Meet me at the Mugrabi

January 28, 2010 - 8:56 PM by

When I recently was hired to record a series of conversations to accompany a course on teaching Hebrew to English speakers, I didn’t know I’d be getting a lesson in Tel Aviv nostalgia.

The project was to edit a 500-page curriculum originally developed in 1965 by the U.S. State Department to prepare diplomats posted to Israel. Along with the written text, there were about 200 short snippets of dialogue – ranging from “how are you today?” to “the fish was delicious, can I please have the recipe.”

I brought in nine Israeli men and women to record the voices. That alone was a big part of the overall experience. In my line of work, I don’t meet a lot of native-born young people. Indeed, all of my current clients are Anglos and when I write an article for a publication like Israel 21c, I usually conduct the interview over the phone. So, it was refreshing to get to know the world outside our insular Jerusalem Anglo bubble.

My main voice talent was a genial twenty-something named Dov, recently out of university and unfortunately out of a job, having been downsized when the economy went south. With a deep, rich baritone and superb diction, he was considering a career change to radio.

Our team also included Hallel, a playwriting student with a mostly shaved head whose father once served as the security guard at our son’s kindergarten; a musician named Daniel who heads up a band called Moshe and the Refugees that sounds a little like a mashup between the Doors and Leonard Cohen; Maya, who’s pursuing an M.A. in criminology at Bar Ilan University; Rachel, a professional translator, Hebrew/English editor and hazanit (a female cantor); and Avital who is active in the Gush Etzion “Raise Your Spirits” musical theater ensemble that performs exclusively for women.

As I mentioned, the curriculum itself was old, which let us all take a trip down memory lane (or in the case of my actors, who were born in the 1980s, a trip down their parent’s alleyway of antiquities).

At a key point in the course, a U.S. diplomat, Mr. Williams, is looking for the government tourist office. He is told to head in the direction of the Mugrabi Cinema. None of us had ever heard of the Mugrabi and, despite our all being Jerusalemites, we were pretty sure there was no such theater with that name in Tel Aviv today.

Thank goodness for Google. A quick search and we discovered that the Mugrabi was in fact a key cultural icon. Built in the 1920s, the building served as the home for the Palestine Folk Opera in the 1940s and later became the cinema for which it was most famed. It was designed in a classic Bauhaus style. If you wanted to locate yourself in Tel Aviv, it was always in relation to the Mugrabi.

The theater was, sadly, bulldozed to put up a parking lot in the 1980s (Israeli shades of the Judy Collins classic).

There was another reference in the dialogues that was less well known. Adjacent to the Mugrabi, apparently was a restaurant called the “Brooklyn Bar” which, according to the text, served banana splits “just like in America.”

I’m sure that – if the course saw fit to put what sounded like a glorified ice cream parlor in the same conversation as its more famous street-mate – it must have been popular with the locals – back in the days when such cultural imports from abroad were still a novelty. We found one short mention of the Brooklyn Bar online but no pictures.

These days, banana splits have been replaced by gourmet Belgian waffles and the main imports from Brooklyn are new immigrants. But for a few minutes, it was a trip to indulge in this nostalgic blast from the past.

Let’s just hope our Mr. Williams arrived at his destination safely. And that the ice cream lived up to a reputation stellar enough to be highlighted in a once mandatory course for all American diplomats.

Tags: , , , • Category: History and Culture 

Comments

5 Comments on Meet me at the Mugrabi

  1. Rachel on Thu, Jan 28th 2010 10:22 PM

    2. There was nothing like going to movies in Israel in the old days!
    http://israelity.com/2008/12/14/nostalgia-sunday-going-to-the-movies/

  2. Nicole on Fri, Jan 29th 2010 3:21 PM

    3. FYI, the mugrabi reference wasn’t lost on you because you’re all young, it was lost on you because your all jerusalemites. I moved to Israel in 1995 and I know what Mugrabi is, and we still use the name Mugrabi for the carpark that took its place.

  3. Dorothy Kushner on Sat, Jan 30th 2010 3:35 PM

    4. Judy Collins was great too, but the song about turning Paradise into a parking lot was by Joni Mitchell.

  4. Dina on Sat, Jan 30th 2010 7:34 PM

    5. Brian, that Foreign Service Institute book was our Modern Hebrew textbook at the University of Michigan in 1966 !! (And Edna Coffin was our teacher.)
    When I made aliyah in ’68, I looked for and found the Brooklyn Bar.

    So happy you are giving the course new life.

  5. Meet Me at the Mugrabi on Wed, Sep 8th 2010 8:37 AM

    6. [...] version of this story originally appeared earlier this year on the Israelity [...]

Leave a Comment





© 2012 ISRAELITY | Sitemap