Tel Aviv Rooftop

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...

From time to time my efforts to keep this blog light and fluffy give way to an urge to delve more deeply into the complexitities, contradictions and conundrums that surround the rooftop. This temptation has been increasing as the 60th anniversary celebrations grow inexorably closer (officially Independence Day is on May 8). The official celebrations for which no-one seems to have much stomach, have even been the subject of an on-line protest petition calling to spend the money on projects more urgen than fireworks and DJs. The urge has also been exacerbated by a spreading feeling of national hope-less-ness, an entry into a very uncertain era in which peace is not merely difficult to attain but accepted as permanently unattainable. Consequently, the stark choice that is beginning to emerge is between apartheid (contination of the occupation with a Palestinian majority betweenthe Jordan and the Med) or Israel/Palestine as a 'state of all its citizens (i.e. no more Israel as a Jew...

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...

Purim in Tel Aviv 2008 I came across an article in Ha'aretz on Purim in Tel Aviv written by the Hungarian Jewish journalist and author Arthur Koestler (who later became a British subject). Koestler lived in British Mandated Palestine , from 1926-29, first on a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley ("Heftzibah"), and later in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where he almost starved. Describing the Purim carnival for one of the Berlin liberal dailies of the time, he contrasted the chaotic and hedonistic atmosphere in Tel Aviv to that of the grim sanctity of Jerusalem. Here are a few excerpts (translated from the Hebrew, itself a translation from the original German) "My Tel Aviv, 'Spring City', on the coast, the kitschiest city in the world, you, who stand facing Venice, how my desecrating heart loves you. When young men, faces blackened like the chocolate boys in the 'Talmi' margarine advert and dressed in Hollywood loinskins pull the Purim Queen on a cart through the...

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...

Three days at a spa hotel at the Dead Sea - even for a teambuilding exercise - can do wonders for your state of mind. Horizons , like the mirror-still water, flatten. The hazy weather meant that the Jordanian side was invisible, giving the impression of a real sea. The hot soporific weather, an aromatherapy massage and 15 minutes in the mineral baths help to slow down the pace and the absence of constant news updates keeps you stress free. At 6.30 a.m. two buses disgorge groups of fit-looking Russians (tourists?) who delight in the novelty of the bouyant waters. and find a double twist on the classic reading the paper photo. The road north between Ein Boqeq and Ein Gedi reminded me sometimes of the Sinai coast. The Dead Sea Works at night. In fact the main Dead Sea hotel area is situated not on the sea itself but opposite huge industrial pools that serve this plant that gathers minerals like potash Now that the flow of fresh water from the Jordan River to its north has completely sto...

Almond tree in full blossom near Amuka Spring has definitely sprung and the evidence is everywhere, starting with the rooftop itself which is coming to life after its winter hibernation and is sprouting buds where once there were dead stalks and pushing out flowers through formerly brown wilted leaves. The swallows are also back and while it's true that one swallow does not mean spring, scores of the nimble daredevils certainly do. Following their aerobatic displays, as they swoop around the rooftop, adds a touch of excitement to your morning fruit salad and yoghurt. Last weekend we were in the Galil where the almond blossom overpowered the senses and fell to the ground like snow (see pic above). On the downside, after a week of blessed lull (more or less), there's also a springlike resumption of hostilities in Gaza, following an Israeli assault on an Islamic Jihad cell in Bethlehem, in which senior Jihad military commander Mohammed Shehadeh was killed. As the Israeli pop song...