Tel Aviv Rooftop

It's Herzl 's150th birthday and there's not much celebrating going on. Just up the road from the Rooftop, on the corner of Herzl and Yehuda Halevi, several young men dressed up Herzl-style in a fake flowing black beard, a black suit with tails and top hat, handed out the flyer above . This reads: Herzl's 150th birthday. Today too it is no dream. Believe, Act, Change!' (I know I should have had my camera with me). Not clear who is behind the campaign. There was no phone number or website offering guidance on how to believe, act or change. On the other hand they were standing suspiciously close to Bank Leumi. Was this a government campaign to re-instill  Zionist values among a wayward, decadent Tel Aviv public or perhaps part of the bank's marketing policy? Even though Theodor Herzl is considered to be the "visionary" of the Jewish state and his inspiring slogan " If you will it, it is no dream" became the slogan of the political Zioni...

It's taken me a while to post some more photos of the Negev in the Spring, partly because I've been avidly following the crisis between the US and Israel that exploded during Netanyahu's recent visit to Washington. Obama's demands, now being discussed by Bibi's mainly hawkish septet of ministers would essentially mean that Israel would have to show some serious good will towards the Palestinians, among other things by halting construction in East Jerusalem - anathema to Bibi's rightist and religious coalition partners  and to Bibi himself. As a result, Netanyahu has been left exposed and it remains to be seen how far he will be able to rely on Obama in the future.   While the warm spring winds blow through the suddenly verdant desert, Israel's relations with its strongest ally are suddenly being put to the test, not a situation that Israelis are used to. Netanyahu seems trapped like a moth in the harsh light of the crisis. If he sticks to his princi...

Parking says the sign at the Cornfehl (?) Farm. Not seen in the frame is funky little restaurant featuring goat cheese with an outdoor deck overlooking a flower garden and an orchard. Israel's real Wild West is of course the West Bank but the Negev comes in an honorable second place. The sun dries and cracks and blanches. The winds whip over the mountains and through the wadis and the flash floods carve out new terrain. A politically aware post about a trip to the Negev should mention the miserable “unrecognized Bedouin villages” to the south and east of Beersheba, the large army firing zones off limits to civilians and what seemed like an inordinate number of prisons. But we were on a weekend getaway and were interested in getting closer to some of the local inhabitants. Yeruham, perched on the edge of hamchtesh hagadol the Great Crater (diminished to only “Large” on the road sign) is home to a few factories (Negev Ceramica, the Phoenicia Glass Works) and a few thousand pe...

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...

We're having a heat wave ,a tropical heatwave. And while you are freezing, we're sitting back easing, enjoying the sunshine. And so on an unseasonably warm Shabbat morning we cycled down Sderot Rothschild, the fanciest boulevard in Tel Aviv. An old chassid crossing the road against a background of posters advertising cool performances. Elton John, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and the Pixies are all supposed to be performing in Israel this summer unless frightened off by boycott, divestment and sanctions. At the bottom of the boulevard - the massive hulk of the new expanded Habimah (national theatre) building. Not only is it ugly and too big for its surroundings but the facing includes little sparkles which serve to make it look  glitzy. Three men each pushing prams containing twins! Were they all on the same pill? Posters advertising a Peace Now demonstration against the policy of the Bibi-Barak government described by the poster as a "masked carnaval...

On a steep side street in Ramat Gan sits a crazy apartment building. We went to visit it last night with Y who has just moved into the neigbourhood. It was a moonlit night The tentacles of alien creatures hung over the sides of the crazy building. Their parents, possibly scavenging for food, roamed the neighbourhood Surprising shapes inspired by Gaudi confronted us at every turn. A concrete banana skin helter skelter wrapped around the exterior of the crazy building contains a staircase that allows the visitor to enter the beast from the outside and as well as from the inside. What a shame that most buildings are not crazy

What with everything being so gloomy and all (Iranians getting closer to the bomb, Bibi planting trees in settlements, International Holocaust Day tomorrow, it's cold) I thought I'd cheer myself up with some examples of Engrish and Hebrish I recently stumbled across.                      My personal favourite. Have they no shame? Couldn't have put it better myself. The rest are for Hebrew speakers. Here ' Navy vessel Nidkar' in Hebrew becomes 'my brother was stabbed" (that is in the Hebrew meaning of the English). Similarly 'Alexandroni' (one of the regiments that fought in the 1948 War) has been transformed by the linguists attached to the street signs department of Tel Aviv municipality into 'Alex and Roni'. The guys who live next door? Finally, a sign , obviously created by the department of philosophy attached to ma'atz, the public works...