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Showing posts from 2012

Optimists in Habima Square

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I It was a bright and sunny Shabbat and we decided to ride our bikes up to Beit HaOmanim -the Artists House in north Tel Aviv. In Kikar Habima ( Habima Square) at the end of Rothschild Boulevard we came across this scene. Sitting around a table, placed in the sandpit of the sunken garden, were a group of Israelis (on the left) and Palestinians (on the right). Armed with a microphone some bottled water and notepaper they seemed to be debating the finer points of final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Around them, children ran between the flower beds, owners played ball with their dogs. A few interested spectators listened from the deck terraces.As usual, the Israels were casually dressed while the Palestinians were dressed formally. There were no signs of informational material.   It was interesting that the Israeli side was not entirely composed of classic left wingers as is normally the case in peace encounters. One of them, in the centre of the picture, was weari

Day 5 of Gaza campaign. Some notes from the Rooftop

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Wake up, check the news. On Day 5 it seems as though ceasefire talks are underway. French foreign minister flying in. Hamas reps talking to the Egyptians in Cairo. Quiet night in the south and no  missiles shot down over Tel Aviv since yesterday morning. On the other hand, tens of thousands of reservists called up with the army preparing itself for a possible ground incursion. Tanks and artillery lined up to go in. Israel, like Hamas with its missiles aimed at symbolic Tel Aviv, upping the ante to deter the other side and/ improve its own starting point for setting cease-fire terms. General impression : Israel doesn't want to send in ground troops but will do if Hamas halts its fire. Hamas wouldn't mind a cease-fire but needs this round to end in a victory so demanding its own terms (opening of Rafah crossing, halt to targeted assassinations). Thankfully drink coffee. Make fruit salad, feeling uncomfortable positioned between a ceasefire and a serious escalation,  Go for a wa

Everything's Gold

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The writer and poet Haim Heffer  a bastion of secular Israeli culture from  the “ Palmach generation”, passed away yesterday and today they are playing his songs on the radio. When I first arrived in Israel and began to distinguish a few Hebrew words in the songs I was hearing on the radio, many of them were his. I also cut my teeth on the maqamas   that he wrote in Yedioth Aharonoth, in which he’d comment in rhyme on current affairs – a form that seems hopelessly outdated now but was taken seriously then. Even someone taking his first steps in the language could recognize that Heffer was a master wordsmith with a prolific output. But, for me, the sentiments expressed in many of his lyrics belonged too closely to the 1948 generation, to times and places before my time, that were foreign to me.   . Not so with one song that I loved from the start : Hakol Zahav  (Everything’s Gold). Heffer wrote the lyrics for the singing troupe Ha-Tarnegolim  (The Roosters) under the dir

Changing places

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We've recently returned from two weeks in the USA visiting family and had the good luck  to exchange the Rooftop for a fortnight with Paula Derrow and her husband whom we met through a house exchange site. So while Paula and R were discovering the charms of Neve Tzedek, A & I were wandering around the  Upper West Side. And while they  were enjoying the beach here at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, we were riding bikes down the Hudson River Greenway, all the way to Battery Park. Central Park Apart from the financial savings, people who exchange homes do so in order to simulate  the experience of living as an "ordinary" person in a foreign place. Living in an apartment block and not in a hotel, means that you get to meet the neighbours in the stairwell or the lift; you visit the local grocery store, buy in local shops and eat in local restaurants.         Everywhere we went in New York, people were kind, courteous and patient. What happened  to th

Evidence of normality on the Rooftop

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The endless hot-muggy weather has kept me more indoors than out. It's only in the early morning or evenings that I escape the AC for some fresh air. Venturing out at sunrise a few days ago I discovered that a fully grown sunflower had appeared on the Rooftop.       Over the road, signs of work on the Tel Aviv metro. A humid haze hangs over the sea to the west. To the north on nearby Yitzhak Elkhanan, a big  residential tower is going up. The sun rising through the office buildings to the east. To be welcomed by the sunflower...    At this time, with the threat (no one for sure knows how real) of an imminent war with Iran and its satellites feeling more credible by the day, and just before we head off for NYC for a family visit, I wanted to post these signs of normality. In a superstitious attempt to ward off the coming disaster? As a way of documenting the Rooftop and its immediate surroundings before the ....       Here's a small

(Keep on) Rockin' in the Free World

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July 12, Neve Yosef Community Center, Haifa. MidLife Crisis performs Neil Young's  socially relevant 'Rockin' in the Free World' at a the Neve Yosef community theater festival. Filmed by ML. It took over three hours navigating  traffic jams to get to Haifa in Danny B's 'band van' and when we arrived at the prestigious "back balcony" stage, the audience consisted of roughly 3 little girls and a savta . But MLC will never pass up a gig, no matter how small (as long as we're all free that day and preferably if there's a drum set). After a few numbers, more people dropped in. A few started dancing. For once we had monitors and could hear ourselves. Threatened with only a short 45 minutes, our set extended to over an hour and a good rockin time was had by all. We've been promised the "front balcony" next year. At last, the big time!    

Roller-Coaster

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I t's been a roller-coaster week. The sort of week that, in most countries, would be spread over a year. It started with the shocking self-immolation of Moshe Sliman  at a social justice demonstration  in Tel Aviv, continued  with the departure of Kadima from the cabinet , the decision to g rant university status to the Ariel University Center   and the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  and ended with the Damascus explosion and the  terror attack at Burgas airport in Bulgaria  . The frequency with which I (and everyone else) am bombarded with dramatic news of potentially cataclysmic proportions has an emotionally numbing effect. Soon after the shock and despair comes the desire - for the selfish sake of remaining in my comfort zone - to downplay, to rationalize.  If Moshe Sliman was driven to pour "flammable material over his clothes and body" and set himself on fire, maybe Bibi was right when he said that this was a "personal" tragedy

Heading for a fall?

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You don't see a lot of musicians on the streets of Madrid, but there are plenty of human statues who strike creative poses for hours on end in return for a few euros. Maybe a sign of the grim economic times? On the posh Calle de Alcala , lined with magnificent banks and fancy cafes, it's hard to notice many other signs of Spain's economic woes. Lack of money was certainly not in evidence at the Santiago Benrabeu stadium where over 50,000 fans paid a minimum of 70 euros to hear the Boss and the E Street Band on their Wrecking Ball tour. Springsteen gave them their money's worth in a 3 hour show that lifted Madridian spirits to the rooftops. Yet a local friend told us that while the shops and restaurants look full, people are spending less and those who still have jobs have stopped complaining about them. The question was how much worse it would get before it gets better? On an attempt to visit the Royal Palace we found ourselves in the middle of a milita

From Within 3

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Continuing this series on a few of the hundreds of sites open to the public at Tel Aviv's Houses from Within weekend, we lined up for a guided tour of  a newly renovated industrial building on Simtat Chelouche. Although close to trendy Neve Tzedek, this is a pretty desolate spot in an unkempt side road situated in the seam line between the old army museum and Derekh Yaffo. In this setting, the clean lines of the spanking white exterior are especially striking. This International Style building was not on the preservation list but was nevertheless lovingly restored and renovated. The building was purchased by a group of five friends  who commissioned an architect to create airy, light filled apartments with plenty of shared, communal spaces, like a rooftop garden.  A shower cubicle open to the roof. Behind it you can see a movable skylight.  A living room. On Day 2 we switched from bicycles to 'Vespa' to visit some sites a bit further afield.  Th

From Within 2

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Behind the sleek design studio (see previous blog ) lay a courtyard which, perhaps because of its seclusion had been given especially devoted treatment by street artists. A few blocks away, on the 11th floor of a commercial building on the corner of Shocken and Kibbutz Galuot, pianist Hagai Yuden is ensconced in loft that features a 150 year old Steinway Grand that used to belong to the mayor of New York. Yuden, who gives piano recitals set against the background of the constantly sprouting Tel-Aviv skyline that can be seen from his panoramic window, also has a view one of his neighbours.  This looks like the inside of a beit knesset (synagogue) and it is: a scale model of the interior of a beit knesset in Aden. It can be found in the museum devoted to the Jewish  community of Aden that recently opened in Lilienblum 5. The museum occupies the ground floor ( until recently, used for storing textiles) of the simple but elegant beit knesset that the archite

From Within 1

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A section of an original wall painting This isn't the first time that I've done a post on the annual batim mibifnim event ( Houses From Within ). But it's such a rare opportunity to see the inside of some of the most interesting buildings and spaces in the city that it's just too good to pass up. So here are a few images from this weekend's harvest, with more coming separately. By the way, just skimming the programme online will give you an idea of the scope of Tel Aviv's architectural and urban treasures.     We started close to home, in a building on Rehov Mohliver built in 1926. The couple renting this apartment have done a lovely job of preserving many features of the old Eclectic Style with minimum expense and maximum care and taste. To reveal the lovely old tiles in the photo below they had to scrape away the linoleum that had covered it.      On the top tier of this antique magazine rack sits an original copy of a book of photographs