Tel Aviv, Shmel Aviv

July 22, 2008 - 8:05 AM by Harry · 5 Comments
Filed under: Travel

Sure, I’m just as happy as the next guy that Tel Aviv got a fantastic write up in the New York Times. My problem with the piece is that it recycles the same information available in every other article written about Tel Aviv. Yes, I know, Madonna ate at Manta Ray (maybe because it was directly across the street from her hotel?), yes, Brasserie and Coffee Bar are indeed hip (but is it about the food or being seen?), the Bauhaus architecture, the fancy shmancy luxury apartments, Neve Tzedek, etc, etc…..all the rich stuff. The piece made me sad. It made Tel Aviv (often referred to as “Hell Aviv” by my Jerusalem loyalist friends) seem like the most pretentious place on earth. Hell yeah it’s got pretension, but it is not lurking in every corner. Especially not at Levontine 7…

…This impermanence can be an intensifier. I think of the hour I spent at a club called Levontine 7. Started by three musicians (including Ilan Volkov, the Israeli-born conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra), the dark and underdecorated two-level club is in Gan Ha Hashmal, Tel Aviv’s former unofficial red-light district, which is sprouting those kinds of hyper-groovy stores — one was selling a lamp made out of forks and spoons — that fascinate but baffle. For the recent national basketball finals, Levontine 7 hired two groups of six musicians who each improvised music to go with one team’s movements, in the manner of a silent movie.

Agreed, improvising Jazz to a live basketball game is a bit much, but that is not at all what Levontine 7 is all about. It is one of the only venues in the city that fosters indie musicians of all disciplines.

I’m also a bit miffed that the journalist spent a full week in Tel Aviv, but just eight hours in Jerusalem.

And while the memories I developed during the course of my weeklong, first-ever trip to Tel Aviv are pleasant and strong, the ones I concurrently made during my eight-hour-long, first-ever trip to Jerusalem are permanently scarred into my brain.

You don’t have to be devout, or even a believer, to be moved to tears by a visit to Jesus’ Stations of the Cross or to the Holocaust Museum of Yad Vashem. At the latter, the Children’s Memorial is a single room in which five candles are reflected in 500 mirrors, creating the impression of an infinity of candles; meanwhile a voice slowly intones the individual names and nationalities of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by Nazis. The effect is bone-chilling.

I am not going to fault the writer for his heavy experience in Jerusalem. It can be quite a heady city, but to completely ignore the myriad of cultural offerings in Jerusalem is nothing less than a crime. But hey, why experience the awesomeness of Jerusalem when you can eat where Madonna ate?

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