Four Views From the Roof - South

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Protection

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A few days ago, a flyer appeared on the front door handle. It carried the slogan "Protect Yourself - Right on Time" (sounds better in Hebrew) and showed a map of Israel (and the West Bank) divided into brightly covered sections. Each section referred to the amount of warning time you'll have to reach your "protected area...in the case of an emergency" (read: "if your area is attacked by missiles"). If you live in Kiryat Shemona you have zero time. Lucky Jerusalemites have 3 minutes.The rooftop and the rest of Tel Aviv will have 2 minutes. We don't have a mamad ( reinforced room) in this old flat but 2 mns would probably allow us to reach the bomb shelter on the ground floor in time - although the security window in there is stuck half open. If not, we'll head one floor down and seek protection in the stairwell. The folks from the Home Front Command advise us to keep water, food, batteries, first aid and even an internet link in our safe areas,...
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The only matkot museum in the world

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Meet Amnon.  We met him on a stormy Shabbat morning on the side of a steep side road in Neve Tzedek. He was putting away his bicycle after giving up the idea of playing matkot on the beach, something he does on a daily basis and has been doing for at least 50 years. He invited us to see his apartment otherwise known as the Only Matkot Museum in the World. Amnon was born and bred in Neve Tzedek and is a major figure in the matkot community. There are some 350 matkot (beach paddles) of every conceivable size and colour in Amnon's matkot museum interspersed with large paintings of the northern European forest scenes so popular among people who live in hot countries. His devotion to the sport is boundless. Amnon, still sprightly now, thanks to matkot, is surrounded here by photos of him in action in younger days (click to enlarge). Now he and his fellow matkot-obsessed friends play on a concrete strip underneath one of the hotels on Gordon Beach where they have been gr...
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Yom Kippur 2010

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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 ...
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