Bondage Radio

It is an unusual dinner party. The hostess inspects the hands of half the guests, then allows them to carefully wash the hands of their partners with a bowl and jug of water.

Therese, the hostess, is wearing a black dress with a cane hanging from one side of a belt and chains hanging from the other.

The ritual is simply the beginning of another Thursday night at Israel’s only sado-maso club, the Dungeon. The club, which is in the heart of the old town of Jaffa, surrounded by Christian monasteries and mosques, has a hardcore of devotees to BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) and hundreds more voyeurs.

The banquet is an S&M affair because the guests are divided into servants and masters. According to the chef, Yuval Rosnan, the food also has a distinctive S&M quality. “The food is sensual, oysters and things like that. The theme is forbidden food such as mixing dairy and meat, and pork, things forbidden by the Torah,” he says.

The club was started by Amos Levy, a 45-year-old father of two who runs a software company. He used to be a career soldier in military intelligence, which he says prepared him for his unusual sideline.

“Intelligence, unlike say, the paratroopers, makes you think differently,” he says. “Someone said to me there is no BDSM club in Israel and I thought about it, went to London to see clubs there, and realised there was an opportunity.

“I am not into BDSM myself but I like craziness.”

Domme, 23, has been a regular on the Tel Aviv BDSM scene for almost a year, but at the banquet she is on her own as her submissive boyfriend is carrying out his annual reserve duty.

“Usually your sub serves the master or mistress and they get whipped and humiliated throughout the meal,” she says. Pointing to a man at the other end of the table, she adds. “He was my master until I met my new boyfriend. I go both ways. I am a good sub and a cruel mistress.”

The nightclub is in a bare stone-vaulted basement in a building whose foundations date back centuries. The dancing, to normal club music, is halted regularly to allow erotic performances, which have themes of domination and role reversal.

Elsewhere in the club, it is organised mayhem. In an upstairs cell, a woman is carefully and intricately tied into a cradle and hoisted to the ceiling, then left there. Next door, a woman in high heels and a black dress is walking over a naked man lying on the floor. In the corner, a naked woman is hunched in a ball.

Rachel, a lawyer, says she came to the Dungeon out of interest. She is wearing a black and white dress and thigh-length boots. She becomes perturbed after a succession of men ask if they can lick her boots. When she says no most walk away, but one takes a few steps back and waits submissively.

The clientele is predominantly Jewish but Arabs also attend. The BDSM scene exists independently of Israel’s political strife, although some regulars say it is an escape from these pressures.

According to Mr Levy, the main escape is from the day-to-day grind. “Here they leave behind work problems, family problems and they can do anything they want – dress in women’s clothes, be whipped, be naked, anything.”