"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity."

Public Transportation

There's a vast public–transportation system in Tel Aviv: taxis, busses, trains, and jitneys crisscross the ever–busy (except on Shabbat) arteries. Hacks are easily hailed, but, to a stranger's eyes, busses and jitneys collect and deposit passengers at no particular designated locations. Israelis "just know" where the bus stops by divine direction or genetic reckoning. Orderly queues are unknown and presumably unimportant.

Once aboard a jitney, a passenger's fare is efficiently passed from passenger to passenger and finally to the driver with a string of cordial b'vakashas and todas (pleases and thank yous). If change is due, the process is reversed. I liked this ritual in a city whose citizens possess a minimum of social skills.

To an American, it looks like chaos that implausibly works. However, the public is well–served.

"We told you so."

Israeli Reaction to Terrorism in Europe

Rick Oldano (a dilettante military historian) of Digital Tourist fame e-mailed me in Israel and asked how the locals were reacting to the recent terrorist events in England and Scotland. I hadn't given much thought to the matter, but retrospectively I recalled an increase in conspicuous and low-profile security, including an M4 Carbine–toting 19–year old American expatriate woman—a plainclothes IDF–designated on–call sharpshooter hauling a knapsack clattering with specialized scopes.

The Israelis are fully aware of the terrorist events and arrests. CNN, BBC, and Fox, available in Israel, have as usual, over covered the news. Israeli media regularly report terrorist activities in other countries, but one senses that Israelis are shrugging their collective shoulders and saying, "We told you so."

Israelis think that Western Europe and America have been sleepwalking in a state of denial. Islamists have been using Western charity and democracy to subvert these very values. It's possible that these incidents will lead to a backlash: displaced aggression generated partly by the lack of open condemnation of radical Islam by moderates whose current public comments make them sound suspiciously like fearful apologists.

Don't dismiss the power of displaced aggression. How do you think we justified invading Iraq after 9/11? Americans wanted revenge, and Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, was close enough and available for invasion.

How does one negotiate with those who refuse to compromise?

"Bring out your dead!"

And the Voice of Recycling Is Heard Throughout the Land.

Nearly every morning, the song of the junk man in his horse–drawn cart can be heard on Droyanov Street. I was annoyed the first few days (he's loud without his megaphone), but his scavenging serves Tel Aviv well. "Junk" is a relative term. The man ensures that nothing, nothing that can be saved, repaired, or used up is not sent to a landfill.

And so, a cry can be heard throughout the land, a cry from European man's Middle Ages. My son noticed the similarity between the junk man's call and a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, decimating forever my historical observations.

At Least They're Served by Jews…

"Real" Bagels Scarce in the Holy Land

I'm just polishing off a bagel with lox, cream cheese, and a little onion at a café on the corner of Dizengoff and Tchernihovcki—street names in Israel don't roll off the tongue like Washington and Elm. Against all logic, it's difficult to find bagels in Tel Aviv like we have in America.

Here's a rat hole: when young Israeli men notice their hairline receding, they shave their heads, refusing to accept some imagined humiliation; they troop through the streets looking like extras from Apple's 1984 Macintosh advertisement.
Conversely, hirsute middle-aged and older men take added care to orchestrate their hair to reveal the density a la Omar Sharif. Combovers are scarcer than American-style bagels.

Revitalization Like Putting Lipstick On a Pig

Tel Aviv's 100th Anniversary Revitalization

April 2009 will mark the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv, and the city is doing its best to spruce up. Having taken long, shin-splinting walks yesterday and today, I believe I better understand Tel Aviv's renewal and beautification program.

The Mediterranean beach front is a beehive of remodeling and rebuilding. Old hotels, small businesses, and residences are being replaced by new, modern buildings described as "in the Bauhaus tradition." The few results still look ungraceful—more bow-wow house than Bauhaus—but visiting businessmen and dignitaries won't be electrocuted when plugging in their shavers.

Walk a few blocks inland from the sea, and beautification and revitalization taper off to near oblivion. Most residents live, by North American standards, in substandard housing and are serviced by poorly maintained and controlled streets.

A member of the omnipresent septet of older men at the Schweitzer Café wasn't willing to discuss American politics, but shared that Israelis were more upset by corruption inside their own government than the leadership's lack of direction and imagination.

"A little corruption is to be expected, but…"

Apparently, the reason that large businesses and hotels are being rebuilt or remodeled with indifference to most of Tel Aviv's citizens is that elected officials are leaving office richer than the day they took office, something Harry Truman said was impossible unless a politician was corrupt.

Tel Aviv feels like a "Mini-Me" New York City or Detroit without the charm. Most buildings are an electrical and construction nightmare. If the graffiti aren't off-putting, the omnipresent aroma of feral cat urine wafting through the air is. Tel Aviv's city fathers should be hanged, and her citizens ashamed for tolerating the vandalism and filth.

"Yond Cohen has a lean and hungry look…"

California Oasis in the Middle East

I'm having lunch at the Mexicana on Bograshov Street around the corner from our apartment. I shouldn't be surprised by the existence of a Mexican restaurant in Tel Aviv—there several—but I am.

The food is as authentic as could be expected in a country bereft of limes and anchovies, making their caesar salad odd but tasty. Owned by two California women, the restaurant felt like a little bit of home, a friendly California oasis in the Middle East.

Crying All the Way to the Bank

Tel Aviv: First Impressions

I'm partial to things orderly, ritualized, and dependably in one location; I don't travel well. Living out of a suitcase violates my life's fundamental structure. My first few days in Israel were spent creating order out of chaos. My wife's arrival, plunged any order I'd created back into darkest anarchy.

I took a morning stroll down Ibn Gabriol in search of breakfast, and at the recommendation of indigenous personnel, ended up at the Aroma Café—the Israeli equivalent of Starbucks. Tel Aviv hipsters turn up their noses at the Aroma, preferring less corporate dining.

Ibn Gabriol is lined with traditional cramped restaurants and shops with wares and chairs creeping onto public walkways and punctuated by fetid, offensive smells and a proprietor's occasional chemically perfumed attempt to overpower an ancient, unsanitary bathroom.

The Aroma Café is an oasis in a desert of uncaring shopkeepers. Judging from shekel–spending patterns, Israeli's are beginning to prefer clean shops and pleasant customer service in lieu of traditional businesses beloved by Tel Aviv's cultural snobs. Aroma, Inc. is crying all the way to the bank.

Two Jews, Three Opinions

The Schweizter Café

In the Schweizter Café, five retired men are sitting around passionately arguing about... what? The last war? Gaza? The weak Israeli government? The ultimate direction of Israel's destiny? My waitress informs me that all the fist shaking and finger pointing whirls around the fine points of yesterday's soccer games in Spain.

The dynamic dialog is interrupted by a peddler of fragrances for men and women. He's given the courtesy of their time and noses and gently sent on his way. The peddler, too, is "getting used to it."

Getting Used to "It"

Tel Aviv: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

So far, and with only a few exceptions, the Israelis are living up to the reputation for outward toughness and artfully hidden warmth. Their abrasive behavior is deceptive; ask for directions, look desperate, or be ill in public, and the true nature of the Israelis bubbles to the surface.

Tel Aviv is as I remember: noisy, vibrant, untidy, and unbeautiful. Outdoor cafés abound and the food is respectable to first-rate.

The city is dirty, not New-York-City dirty, but unfinished and incomplete. It's a city of entrepreneurs unconcerned with anesthetics. The signage, storefronts, and Café furniture are all "make do."

The buildings appear on the brink of demolition or decay, although the construction of modern, high-rise buildings is on the increase. Landlords do nothing in the way of maintenance or safety until there is no place to hide from their tenants—who seemed not minding living and working in unacceptable conditions.

In a country renowned for its artists and architects, it's puzzling why Tel Aviv looks as it does. Even Israeli Web pages are artless and clunky. Perhaps it's that most cultures aren't too concerned about aesthetics until they're no longer obsessed with their security, and Israel is indeed in a bad neighborhood.

Customer service and satisfaction are unimportant, something that rankles North Americans. "Good enough" is a working concept. "Doing your best" is an unknown to most.

Yet, Tel Aviv's citizens are surprisingly cosmopolitan and more accepting of racial, sexual, and ethnic differences than most Americans. Its annoyingly self-confident citizens, dressed in carefully thought out tasteless clothing, come from nearly everywhere on Earth, and although proud of their origins, are anxious to be Israeli, which in its self-described classless society is futile; the native-born Sabra are at the top of the social pyramid, having come to Plymouth on the Mayflower.

I don't want to give the impression that Tel Aviv and her natives aren't engaging and friendly. The men and women are physically beautiful and carry themselves with dignity. Once their hard shell is penetrated by a smile and direct eye contact, humor and conversation spill out as if they've been waiting for days to chat with you. Their outer toughness is not a symptom of the concern for survival, but, as one young woman put it, a sign of "getting used to it." "It" was left undefined.