It's all about perspective

These last few weeks have gone by in a haze of almost normalcy here in Israel.
The New York Times even ran an article showing Israel in a downright positive light proclaiming: Where Families Are Prized, Help Is Free

 Jewish and Arab, straight and gay, secular and religious, the patients who come to Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv every day are united by a single hope: that medical science will bring them a baby...

...Demographics here are also political. Israel has historically focused on promoting Jewish birthrates to retain a Jewish majority and more recently as a counterweight to higher fertility rates of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Arab citizens of Israel, however, have the same rights to state-paid fertility treatments as their Jewish counterparts.

While Libya, Egypt and Syria are dealing with the 'Facebook revolutions' involving violence, overthrowing governments and gunning down opponents, we have had our 'Facebook uprising' involving the price of cottage cheese and this week it's the price of rentals for students in downtown Tel Aviv.
There is comfort in the middle-class-ness of it all. You could close your eyes and almost  imagine we are a regular bourgeois country.
But the conflict hasn't gone away. However if Facebook and Youtube have become the venues for change take a look at this latest entry in the war of our legitimacy in the region. Think about it and pass it on. 

One Melody - Two Renditions

Modzitz is well known as THE most prolific and melodious of the chassidic dynasties. The founder Reb Yechezkel of Kuzmir zt"l was a student of the Baal Shem Tov. the founder of the chassidic movement. The history of the group is fascinating and you can read more about it here in English. The second Modzitzer Rebbe, Reb Shaul Yedidya Elazer Taub zt'l escaped Poland to the US in 1940 where he remained until 1947 when he came to the Land of Israel to join his son Reb Samuel Eliahu Taub zt'l, with whom he had traveled to Eretz Yisrael in 1935 and who had remained in Tel Aviv with his family. Reb Shaul arrived in 1947 to join his son and lead the chassidut. He took ill and died on November 29, 1947, the very day that the UN voted on partition. He was immediately buried on Har Hazeitim (Mt. of Olives). He was the last Jew to be buried there and his family did not even have a chance to put a stone over the grave. It was not until Jerusalem was re-unified in 1967 that the family was able to do this. The musical chassidic court thrived in Tel Aviv and later moved its headquarters to Bnai Brak.
Over the years the rebbes and their followers have composed and sung hundreds of melodies. But, as happens with folklore, the melodies were sung but not written down (none of the rebbes had musical training). All that is changing now. There is a group (site only in Hebrew) which is recording the melodies and archiving them. They are collecting tapes and interviewing chassidim and have published two disks already.
Both David and I like this kind of music. A few weeks ago we attended a concert in Tel Aviv by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Yuval Cantors Choir and five guest cantors in a program of chassidic music. It was amazing! The clip below is of a Modzitz melody. (recorded with my still camera acting as a video so the quality leaves much to be desired but you get the idea)

Now, listen to real chassidim singing the same melody celebrating Tu B'shvat. (The melody starts around 5 minutes into the video right after the l'chaim.)

Enjoy!

Tel Aviv - Revisited

One sweltering Friday morning in August I accompanied a few young members of our family on an outing to Tel Aviv. Our destination was the open air arts and crafts fair held every Tuesday and Friday at the Nachlat Binyamin pedestrian mall which is right next to the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately the fair itself has no English website (that I could find) but there is a photo gallery here on the Hebrew site. 










Tel Aviv got it's start in the area when the first homes outside Jaffa were built by the "Ahuzat Bayit" group which got started in 1909.(Tel Aviv just finished celebrating it's 100th anniversary.) The Nachlat Binyamin neighborhood was founded just after that (1911) and the homes there were less expensive than the Ahuzat Bayit ones. It seems that the source of the name Nachlat Binyamin  is disputed. One story is that that the founders applied for financial help from both the JNF (Jewish National Fund, an organization which collected money from Jews in the diaspora to fund land and forestation projects in what became the State of Israel) and from Baron Rothschild. They said that if the JNF gives the money we"ll say it's named for Binyamin Ze'ev (Theodore) Herzl and if Baron Rothschild come through then it will be for Binyamin (Edmond) Rothschild. 















The neighborhood has long since lost its lost its original character and now has Tel Aviv's unique mixture of 100 years of architecture. Some of the buildings are better preserved than others but you can still see the old grandeur. 


The fair it self is colorful, crowded and lots of fun. There is even some street entertainment. Below are some photos of the craftspeople and their wares. By the way, to participants have to be selling their own wares (so that you actually meet the artists themselves). 

C

Tel Aviv, Learning to Love It

L'chaim!
It's no secret that it's been a very hot summer here (and it appears elsewhere too) but still this is the time we traditionally spend discovering 4  new 'amot' in the Land of Israel. 
An amah (pl. amot) is a measurement used in the Tora and the Talmud and is generally accepted to mean the distance from your elbow to your finger-tip or about 1/2 a yard. Four amot is a phrase used to denote the space around you. For instance 4 amot is considered personal space so going 4 new amot is going somewhere you've never been before.
I took David to the Tel Aviv Port. The port was set up as an alternative to Jaffa port when the Arab workers in the Jaffa port went on strike in 1936. That gave the Zionists an opportunity to build their own port and they did. It served the country during those years leading up to the statehood and especially in the War of Independence. It fell into disuse in the 1960's with the building of the brand new Ashdod port. For many years it was the home of warehouses and building supply companies and not very pretty.
That's all changed now as the area has undergone a major makeover and become a major shopping and entertainment center. There is a lovely boardwalk which is also part of Tel Aviv's bike path. The boardwalk is home to dozens of restaurants and cafes and the warehouses have been taken over by shops and galleries. There is often some kind of event on the boardwalk like the twice weekly Farmer's Market or the children's games festival. There are two kosher cafes on the boardwalk. One is Cafe Cafe and the other is Badolina.
We chose Badolina, which is the second branch of a cafe-restaurant in Gedara (just south of Rehovot) where we have eaten several times. We had fish dinners which did not disappoint us. The food was well made and artfully presented. It was early and still too hot to sit outside but the view from inside was lovely.
We have been living a 25 minute train ride from Tel Aviv for almost 15 years and this is the first time we went there together on a 'date'. We decided that we really should do this more often and put Tel Aviv back on our map!