Tel Aviv Rooftop

Erev Yom Kippur, Rehov Herzl.  A family walks down the centre of the normally busy street towards the Shalom Tower safe in the knowledge that they will not be mown down by a car. Yehuda Halevi, a.k.a. 'rehov habankim' because the big three banks have their headquarters here. Bereft of human or vehicular activity - as though on the day after a mystety virus had wiped out the population - the functional office towers suddenly seem functionless and the arrows on the street are pointing to nowhere. In this tempotrary deserted world the neon lights shine for no-one. All commerce halts. Capitalism takes a day off.  Apart from the clicking of the superfluous traffic lights, silence reigns. Rehov Shabazi, Neve Tzedek. Three women, one pushing a pram, walk home from the kol nidrei service that brings in Yom Kippur. They might be a grandmother (right) grandaughter (middle) and daughter (left pushing  agrandaughter. Four generations sharing the same ...

This is a photo of nos 8 and 6  - the twin beauties on the left. It was taken in 1927. There is reportedly an earlier photo of them taken in 1924, the year they were built, that shows them standing in splendid isolation, surrounded by sand. But by the time this photo was taken, pavements had been laid on Rehov Yehuda Halevi (they seem to be in better shape than the ones we have today), and the road, through still unpaved, seems smoother than the existing version; certainly smooth enough for the horse and cart clip-clopping towards Neve Tzedek. There's a spanking new electricity pole outside the Hadassah hospital (hidden on the right behind the imposing stone wall and a general air of gentility about the quiet street with its substantial buildings designed in what was later to be called the Eclectic style :  a wonderful hodge-podge of European romanticism and eastern fantasies a la One Thousand and One Nights. The "twins" were built by immigrants from Rus...