Tel Aviv Rooftop

In our daily lives we play different people (colleague, parent, friend, competitor) and , as the number of roles increase, we stand to forget who the 'real'  me is. Purim (like all carnivals) gives us the legitimacy to stop pretending that we're not pretending and play out a role in public. A local couple showing their appreciation After several years of tension and negotiations between the bar owners of Florentin and the authorities, this year, the police and the municipality decided to cooperate: they blocked streets to the area, set an 18+ age limit and gave the annual Purim Florentin street party the freedom to play loud music all night, sell alcohol on the street and generally go crazy. There are similar street parties on New Year's Eve and Independence Day. Many people wore bunny ears. Japanese nuclear scientists was another strong theme.   Some people took to acting our their fantasies a little too vividly. For others, Purim mi...

Wearing silly hats, we forayed out for another Purim street party in Florentin last night 'erev Purim'. These photos were taken at about 11 p.m., that is just as things were beginning to warm up. My contacts had told me that the Florentin party had been cancelled this year but for once Facebook was wrong. While the police blocked off the entire neighbourhood to traffic, pedestrians of all shapes, sizes and appearances were soon filing in to make merry in the bars and streets.          Yes the picture to your  right does feature three guys pushing a car with a larged stuffed rodent on the roof. The male victim of this Draculess said that she wanted her photo taken. In fact, I was regularly stopped by gaggles of people only too willing to pose for the camera. They had made an effort (sort of) to get dressed up and seemed to want a bit of recognition for their efforts. Some of them had a naturally exotic look, while others, li...

For the third year in a row Florentin was the site of the biggest and bestest Purim street party in town. So big, that the crush on some street corners made breathing, let alone movement, impossible. These photos were taken at about 1 a.m. and people (all of them younger than we, many of them stranger looking) were still streaming into the area. It goes without saying that in Tel Aviv, Purim is just an excuse to dress up in a costume, act silly and get drunk. Consequently it beats other festivals hands down. Click to enlarge pics. There were many tipsy angels in the crowd. As well as delegations from the east. Everydoggie was getting into the act. Some went to extravagant lengths to gain attention. While others preferred to find a quiet corner and contemplate deeper meanings Moose meets leiderhausen in what could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

While soldiers, policemen and Israeli missions overseas entered a state of super-high alert for a reprisal to the assassination 40 days ago of Hizbullah 'defense minister' Imad Mughniya, the rest of us prepared for Purim. Frazzled mums stayed up all night putting the final touches to the costumes of the little ones to show off at school or at the bigger Purim carnival adaloyada parades like the one in Holon that is happening today. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv's older balyanim (clubbers?) were preparing their own costumes. The tradition of Tel Aviv adloyada carnival craziness goes back to the 1910s and 20s. The tradition of a massive street party in cool Florentin is much younger but this year caught on big time. On Thursday night, attempting to disguise our age with outdated Purim costumes, we mingled with the twenty-somethings as they danced the night away to the sounds of outdoor DJs and live bands. The alcohol flowed like water until the revellers, in the Purim tradition, fai...

Starting tomorrow night it's Purim -the festival that everyone can relate to because it's so much fun. The dressing up, the parties, the craziness. It's even a mitzva to get so blasted you can't tell wrong from right - ad lo yada . This concept of crossing moral lines in the service of God was literally on the Purim of 1994 when Baruch Goldstein fired on Moslems praying in the Cave of the Patriarchs killing 29 people. Adloyada is also Hebrew for 'Purim carnival parade', Tel Aviv held the best and biggest adloyadas back in the 20s and 30's but the Queen Esther crown is now worn by it's upstart neighbour Holon . It always rains on Purim (but it won't this year they say). I wanted to snap kids on their way to their school Purim parties clad as pirates, policemen and superheroes but my camera is in Amsterdam and the next time I see it (hopefully), I'll be in London. So I searched my collection for something wacky but all I could come up with ...