Tel Aviv Rooftop

Synagogue, Pitigliano, three Jews left When visiting a place as rich in history as Italy, the tourist (the photographer) can follow his/her own religious or cultural inclinations and take a personal trail. On Rosh Hashana we shared apple, honey and songs at 'home' in a converted farm cottage in Montefesciano. Christians might look for churches, Moslems for mosques, we tend to look out for synagogues. In the Tuscan hilltop village of Pitigliano we found one, part of a sort of Jewish heritage centre in what was once known as "La Piccola Gerusalemme" Here it was sobering to recall that 'ghetto' is not only an Italian word but an Italian invention. The Jewish community of 500 that shared the complex of synagogue, bakery, slaughterhouse, mikve etc were confined to these narrow quarters from the middle of the 16th century until 1871 when Italian unification also brought emancipation to the Jews. There are shops nearby professing to sell Jewish food, consisting main...

It's easy for someone coming from a Mediterranean country like Israel to immediately feel at home in Italy. The landscape resembles the Galilee, the Mediterranean menu suits our palate, the people are open and friendly. Given the outward similarities, the real points of interest are to be found in the differences. These images from a recent trip to central Italy (Lazio, Tuscana, Umbria) and Rome sparked some thoughts on how different we are but also on the howItalians appear to live in their towns and what, if anything, we might learn from them. For example, the scene above (actually some sort of church statue shrouded in black cloth sharing the back of a van with some flowers) would not normally be encountered on the streets of Tel Aviv. In Montefiascone, a town of about 13,000, a lady, dressed to kill, strides across a mediaeval piazza. In the background is an older less fashion-conscious local lady, and behind her, Il Caffe is a supertrendy, streamlined custom designed cafe-bar...

Workers rebuilding the tiled roof of the old house next to the rooftop. August. Back to blogging, after another long break. Thanks to A for reminding me that I'm meant to be "archiving the city" and even for dangling the possibility of a mention in an important academic publication. I've also been taking a few more photos recently so here's a quick foray before we fly off the rooftop for a holiday. Soviet/early Zionist style street art on Herzl this morning. September is art month in Tel Aviv and the ART TLV Biennale opened on Thursday. This wasn't one of the exhibits. We started by cycling down Rothschild Blvrd, one of several boulevards hung with hundreds of banners containing painting and photographs of Tel Aviv(for some reason can't find them now) . Then headed for the Betzalel gallery on Salame 60 where there was an excellent exhibition and we could wander into some of the studios of the resident artists. One of the ARTTLV exhibition spaces was the c...