Tel Aviv Rooftop

The Vienna Art Orchestra letting loose in Eilat - filmed with my digital camera. My first video on this blog. Turn up the sound! Back from annual jaunt to the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat . Three wonderful sleepless nights of jazz, booze and more jazz. Three days of sleep, reading, food and pool. If only real life was more like this. After the official shows at the port (attended largely by wrinklies like us) the action begins at the jam session at the Riviera Hotel where the audience is mainly under 25 and where even younger musicians can share a stage with some of the big names who come back to the hotel to jam until dawn. There's hope for Israeli jazz if so many young people are prepared to take the trouble to head for Eilat , often just for the jam session. My personal favourites at the official shows were the Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko , saxophonist Chris Potter and the Vienna Art Orchestra but there was something for everyone including the slick British soul ...

I'm on holiday! Sunday morning. Time to do some siddurim (no translation I can think of - chores like paying a bill) before heading off for the annual jazz fest in Eilat tomorrow. But first some exercise to burn off some excess carbs . This took me to the entrance to the old Jaffa port where renovation work has started on one of the big hangars, part of the development of the whole area. The workmen laying the pipe uncovered whole layers of buried buildings. That's what tends to happen when you dig up a city which is 5,000 years old. Later, a trip in search of a a part for the Rooftop's increasingly elaborate drip-irrigation system led me to Rehov Levinsky , where most of the people you see in the street are foreign workers . Here I came across this water container for bomb shelters. Mmmm could come in handy. On the Florentin side of Levinsky is the famous little shuk that specialises in herring, dried fruits, olives, seeds and spices etc. A good opportunity to ...

No 14, designed for the rich. There has been a flurry of articles on Tel Aviv in the national media over the past few weeks. Ha'aretz (following a PR blitz at the paper's offices by controversial mayor Ron Huldai and his image makers) wrote what one critic called a " panegyric " (look it up) on the dramatic development of the city over the past decade. Ma'ariv featured the downside of Huldai's accomplishments. As Uri Misgav wrote in a critique of the Ha'aretz piece: "No-one one disputes the fact that Huldai has advanced Tel Aviv in certain areas. But his tenure, particularly his second term, is far from a matter of consensus. Alongside construction enterprises, his "bulldozer" also sows destruction and anguish." To sum up the arguments. On the plus side , Huldai has fixed crumbling infrastructure ignored for decades, beautified the city's boulevards and developed formerly run down areas like Tel Aviv port and has ...

"Peace sells but who's buying?" is a slogan (painted onto a wall in Florentin ) that I never managed to get my head around. It sounds catchy but doesn't make sense. If peace sells then there must be buyers - right? But what if there is more than set of buyers in the peace market. Then peace would be bought by some but not others. Also right. That, I think, is exactly what is happening right now. There are buyers in the peace market. The US for instance which would like to offset its losses in Iraq and blunt Iranian/Shiite advances with a deal between Israel and the pragmatic wing of the PLO. The same goes for Europe and the rest of the international community. Then there's Olmert , prepared to make peaceful noises as long as this holds out a chance of staving off demands for his resignation over his malfunctioning in Lebanon and/or corruption allegations. And Abu Mazen , keen to show Hamas -controlled Gaza that violence (especially against Fatah) doesn...

Old house in Neve Tsedek . Avinoam , the barber, is one of my few connections to the world of amcha yisrael which is a polite way of saying the common people, the hoi polloi . The time before last I had him trim my locks (if only) he was waxing ecstatic about the virtues of Philippine women. He had visited a friend who had recently met and married one (a foreign worker) through a dating agency. Avinoam thought he had died and gone to heaven. “Such tranquility! Such respect! She waits on him hand and foot and she’s always cooking him meals and worrying about him. And the apartment! Not a speck of dust! That’s what I want! A woman like that. A woman who will respect me and love me and look after me!” (A, aged 50, is single, on ideological grounds, having allegedly suffered a series of humiliations and rip-offs at the hands of Israeli women). “And what about her?” “ Wa ?” "Her. What about her? What does she get out of it? “Well, he looks after h...

Met this little guy amongst the cabbages in shuk ha- carmel early on Friday morning. He had been adopted by the cabbage seller who was quite happy to have him roam the undulating topography as he set up his stall. The news of the past week of the past week has included the opening of yet another criminal investigation into Ehud Olmert's shenanigans, lots of talk about a peace process and peace plans (to be discussed) and the march of the Holocaust survivors for some decent support. When it comes to important issues like redeeming the reputation of a crooked prime minister or a sex-offender President, the "strategic advisers " amoral and unscrupulous to the core, are called in to save the day. One of the most aggressive (and weird) is Moti Morell who this time was working for the Holocaust survivors' organsation and whose methods are described this week in Ha'aretz. But early August is still too hot to get even hotter under the collar about how our lit...

The Palestinians argue that we not only stole their land but also their national dishes - humous and falafel - and made them our own. They may be right but, historical injustice notwithstanding, there's nothing more Israeli today than humous ( or humus or hummus) . Open an Israeli fridge, be it that of a family hailing from Russia, Morocco, Poland, Iran, or Brazil (or just Israel), whether its owners are ultra- haredi (ultra- orthdox ), super- chiloni (secular), Moslem , Christian or Bahai , be they tycoons or street sweepers, - and you'll find a container of humous . Humous , tasty, cheap and filling , so happily adopted by the non Palestinian residents of the area , has also become a sort of glue, a neutral meeting ground for Jews and Arabs. The Arabs serve humous to the Jews, the Jews show their appreciation and come back for more. Jews who would be afraid to enter Shefaram visit Abu Ghosh in droves - for the humous . In Tel Aviv - Yaffo , Abu Hassan in Yaf...

A few weeks ago I had to visit north Tel Aviv , something I do quite infrequently. There's nothing much I normally need in that part of town and I'm quite content to limit my leisure time activities to Neve Tsedek , Florentin , Yaffo , the beach and the city centre. The photos here are from the 'old' north, just off Jabotinsky and quite close to north Dizengoff . . The first thing you notice is how green the streets are compared to the south. The trees here are old timers, the pavements are cleaner, broader and almost deserted. The buildings here are post 'Bauhaus', from the 50s and 60s, spacious and well maintained. By Israeli standards this is still a genteel neighbourhood. The north ( tsafon ) has become synonymous, by way of association with the ashkenazim that tend to dominate in this neck of the woods, with wealth, elitism and snobbery. Hence a ' tsfoni ' or a ' tsfonbon ' means a rich, ashkenazi snob. Hedges forming an arch, shiel...

I've been having some serious technical problems which have kept me off-line for a while. Also been busy with a roller-coaster of family celebrations, and departures. It's good to be back. Being technically obstructed from posting this blog was surprisingly frustrating. Now that the technology is is so simple, I'm as hooked on it as everyone else. Another technological marvel, produced the photo above which I used to illustrate my very first blog. A few months ago I submitted it to a photo contest on theme of tmunot yafo t (beautiful pictures of Yaffo ) and a few days was awarded an honorable mention and dinner for 2 at a fancy Yaffo restaurant! The contest was sponsored by Harova (The Quarter) a company marketing a new residential complex in Yaffo but the judges included some of Israel's leading photographers. You saw it here first! See all the photos here . Click to enlarge. While banished from my small virtual world I wrote something that I'll post here...