Reuven Rubin

Israeli art is not a subject I'm particularly familiar with. I would struggle to name more than a couple of famous names from this field, so this morning, as a first venture into the Israeli art world I payed a visit to Reuven Rubin House, just a couple of doors down from Bialik's.

The first pleasing fact I learned about Rubin was, that he was Romanian, like my mum, even though this doesn't really mean anything and is just an instinctive, irrational reaction; I mean, it's not like we're related.
The second pleasing fact I learnt about my Romanian half-brother is that he painted these paintings himself, he didn't steal them, honest; there are photos and films to prove it; that is relief to know.
The third interesting thing to learn about Rubin is he's a Romanian who looked a little middle-eastern in his youth, especially in the self-portrait below; well that's OK, my dad's Iraqi - maybe we are related after all.

Ancestral nonsenses aside, Rubin's painting capture the early day's of Israel, when the country was more or less just a pile of sand. His early paintings from the 1920s often show characters holding flowers in front of a desert backdrop, reflecting the dream of making the desert blossom. His paintings often depict familiar Israeli themes including religion, zionism, multiculturalism and the meeting of east and west, as well as beautiful Israeli scenary, always in vibrant color; a feast for the eyes!
Here are a few of his paintings that particularly caught me eye for different reasons.

1) This Jaffa scene somewhat reminds me of my current lifestyle except without donkeys and goats.

2) This painting is called something like "Jew with a red beard". I find it impressive in its straight-forwardness. Also, I too have a reddish beard, so this is what i might look like religious!

3) This one called "Rakafot" proves he is Romanian after all; didn't he know it's illegal to pick flowers in Israel; wait till the authorities hear about this!

4) "The first seder in Jerusalem" depicts early mutiethnic, multicultural Israel at Pesach, including, strangely, Elijah the prophet on the left dressed as Jesus of course. So he turned up for once but did he have to come in fancy dress? It's Pesach no Purim!

Let's just say when I had finished, I wanted to see more.

Beit Ha'ir - The old town hall

Once upon a time beauty came before function. Such is the case with Tel-Aviv's old Town Hall, a beatifully unique building in it's style which couldn't be more of a contrast to the dent on the Tel-Avivian skyline that is the new, ugly block of a town hall.

From this building, back in the glory days of the "White City", Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel-Aviv ran the show. Dizengoff served as the mayor of Tel-Aviv twice, from 1921-1925, and again from 1928 until his death in 1936. Prior to and in between his tenures, the man can be considered a zionist entrepreneur, whose activites included settling up a glass factory, establishing the Geulah company for purchasing land in Palestine, establishing the Meir Dizengoff & Co. import/export shipping committee, heading the Zionist Executive Urban Settlement Department, and establishing the Company for the Development of Tel-Aviv - the list goes on. He was even awarded the title of "Commander of the British Empire" for his contributions under British Mandate rule. It's no wonder he was considered the "King of Tel-Aviv" and the grand office he served from was indeed fit for a king.

Meir the mayor aside, the old town hall is the place to come if you want to get a feel for Tel-Aviv in its pioneering heyday through it's extensive exhibition of family photos showing the different areas of the city and the landmarks that have been and gone.

Here are a few Tel-Avivian oddities that stood out for me:

1) There used to be a casino on the beach. Now, I believe, the closest legal casino is floating out in the Mediterranian somewhere.


2) Once all the builders were Jewish pioneers. Now mostly arabs or imports from afar.


3) Yes, it used to snow it Tel-Aviv! Once you didn't need to go to Jerusalem or climb Hermon to see the white stuff.


4) Dizengoff square used to look good in all it's Bauhaus glory.


5) Unbelievably, there used to be a zoo right in the middle of Tel-Aviv near what's now Rabin Square. How Bizarre!

Well I don't know much about local politics or how good or bad a job the town hall is doing, but watching the continued evolution of Tel-Aviv is fascinating, more for better than worse from what i see, and I think Dizengoff, on the whole, would have been pleased with the results. Watch this space.

Poor Man's Sushi

When my friend Josh left Israel's shores back in April, he very kindly left me two bags of sushi rice and they've been sitting on my kitchen shelf ever since. Now let's face it; there isn't much you can do with sushi rice except the obvious: make sushi, right? So it was only really a matter of time before I tried my hand at making the cuisine that I so obsessively consumed in the land of the rising sun. Well scoffing the stuff is one thing, and preparing it is a completely different matter.

Seeing as it is that i'm on unemployment benefit - yes, I got my first payment for June, isn't it great? - and this was my first attempt at making sushi, I opted for the much cheaper canned tuna filling as opposed to the considerably dearer fresh fish. The rest of the ingredients, albeit numerous, can be considered a long term culinary investment, as, after all with 2 kilos of rice I'll be eating sushi for a month or two.

At the first step of the process, I already ran into problems. The instructions at the back of the packed of rice stated 1 cup of rice to 11/4 - 11/2 cups of water. Maybe I was missing something but I didn't have a clue what the stated quantities of water actually means. Well, what's the internet for? Unfortunately most of the recipes I found gave the rice in grams and the amount of water in fluid ounces. Of course, the recipe I chose which stated rice:water as 1:1 by volume didn't do the job and after adding extra water to the uncooked rice I concluded that 1:1.5 is the correct ratio; sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

The rest of the process went quite smoothly, apart from making my first roll while the rice was still warm - not recommended - and overfilling a couple of the rolls with too much of one thing or another. In the end, i became quite the expert and there's definitely potential there for a career alternative if the whole computing thing doesn't work out. Just look at the beautiful results:

(Photographic consultant: Iris Chvaicer)

And friends, my blog wouldn't complete without attempting to educate you with an interesting fact about sushi. Those of you who read my Japan blog might recall that I mentioned the mischievious creatures called "Kappas" that are said to live in the Tono Valley and look something like this little fellow:

Please note that this Kappa is holding a cucumber, his favourite food. The sushi lovers amongst you who pay attention to the Japanese names of the different sushi, might recall that "Kappa Maki" is a cucumber roll, that's right, named after these little critters. There's an interesting fact to impress your friends with while you're stuffing your faces with Japan's favourite export.

Haganah

I had already discovered political zionism from Ben-Gurion and Jabontinsky and cultural and artisitc zionism at Bialik's house, but the picture was incomplete. The missing piece of the zionist puzzle is, of course, its practical implementor, the zionist enforcer, the machine that made it all happen.

Introducing Eliyahu Golomb, another familiar name in zionist circles. Golomb's house on Rothchild Boulevard fittingly houses the Hagana Museum, as he together with Dov Hoz, are the founders of the Hagana, the official defence force of the Jewish settlement in Palestine during British mandate rule. His house was the official headquarters of the Hagana from which all of its operations were conceived, planned and put into action.

The original defence force of the Jewish settlement was "Ha Shomer", "The Guard". This group of jewish "cow boys" (gunmen on horses) and "sheep boys" (they disguised themselves as shepherds) was independently established and an authority unto themselves whose role was simply to defend the Jewish settlements from arab attack. Then in 1920 Golomb established the "Hagana" as the official jewish defence force, which was to act in accordance with the aims of the elected Jewish authority. The Hagana, of course, was an underground organisation which existed without the permission of the British authorities.


The Hagana can be considered in large part the the implementer of the zionism vision because on one hand it provided the military strength to make it happen and on the other hand it was much more than just a military force. For starters, its members were normal jews from all over Palestine who worked hard to build up the jewish settlement using their individual talents. Thus was created the true zionist pioneer, a hybrid worker/fighter prepared to contribute in any way for the zionist cause. Consequently, apart from defence, the Hagana played a huge role in setting up the jewish infrustructure, including the agricultural water system and an intricate communications network throughout the land, and helped to establish new settlements with the "tower and stockade" policy. After the war, the Hagana networks throughout Europe organised many ships to illegally bring thousands of Holocaust survivors to Palestine, and it's leaders worked tirelessly to obtain weapons from all over the world for the defence of the jewish settlement.

Naturally we can't ignore the Hagana's pure military contribution to the establishment of the State of Israel through its active defence against Arab hostility before and during the war with the Palmach strike force and the "Special Night Squads" established by a certain British captain named Orde Charles Wingate (see below), and its daring sabotage operations to undermine the British rule after the war.
The most significant heroic act of the Hagana, now incorporated into the Israel Defence Force, the official Israeli army established after the Declaration of Independence in May 1948, was the defence of the State during the War of Independence which cost the lives of around 5000 fighters with thousands more injured. A high price to pay but ultimately proof that Golomb's brain-child of 29 years earlier had proved a success, as the State of Israel was here to stay.

Bialik

Hayim Nachman Bialik surely provides the soulful expression to the political and idealogical zionism of Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky. Israel's "National Poet" is so-called simply because many of his poems were nationalistic, reflecting the love of the Land of Israel and the world-view of the Jewish pioneering generations. Before visiting Bialik's House on Bialik Street (named during his lifetime apparently, I checked this time) I knew little about the man except being told that he wrote very metaphorical, sometimes depressing poetry in very sophisticated hebrew, which I knew would be impossible for me to understand. It just so happens that poetry was just one of the many string to the bow of this literary and cultural power-house.

Born in the Ukraine in 1873, Bialik went to live with his grandparents after his father died when he was very young, and had a traditional orthodox Jewish upbringing. His love of literature thus began in a religious Jewish setting, in which he initially planned to remain by studing at a famous Talmudic Academy in Lithuania, but his interest in European literature and attraction to the Jewish Enlightenment at that time, resulted in his move to Odessa when he was 18, then the center of modern Jewish culture. There he studied German and Russian literature and met his mentor Ahad Ha'am, who was a great influence on his zionist outlook. Bialik's reputation grew with the publication of his poems, which had a growing impact in zionistic circles, especially after the Kishinev pogrom, by which he was deeply affected.

Poetry aside, Bialik set up a publishing house in Odessa, he translated many literary masterpieces into Hebrew such as Shakespear's Julius Caesar and Cervantes' Don Quixote and he compiled a number of volumes of Jewish literary works. Eventually in 1924, after a two year stay in Berlin he arrived with his family to Tel-Aviv and moved into the house on Bialik street which he helped to design.

Bialik's house is well worth a visit just to see a stunning example of an eclectic style Tel-Avivan building, renovated to its original form. Bialik's reputation preceded him so, that he assumed more a position of mentor, teacher and advisor during his time in Tel-Aviv, with his "open-house" policy attracting many to seek his council on numerous subjects. Aside from his already mentioned literary talents, Bialik also edited other authors' works and became a children's author himself, delving into his difficult childhood for inspiration.

One of Bialik's greatest contributions to Israel is as a Patron of the Arts, playing a significant part in the establishment of the Israeli Opera and the Habama National Theatre and collaborating with and establishing connections between many Israeli writers and artists of the time. For these, he can be considered one of the fathers of Israeli culture.

In the end, I didn't have to try and read a single line of Bialik's poems, which was unexpected, but is probably just as well at this stage. What i did discover, however, is a larger than life character, whose contribution to Israeli literature and art is unsurpassed.

Bauhaus

When walking around Tel-Aviv, the trick is to look up. This way you'll surely discover the truely unique characteristic of the city - the architecture. For those who weren't aware of it - and I was one of them - Tel Aviv is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and why? Because it is the only city in the whole world that has a high concertration of Bauhaus style buildings in the city center; approximately 3,500. Sure, other European cities have Bauhaus buildings, but only spread out on the periphery. This, unbelievably, renders Tel Aviv a wonder of the modern world. All of this, and more, I learned on the Bauhaus tour of Tel-Aviv.

First, a little history. Bauhaus, translated literally as "Building House" is an artistic style originating in Weimar, Germany, where the Bauhaus school was founded in 1919. The ideaology behind Bauhaus architecture is socialism, which motivated a number of Israeli architects to go and study at the school in the 1920s. The school itself only existed for 14 years before the Nazis closed it down in 1933 for being incompatible with their right-wing extremist ideaology, but thankfully, this was enough time for the young architects to learn a thing or two and bring their knowledge back to Tel-Aviv.

As our guide Michal explained, in line with its idealogy, true Bauhaus architecture is characterised by simple, functional buildings with straight edges, flat roofs, balconies and little decoration; sounds boring doesn't it. The Bauhaus motto is "Function Before Form", meaning that the exterior shape of the building is determined by the functionally designed interior, and not the other way around, which often results in Bauhaus buildings being asymmetrical. I'm sure, however, that it may not have escaped your notice, that Bauhaus Tel-Aviv is somewhat more adventurous than this philosophy suggests, with symmetry, rounded edges and minimalisic industrial style decorations, owing to the influence of other architectural styles at the time, thus producing a Bauhaus style with an architectural character unique to the city.


The tour focused my attention on architectural aspects of the city that totally escaped my notice, even though I often pass by these areas, most notably, Kikar Dizengoff, once an important meeting point in the center of the city to which people came specially from all over the country, and now, a run-down, unattractive passing point on the way to more interesting things. Well this landmark, which so many of us pass without a second look is, remarkably, the only completely Bauhaus square in the world! Yes, take a closer look, cos I never noticed it. The pedestrian over-pass and over-grown trees admittadly don't help matters, but thankfully plans are already in motion to knock the square back to ground level and return it to its former glory. Well, we wait with baited breath!

In the meantime, it was great to get a little more intimate with my current home-town and adopted city. It definately made me appreciate it a lot more.