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Michael HarPaz looks very
different now from the way
he is remembered by former
neighbors in Huntington
Woods, where his parents
and girlfriend still live.

op music fans around Israel are
lic) holding on to postcards pictur-
ing a chart-topping, new record-
ing group — I{Five (pronounced
HiFive).
Each performer's autograph
is on the memento, but only one
is written in English — the first name of Michael
HarPaz, an American teamed with four Israelis.
With hair bleached blond, the requisite ear-
rings and an intense stare for the camera,
HarPaz looks very different from the way he is
remembered by former neighbors in Huntington
Woods, where his parents and girlfriend still live.
The changes are part of a package put together
by Hed Arzi Music, the recording company that
auditioned 500 young men for a group it want-
ed to shape and sell to au-
diences hungry for the
pop music style sweep-
ing across Europe.
The Israeli version of
New Kids on the Block, the
quintet went through months
of preparation before entering
a recording studio or dancing in
the middle of a concert stage.
The mix apparently has
worked. Along with their suc-
cessful CD — which rose to
No. 1 on the charts — they
have personal appearances that
draw enormous crowds.
On Israel's Independence Day,
tens of thousands of screaming fans
crowded an outdoor arena to watch
the 20-something performers sing and
move to their marketed beat of love. The
number of bodyguards needed to shield them
from arena crowds has grown from three to 30.
"Our music is meant to be heard from the
heart," said HarPaz, 24, who performed in school
shows while attending Hillel Day School, Berkley
High School and the University of Michigan,
where his concentration was divided between
musical arts and Judaic studies.
. "We sing upbeat and disco-ish and are not like
a lot of the Israeli entertainers whose songs are
about the army."
Becoming a pop icon in the-Mideast is not ex-
actly what HarPaz imagined when he decided to
leave his Michigan job as a business manager
and try to grow a concert career in New York.
Wanting to realize a dream cemented during