Tel Aviv Rooftop

I lost my cell phone today. It fell out of my pocket when I was jumping out of a taxi. It had hundreds of numbers on it and I had no back up. I have not had a good day. Posting some photos of 'eclectic style' buildings from the 1910 and 20's will help soothe frazzled nerves. This crowd of yellow hard-hats was shot by Jacky from our front room. They're students of conservation from Tel Aviv University taking a tour of the neighbourhood with their lecturer Amnon Bar Or (hi Amnon ) who is also the conservation architect of the soon-to-be-renovated-we-hope building ( Yehuda Halevi 6) This is part of what writer and translator Hillel Hankin had to say about Tel Aviv's eclectic style in a recent issue of Commentary magazine (thanks to Fay for passing it on) : " Best described as a kind of Levantine Victorianism, in which turrets, domes, porticoes , and other flamboyant elements from a variety of architectural idioms were deployed with naive exuberance, this s...

View of Yaffo from Alma beach at sunset A few days ago, on the shavuot holiday, we met friends for breakfast at Alma Beach. Alma is both the beach closest to the rooftop and also the prettiest beach on the whole strip. To the immediate south, a few hundred metres away, lies the Yaffo promontory with its church spires and ancient stone skyline gently descending to the old fishing port. This proximity to Yaffo , as well to south Tel Aviv in general, makes Alma Beach the natural playground for the diverse populations who live in the area. Yuppie Neve Tsedek parents pick at calamari and supervise their kids behind expensive sunglasses ; Arab women wade into the waves, their black dresses ballooning around them. Gaggles of Filipino women from the Neve Sha'anan area, home for most of Tel Aviv's foreign workers, giggle and take photographs of each other. Ruddy Russian families scorn the pricey beach cafe for a picnic hamper and cheap beer. On the wide lawns behind the beach...

This is what Florentin looked like tonight. Hundreds of young people marking Florentin Day. The idea was to make the public aware of the lack of facilities in the neighbourhood (populated by a mix of Holocaust survivors, artisans , students and artists) and also to protest plans to evacuate long time residents to build residential towers without green spaces. There were 12 bands, a fair and you could sign protest petitions. The band in the photo is Puppet Folk Revival, 3 American musicians with muppet characters who sing Dylan songs. The kids, who were younger than our children , knew all the words. It was like being back in the 60s . For more on the struggle (in Hebrew only) http://www.fight4florentin.com/

Those of you who know me know that I don't normally rant about the bias of foreign media when it comes to reporting the Middle East but there's something about the way the Sderot -Gaza crisis is being reported that is infuriating. This is a photo of a burning car that was hit by a qassam missile today in Sderot . One woman was killed there today and another suffered medium injuries. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/861946.html Sderot , a town of some 20,000 people, has been under intensive rocket attacks from the northern Gaza Strip for 7 days now. The Sderot area has been hit by 150 rockets in the space of a week. It has suffered from sporadic salvos for 7 years. The government has just promised to provide security rooms in all homes but it's too late; the local residents have had enough. Thousands have either fled or have been evacuated for 'rest and recreation' and those who stayed behind live in constant fear. Near Sderot , on kibbutz Nir Am, a group o...

My first blog was on December 30, 2006 and it was called Setting the Scene. I did a 360 degree tour of the immediate region from the rooftop and briefly described what was going on there http://telavivrooftop.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2006-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=4 Today, The basic elements are still the same but the entire picture is much worse. In Jerusalem sits a discredited government living on borrowed political time, traumatised by the Winograd report on Lebanon II and incapable of making strategic decisions. In Sderot , on the border with Gaza, thousands of residents have been evacuated as scores of qassam missiles devastated homes and caused numerous injuries. After years of incessant bombardment the government still hasn't found the money to build proper shelters for the people of Sderot . Even the evacuation of its terrified residents was partially funded by the Russian oligarch Arkady Gaidemak w...

The weather is spring crazy: hot, dusty, dry days of ' hamsin ' followed by dirty rain and then a perfect day. In general it's getting progressively warmer and so I took my first dip of the season this week. This is the best season for swimming in the sea. The water is clean (or at least looks clean). In summer, this end of the Med has the consistency of dirty chicken soup and is often infested with massive jellyfish ( medusot in Hebrew). The waves also get bigger, churning up the sea bed and on a really good day something goes wrong with the system and raw sewage is added to the mix. But this week everything looked pristine and, after the initial shock, the water felt great. For demographic reasons (Jewish Tel Aviv wanted to bypass its Arab neighbours in Jaffa and Manshiyeh the 1920s and 30's) , Tel Aviv's main streets ( Hayarkon , Allenby, Ben Yehuda , Dizengoff ) run parallel to the sea, thereby breaking the rule of every Mediterranean seaside town. Hence,...

I was thinking about an image that might illustrate how most Israelis view their political institutions at this point in time and happened upon this ruined, dangerous, old pre -fab(erected in the 1860s by Christian 'Lovers of Zion' in the American Colony). In the background the get-rich-quick-and-screw-everything-else Neve Tsedek Tower dominates the landscape. Rabin Square was filled last night with 150,000 (or whatever) people holding a variety of political views yet united in their demand for Olmert and Peretz to resign. Peretz seems to be wavering but Olmert (with the backing of most of his Knesset faction) is hanging on. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/855600.html After Tsipi Livni blew her chance to grab the leadership of Kadima , who knows what will happen. If the public wants to bring down the PM, thousands will have to demonstrate in Jerusalem -and for long, bitter weeks. Somehow, despite the general disgust with Olmert , I don't see that happening. Toda...

Winnograd report fallout is at fever pitch and the people want Olmert's neck. If Olmert's popularity could get any lower it would be subterranean. The tsunami of demands for him to resign is obviously having a physical effect on him too. All eyes are now on the big demo planned for Thurs night in Rabin Square. I hope they don't spoil it by letting politicians (and especially Bibi) demand Olmert and Peretz' heads. The best outcome possible is probably Olmert's replacement by Tsipi or even Shimon. That would keep Labour (without Peretz at its head) on board and we might be spared new elections. Anything but Bibi. But will they have the balls to do it? Sources close to Livni deny that she is planning a putsch http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3394533,00.html I hope they're wrong. On a more serious note, a new song has appeared on the Mid Life Crisis page on myspace http://www.myspace.com/mlcisrael It's called Ecstasy and features New York flautist...