One of the most compelling documentaries of the recent St. Louis Jewish Film Festival was Blues By The Beach, about Mike’s Place, a small American bar on the Tel Aviv beach.

Like Rick’s Caf é in the classic film Casablanca, Mike’s Place was a haven from the political tensions outside its doors. It was a watering hole with live blues music, where patrons were required to speak English and the turbulence of life was left outside, just beyond its doors.

Everyone was welcome at Mike’s Place, as long as they were just there for the music and the fun. Politics and prejudices stayed outside, a policy enforced by owners Gal and Assaf Ganzman and Dave Beck, and bouncer Avi Tabib.

American documentary filmmaker Jack Baxter traveled to Israel intending to make a film on a different topic when he came across Mike’s Place. Shot in a cinema verite style, the story of Blues By the Beach unfolds as it happened, reality style.

As the audience learns about the people who made Mike’s Place an oasis of peace and normalcy in a turbulent city, a twist of fate changes both lives and the film when the club becomes the target of a suicide bomber’s attack.

St. Louisan Bruce Mazer was there, in Mike’s Place, on the night of the attack. If you have not seen the film, be warned: this article has some spoilers.

Mazer is back in St. Louis now, renovating a house he owns in the University City area, after having lived in Tel Aviv since 2002. A compact man with shaved head and striking blue eyes, Mazer has the look of an adventurer, seeming far younger than his 40 years.

“I was sitting near the bar but away from the door, celebrating a birthday with friends, on the night of the attack,” said Mazer.

Bouncer Avi Tabib became suspicious of a couple of men who wanted to come in. It was ‘Jam Night’ and the place was packed, but the burly bouncer had a knack for spotting trouble.

Tabib blocked the doorway to the bar and shoved one of the suspicious men out the door just as he detonated his suicide bomb.

“He saved my life,” said Mazer about his friend Avi Tabib. “If the bomber had managed to get in the door, probably everyone in the small space would have been hurt or killed.”

The St. Louisan spoke to the film festival audience after a screening of the film.

“That was the first time I had seen the film with an audience, on a big screen,” said Bruce Mazer in a recent chat over coffee.

“I did not realize how much it would affect the audience. When the bomber blew himself up, you could hear them gasp.”

Mazer had been hanging out at the bar while the film crew was working. “I did not pay much attention to them. They were just part of the place.”

The suicide bomber’s companion also had a bomb but it failed to detonate. Some of the staff and patrons near the door were killed along with the bomber but because of the bouncer’s quick thinking, many more lives were spared. Mazer was not injured but he will always have the emotional scars of that night.

Miraculously, the bouncer Avi Tabib survived. “Avi recovered fully. He was so hurt, they did not know for a long time how well he would recover, but he has exceeded expectations. He is a very strong guy,” Mazer said.

Filmmaker Jack Baxter was also injured in the attack, leaving Israeli-American co-director Josh Faudem and Czech-born screenwriter-filmmaker Pavla Fleischer to finish the film. They continued shooting as the injured recovered, the dead were memorialized and Mike’s Place was rebuilt and re-opened.

Mazer visited both the bouncer and the filmmaker while they were recovering in the hospital. “I did not really know Jack before the bombing,” Mazer said. Since then, the two men have become friends and have stayed in touch about the film.

He still keeps in touch with the owners of the bar and Avi Tabib as well.

Mazer moved to Tel Aviv in 2002 but it was not the first time he had visited Israel. “In 1978, my grandparents sent me on a trip,” said Mazer, arranged through the JCC’s Camp Sabra.

“I’ll never forget it. At the time, the Sinai desert was part of Israel. I remember touring Israel, touring the Sinai, and having this deep connection. Something just happened.”

Mazer went back to visit Israel, even working there and, ironically, Mazer was working in Israel when the 9/11 attacks happened. “I always had that connection (with Israel). That’s why when, all of a sudden, I found my self out of a job in 2002, I looked into different programs that would take me to Israel.”

When an opportunity came up to stay while he was visiting the country, he took it. “I was more Zionist than many of the Israelis,” he said with a grin.

He settled in Tel Aviv, in an apartment near the beach, but his adjustment to life there was not without problems. “My Hebrew was not so good,’ he said with a shrug. “Some people can just pick up languages, but not me.”

It was the language problem that drew him to the nearby Mike’s Place. “They spoke my language, so I started going there,” he said.

Despite the trauma of the night of the bombing at Mike’s Place, Mazer is comfortable talking about the experience. Like the owners of Mike’s Place, he is determined to move forward. He would like to see the movie Blues By The Beach get into theaters and become available on DVD, so his friend Jack Baxter can recoup some of the cost of making the film. The documentary has won several awards at film festivals but a distribution deal has been stalled over a dispute with one of the filmmakers, Pavla Fleischer.

Mazer came back to the U.S. last year, when the tenant renting his St. Louis house moved and the lease on his apartment in Tel Aviv was up. Although Mazer is back in St. Louis for now, he intends to go back to Israel at some point. Perhaps he will stop in the re-opened Mike’s Place, for some live blues by the beach and to remember.