Tel Aviv Rooftop

Another Pessah, the theme of which is "me-avdut le-herut" (from slavery to freedom), a motto with rich potential. Of course the traditional discussion around the seder night table on this mighty theme is supposed to revolve on the story of Exodus from Egypt but the theme is too big to be contained by just one story, however epic. On one radio programme, a lot of people were using the Pessah motto to express the hope that they would find their way out of job slavery or possibly into a better paid version of it. Another association this Pessah is of course what is happening in modern day Egypt. Shimon Peres wished the Egyptians well in their Exodus out of the repression of the Mubarak regime but also expressed the hope that this wouldn't lead "in the wrong direction". Meanwhile a group of distinguished recipients of the Israel Prize demonstrated outside the site of Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where Israel's Declaration of Independence was made, to expr...

Playing dominoes in Bat Yam with an abacus to keep score. Normality tinged with illusion. Pessah, this year, at least in the area surrounding the rooftop, felt more like Yom Kippur. We took a stroll around the neighbourhood yesterday (erev chag) and a bike ride to Kiryat Shalom in south Tel Aviv this morning and were struck by the tranquility . Almost no cars on the roads, datiim (religious people) walking to and from beit knesset in their holiday best alongside chilonim (seculars) just enjoying the spring sunshine. entire families congregating on plastic chairs in courtyards and here and there the whiff of a charcoal grill from a back garden sprouting wild flowers. In ancient times Pessah, a spring festival, was the start of the year, a much more fitting time than Rosh Hashana. A family making a Pessah mangal (grill) in the pine wood next to low-income neighbourhood of Kiryat Shalom this morning. One of the reasons that Tel Aviv seemed to empty out is that so many people have gone o...

Tonight, Israeli minister of infrastructures, Binyamin (Fuad) Ben Eliezer said that in the next war it will be much safer to live in (isolated)Naharia or Shlomi because he foresees hundreds of missiles raining on major population centres like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Oh, and he also mentioned that if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, "Iran would no longer exist as a nation". But why concern ourselves with mere trifles when a classic Israeli story is developing in these crucial days before Pessah. Last Thursday a Jerusalem court ruled that chametz ( not 'kosher for pessach' goods - notably pitot, see below ) could be sold during Pessah (in Jerusalem) as long as it was not 'in a public place'. It turns out that the definition of a not-public place, could be an aisle in a supermarket for instance. Naturally, the religious parties are on the warpath and are tring to urgently push through a law (even though the Knesset is in recess) that would explicitly ru...