or ten years old,

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and said to her, "Barbra,[br]you don't sing well. You're off key,"

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and she had stopped for years.

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We would have lost[br]one of the world's great performers.

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And I want to ask ourselves,[br]how many of us, when we were kids,

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wanted to draw, to paint,[br]to play an instrument, to sing,

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and somebody told us[br]that we weren't capable,

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or we thought[br]we might have been ridiculed,

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and we haven't done it up till now?

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How unfortunate that is!

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I stopped singing for 25 years.[br]You can't stop me now.

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In the meantime,[br]the years have flown by,

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and Elvis is dead, we have a new dog,[br]and his name is Fudge.

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Fudge not only loves to bark[br]he also sings.

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And I want you to have a look[br]at this instructional video,

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because afterwards, we'll do something

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that's never been done[br]in the history of mankind,

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So will you have a look with me, please?

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(Video) (Dog barking)[br](Man playing the saxophone)

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Look at that creature. He's in his groove.[br]He's singing with me.

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He doesn't care if he's being criticized,[br]if there's jazz police.

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Whether he's on key,[br]maybe he doesn't get the words right,

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and I figure that if dogs can sing,

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the very least that human beings[br]can do, is to bark.

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And I'm going to do an experiment

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that's never been done[br]in the history of mankind,

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and you're going to join me[br]and make it happen.

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It's very simple, because changing[br]your life can start with a bark.

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I want you to bark with guts, with spirit.

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I don't care whether you moo, growl,[br]yelp, grrr, it doesn't matter.

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Because your life does[br]kind of depend on it, doesn't it?

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You can sing only in the shower,[br]or you can sing in the choir.

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You can step up to bat[br]with the bases loaded and two outs

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or you can watch the baseball game[br]from your living room.

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You can do your thing, or not.

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But one thing is for certain,

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whether we live our lives[br]and bark our dreams,

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at the end of the day,[br]we all end up croaking.

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So on the way, why not bark?

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So what we're going to do now

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(Laughter)

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is you're going to yelp, growl,[br]bark with all your might,

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and we're going to make this[br]a dream come true,

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and it doesn't matter[br]if you don't understand the words.

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Just let it all hang out. OK?

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Please follow the magic ball.

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Are you ready?

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(Saxophone music)[br](Audience barking along "Autumn Leaves")

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(Applause)

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Inbar: Thank you, Mel.[br]MR: Oh, thank you!

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Inbar: Thank you, thank you very much.[br]MR: Woof!

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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Inbar: You do know, by the way,

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that Israeli dogs bark, "Hav!",[br]and American dogs bark, "Woof!",

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it's completely different kind.

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Mel: But when one dog from Israel[br]says, "Woof!" to a dog from the US,

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they understand each other.

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Inbar: If you're saying so.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)