North of Tel Aviv

Monday started at the gym, working out with Emanuela. I figured that if I asked her to speak only in Hebrew to me, I would (1) get a better ROI fort the investment, and (2) get her to slow down as I asked what the words meant (the #2 reason of course is the real reason).

In terms of learning what's going on here, I also learned that the cafes, at least in this area, don't open before 8 am. 

I started my touring day at The Tel Aviv University, or TAU, campus, in Ramat Aviv, north of the Yarkon river. Four years ago when Rafi and I were here, I remember the river was but a stream. Today, it does qualify as a true river, even for Canadian standards. I feel bad about complaining about the rain last week.

At TAU I visited Beit Hatfusot, the Jewish Diaspora museum. The goal of the museum is to provide an overview of Jewish culture and history since the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and attempts to answer the question, What kept the Jewish people intact through 2000 years. Instead of telling the story in chronological order, it focuses on major aspects of Jewish life, and each aspect has a separate section: Family, Community; Faith; and Culture Among Nations.

Being here was interesting and important for me. Important because an aunt of mine was the Chair of the Board for many years until she passed away a couple of years ago.  Interesting, because the nature of Zionism is only to focus on Jewish history *until* the destruction of the second Temple and *after* the start of the Zionist movement in the late 1800s (the rest is generally regarded as sad, weak, losers' history... which of course is sad in and of itself. But I digress).

Beit Harfusot entrance wall

The museum building and the exhibits are very impressive. From my perspective, unfortunately, I thought the content was pretty basic. Maybe I am not the target market but I would have thought that being housed at TAU it would have had more in-depth content.

View of TAU

After resisting going to the in-museum Aroma cafe, I walked over to the Cymbalista Synagogue a few steps away. 

Cymbalista

The Cymbalista Synagogue and Jewish Heritage Center was made early in a time when famous architects where designing many high profile buildings in Israel, and developing a form of creative contemporary architecture around Jewish institutions.  Impressive building, very new and modern. Smaller than I had thought it would be from the pictures on the web.

For lunch, I walked into a student cafeteria in the Sciences Building (sorry Rafi; I promise not to bring you here to eat when you come). The food was, well, what can I say: like the food in all school cafeterias, except that the portions were large enough to make any Jewish mother sending their kids to school here feel fine.

I sat outside among the students to eat and enjoy the mild weather, but there were several very assertive cats that wanted me to share my lunch and since I essentially hate cats, I had to move indoors (hello Georgia!).

Cats, Einstein...

From TAU I went to Ra'anana, which is about 25 minutes drive from Tel Aviv. From what I can tell, Ra'anana is Israel's high tech capital. Driving on the Yaalon freeway to Ra'anana is a lot like driving from San Francisco to San Jose: you see the very same names on the buildings. Ra'anana has been named the city with the highest quality of life in Israel and the safest city in the Middle East by the World Health Organization.

There I met with M. and O. I tried to ask them about what it is like to live in Israel, but they just wanted to talk business -- and I think that that is the answer: You live here like you live anywhere else. 

But I insisted, so we talked for a while about the Iron Shield missile defense system. After all, O. was a robotics expert in the Army and knew a thing or two about Israel's defense capabilities, and after a bit of prodding was happy to share.The Iron Shield can knock out 90% of the missiles it attempts to intercept, and O. thought that 90% was shameful. It should be higher. M. pointed out that  because it costs over $100,000 to fire each anti-missile rocket, which Hamas get for a few hundred dollars, the system had to be developed to calculate which missiles were actually worth shooting (those expected to land on populated centres) and which were not (those expected to land on barren land). In other words, Ronald Reagan's vision of Star Wars is alive and well.

Is there ever going to be peace? I asked (prefacing it as a naive Canadian question). O. said it all depended on how you define peace. "Maybe we get absence of war."

From that meeting I went to the one of the Microsoft campuses in Ra'anana, where I had been invited to attend some sort of Start-up competition, sponsored by Microsoft.  This was just one event; the whole country is obsessed with entrepreneurship and apparently such events go on all the time, in many locations. No wonder that after Canada and the US, Israel has the most companies listed on Nasdaq.

About six Start-ups did a pitch in front of what I think was a mixed audience made up of other Start-up entrepreneurs and junior VCs looking for the next big idea to fund, as well as consultants looking for new clients. There were about 100 people there, of all ages, both men and women. People were very focused on each presentation, and the checking of emails and Facebook on the mobiles seemed to me to be at a minimum. When the person seating next to me started to chat, others shushed us immediately (I  don't think this ever happens anywhere else in the Jewish world, especially not here where people all talk at the same time).

I decided to leave before it was over (some of the ideas were fairly dumb), and as I was leaving I was recognized by D. whom I met last week. Lucky for me, he was also ducking out early and going to Tel Aviv so I scored a ride. 

He told me he was going to a lecture in English by a journalist speaking on the middle east, so I went along. The place was packed with young Anglo immigrants mingling and sipping wine (my daughters would have fit perfectly, age-wise).  I left early because I couldn't hear the speaker. There was a lineup outside of people wanting to get in.  Outside, the city was just getting going.