Tel Aviv Rooftop

Omer Avital Been especially busy and ignoring my blog commitments but not my commitment to listening to some live music from time to time. As luck would have it Thirld World Love were playing on Thursday night at Levontin 7 , a funky , fringey performance place and bar in the now trendy Gan Ha- chashmal (Electric Garden) area. Thirld World Love are bassist Omer Avital , trumpeter Avishai Cohen , pianist Avishai Cohen and drummer/percussionist Daniel Freedman. The first three are Israelis who live or lived in New York while Daniel is a New Yorker who got sucked into the Israeli Jazz milieu there. All are virtuoso jazz players. Omer can make the double bass sing (and played a long solo in which he made it sing like an oud ), Avishai's lyrical trumpet is as clear as a bell, Daniel is a wonderfully talented and knowledgeable percussionist and Yonatan is a quirky , brilliant pianist. As TWL their music is often based on African and Middle Eastern rhythms that get the ...

Apologies to all my reader. I deserted the rooftop for a week or so in favour of greyer climes and richer food. But there too (in Europe) as well as in Washington, Moscow, New York, Jerusalem, Ramallah , Gaza and the settlements of the West Bank, all the players are jostling for the most convenient positions in the run-up to the Annapolis peace conference that may or may not be held on November 26. The official music coming out of both Washington and Brussels is that 'failure is not an option" . When asked if there was contingency plan if the talks didn't work out, State Department spokesman McCormack said "Plan B is to make Plan A work..." This sort of rhetoric might be good for western team building and perhaps also for motivating the parties to make real progress but taking a look around the arena from the vantage point of the (still hot) rooftop, the obstacles seem formidable. Here are a few scenarios for illustration: Annapolis will turn out to be nothin...

Officially, the rooftop misses the original border of Neve Tzedek by about 20 paces but according to other definitions we are well inside. Whatever our precise relationship, it's our neighbourhood; pretty, leafy, old, charming, quaint, constantly changing and now hopping with activity. Neve Tzedek established in 1887 , the result of the first attempt by Jews to break out of the confines of Yaffo , (see link above for history) is celebrating its 120 th birthday, and its streets are filled with people seeking the exhibitions, open houses tours and concerts. The original narrow terraced houses painted in shades of ochre were soon joined by grander residences and also by new adjacent neighbourhoods. In 1909 Ahuzat Bayit (later renamed Tel Aviv ) was established on the adjoining sand dunes, Neve Tzedek gradually fell into disrepair and by the 1960s was considered a slum. Now, after a hundred years of Tel Aviv's expansion and development, Neve Tzedek (in its tastefu...

Succot coincides with the first days of autumn and is, in theory, a wonderful time for taking trips: still warm but not burning. And indeed, it seems that much of the country (those who are not abroad) are racing from the Haifa film festival to the Acco alternative theatre festival to the hot air balloon fest in the Negev or the Susiada horse show near Beit Shean (partial list). We too took a short trip - to a buffalo dairy and to Idi's , Ashdod's famous fish restaurant, but with am yisrael tearing up the roads, the best place to be is of course close to our succah -like rooftop. The free time I gained by not traipsing all over the country allowed me to finally polish off the 29 th and last interview in 'Dylan on Dylan' (collected by Jonathan Cott ). One of the inspiring things about the unpredictable and mercurial Mr. Zimmerman (65 ish ) is not only the length of his career but his resolute (not always successful) search for songs that resonate in that partic...

To see the film click the link below. While we were enjoying the sacred peace and quiet of Yom Kippur , devoting the day to reading, contemplation and wandering the empty streets, unbeknown to us, a drama was playing itself out just a few hundred metres away from the rooftop. It turns out that the security forces closed in on an apartment in Rehov Piagotto , just up the road, where they discovered a suicide bomb belt that was supposed to be used over the chagim . The apartment was occupied by illegal Palestinian workers who put up a fight and were arrested. The Shin Bet got the intelligence from Hamas militants captured in an operation in a refugee camp near Nablus which too its own toll in lives, including one Israeli soldier and several innocent Palestinians alongside the terrorists. As is often the case, foiled the terrorist attack was a consequence of Palestinian in-fighting. Apparently the Gaza branch is seeking a cease-fire with Israel while the Damascus leadershi...

Yom Kippur. Pedestrians and other non-pollutants control the street for one blessed day. Among the customs of this time, it is common to seek reconciliation with people you may have wronged during the course of the year. The Talmud maintains that Yom Kippur atones only for sins between man and God. To atone for sins against another person, you must first seek reconciliation with that person, righting the wrongs you committed against them if possible. So, if I've been unkind, unthoughtful or downright nasty to anyone out there during the past year, I'm sorry. OK? This time last year I broke my arm (after falling off my bike) and was stuck at home with my arm in a sling. To pass the time I wrote a sort of diary. Here's an excerpt on Yom Kippur. “The streets are noiseless except for the occasional yelping of ecstatic children on wheels who suddenly have full control of the main road (and it’s completely safe!). The quiet is so quiet that it creates a new audio-landscape: t...

Hanging out. This cat , photographed by Y and a resident of his building, spends most of his time hanging out on the handlebars in the front drive. There's no accounting for taste. The rooftop has really proved its worth over the long Rosh Hashana - Shabbat break, proving yet again that the best place to be on a major Israeli holiday is at home. While much of am yisrael (the part that doesn't go to beit knesset) has been 'relaxing' in theme hotels in Turkey, clogging the nature reserves in the Galil or fighting for a piece of herring in the breakfast line in a hotel in Eilat, the rooftop has been our sanctuary. Here we have celebrated rosh hashana and a birthday with family and friends (the pomegranate in the picture was sacrificed for the the festive table) , read copiously, played sheshbesh, dozed, birdwatched, talked on the phone to our sons in two different continents, listened to the '67 Summer of Love marathon on 88FM (what a year!) and so on and so forth....