MyTLVadventure: Welcome to Tel Aviv

Rafi arrived last Wednesday at 3:15 am (read again: at 3:15 am). I wanted to surprise him by picking him up at the airport but the way these things work I was sure he’d grab a cab to the apartment while I was cabbing it to the airport, so I told him I would be there – but he had to act surprised.

Rafi has been here for over a week and I haven’t blogged since. I really want to keep a record of the overall adventure, so now I have to collect my notes scribbled everywhere, as well as emails sent to self, and look at the pictures I have taken to remember all that we have done and seen and experienced this past week. On one hand, I want to give Rafi a taste of ‘my’ Tel Aviv and on the other I want to do things I haven't yet done. In a nutshell, a very busy "vacation within my vacation"! (At least I am not working at all.)

On Rafi's first morning, we started off with coffee at my favourite neighbourhood cafe and from there walked over to the nearby cafe inside the City Hall mall where his late father's best friend would be meeting us. In other words, Rafi got his Tel Aviv groove immediately by kicking off the visit with two cafes in less than an hour.

Outside City Hall, Rabin Square (site where Rabin was gunned down)

Rafi with Louis

(Rafi also noted that while I had been describing my apartment as being “on a very quiet street” it actually is “like a freeway” here: buses screeching and garbage collectors collecting and construction workers next door banging. I guess there is an upside to having a hearing impairment.)

From the second cafe we walked. And walked and walked. We did a grand tour of Tel Aviv, as prioritized by yours truly.

First we went to the Carmel Market. It is a must-see stop, but it is just a market, really. The good thing for me is that I stopped worrying about people blowing themselves up there a few weeks ago (so maybe it is not “just a market”). From the market we walked to Ben Yehuda Street so he could see what the totally renovated apartment building where he was born looks like now (it looks nice).

Coming home... just a few years later

From there we went to Jaffo...


View of Tell Aviv from Jaffo

Old Jaffo

In the shade, Jaffo

... then made a round trip back to the apartment but with a few stops for freshly-squeezed pomegranate juice (end of the season now, so he had two stops) and coffee and cheesecake. We also had a quick stop for Rafi’s first falafel (the staple of Israeli fast food).

Pomegranate Juice, freshly squeezed, V1

Pomegranate Juice, freshly squeezed, V2

Since it was the eve of Yom Hashoah that night, I knew all stores and restaurants would be closed (for real) so we bought food and wine to have at home. After our dinner, we walked the very quiet streets of Tel Aviv. All stores were closed. No buses and very few cars.

Yom Hashoah, the day of remembrance for the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, marks the start of a very important period in Israel, which ends a week later with the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day.

For Yom Hashoah, all of Israel remembers the six million. All businesses are closed on the eve of the day (Jewish holidays start at sunset the day before), and at 11 am the next morning, sirens wail and most of Israel stands still for two minutes, bowing heads. Ceremonies taking place across the country start right after.

At home, as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and the granddaughter of people who were murdered by the Nazis, I always make an effort to attend these ceremonies. I was very much looking forward to the feeling of one-ness when a whole country comes together like this, standing still in silence, all thinking similar thoughts and all sharing similar feelings.

So I felt like a total moron when I realized we missed it.

The siren is loud (apparently, the same sound as when there is an air-raid) but neither Rafi nor I heard it. (And no excuses: the siren did wail. Two women got ran over when they stepped out of their cars to mark the moment).

View of people who did hear the siren (photo from online newspaper)

The best explanation I can think of is that at the right moment we were walking down the Tayelet, the seaside promenade, towards Jaffa and cars were far away (there is a parking lot along parts of it, separating the Tayelet from the road) and very few people were walking along so I did not notice anyone stopping.

I was in total shock and felt miserable for hours when I realized what had happened.

We Remember

(As an aside, while I read quite a number of articles in the Israeli press about Yom Hashoah, it was the Canadian Prime Minister’s speech which really struck me. Stephen Harper spoke on that day at a national Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and honoured the families of two of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ who saved Jews during the war. Key part of the speech, to me anyway, was: “Why did the Righteous choose to do good, even under the most terrifying circumstances? What were the factors which influenced their number in any given place? And in so many places, why was that number not larger? At the end of today’s ceremony will be the launch of an exhibit from Yad Vashem, on Muslim Albanians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. We have much to learn from their example. Following Nazi occupation in 1943, the Albanians refused to turn over lists of Jews within their borders. They gave false documents to Jews, to help them avoid detection. The country protected not only its own Jewish citizens; they welcomed an even larger number of Jewish refugees from neighbouring lands. As a result, almost all of them were saved.” Yep. We can all do something to avoid evil.)

The next day, we probably walked over 9 km – and that was just in the morning and early afternoon. We went to the beachfront Tayelet, down to Jaffa again (spent more time now, walking down the back streets and the port), then back to Tel Aviv to have lunch at a wonderful restaurant called Café Noir, where Rafi (who spent a week in Germany eating Wiener Schnitzel and drinking beer with his friend Wolfgang before coming to Israel) ordered their specialty: Wiener Schnitzel. In the name of science, he wanted to compare it with what he had had in Germany...

Battle of schnitzels

We then walked home.

In the afternoon, I got a phone call from my friend Lea. She was touring with our common friend Raquel and her husband Willie, visiting from Chile, and invited us to join them for coffee. So we cabbed it (I broke down and agreed to a cab) to an area called Tachana to meet them.

With Rafi, Lea, Raquel, Willie

From there, we walked to the area called Neve Tzedeck, the first settlement in Tel Aviv, to have dinner at Dallal. The building where Dallal is located was built on the ruins of three restored houses near the Suzanne Dellal cultural center. The food is based on local fresh produce, influenced by its Neve-Tzedek location - between Jaffa and the Mediterranean Sea.