Nostalgia Sunday – Bialik Street cultural center
Filed under: design, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, Travel
Bialik Street is one of Tel Aviv’s little gems. Once an important location for the homes of not only Israel’s national poet, Haim Nahman Bialik, but also that of artist Reuven Rubin and Tel Aviv’s first city hall, the street turned dingy and dumpy for many years. It began picking up in popularity in the 1980s when Shenkin Street became trendy and now plans are afoot to turn the whole street into a center of Hebrew culture.
It’s a fitting tribute to Bialik whose house at No. 22 has, since 1937, served as a museum. It’s intention, as the Bialik Association put it was as “[a] national home, a house of the people of Israel in Eretz-Israel and in the Diaspora. Let us make this house into a storeroom for the soul of Hebrew culture; let us never extinguish the light which the poet lit in it! The house will serve as a repository for all the things connected to him and his work; a storeplace for Hebrew folklore, a gathering place for Hebrew writers and a center for Hebrew culture.”
In addition to archives, a library, paintings, furniture and many other items connected to his various activities as a poet, publisher, literary figure and Zionist leader, the house itself is something to see. It was built by architect Joseph Minor in 1925. Minor along with his teacher Alexander Baerwald, was part of a group of architects inspired by the Art and Crafts movement that wished to develop Hebrew architecture. In the case of Bialik House, the result was a building that combined western construction with romantic notions about “Orientalia” – towers, domes, pointed-arch windows and ceramic tiles designed by Zeev Raban, the foremost decorative artist of the day.
In his fine essay about Bialik House, author Yonatan Dubosarsky wrote, “The institutions which had been headed by Bialik located some of their activities in the house. Thus the Hebrew Writers Association was active in Beit Bialik and from there published its monthly magazine, which still exists, Moznayim (“Scales”). The Committee for Language and the Association of Friends of the Hebrew University in Tel Aviv met there. Similarly, courses were organized on behalf of the Vaad Leumi (the pre-state national leadership committee) for groups of youth leaders from the United States. Beit Bialik quickly became a tourist attraction for visitors to Tel Aviv. Teachers began to bring kindergarten and school children – a tradition that has continued to this day, and which over 70 years has brought the majority of Israels children to the house.”
Even if you’re not an Israeli schoolchild, a visit to Bialik House and the street’s other cultural institutions is a delightful way to spend an morning or an afternoon. Plus, once you’re done sightseeing, you can cool down with some iced coffee at Cafe Bialik (No. 2 on the street).
Nostalgia Sunday – Shlomit’s Sukkah of Peace
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, War
Composer Naomi Shemer wrote the song Shlomit Bonah Sukkat Shalom (“Shlomit builds a house of peace”) in 1974 as part of an album of childrens’ songs. The date is telling: released one year after the Yom Kippur war, the song expressed hope for a battle-fatigued nation, battered by a difficult political climate and uncertain diplomatic situation. The song has since become a beloved standard for Israeli children and the adults who were once children; in four verses, Shemer manages to encapsulate the traditions of the sukkot holiday and the ideal of better world.
Here is the song as performed at the time by Hanan Goldblatt, Aliza Rosen and Gabi Eldor.
And here is a version sung decades later by kiddie show presenters Rinat and Yoyo, her robot assistant. (I don’t know why she has a robot).
Pop and rock musicians aren’t immune to the song’s evergreen appeal. Perpetual popster Shlomo Artzi has led crowds in song, and rockers Mashina did a full fledged cover…
…plus mizrachi singer Avi Peretz recently pitched in with a Middle Eastern-flavored version.
Shemer was never apolitical in her writing and was certainly associated with Israel’s right-wing, but even she might be nonplussed at the heavy-handed way in which her song was parodied this past week by comedy site LatmaTV. There aren’t English subtitles so here is the gist: the world is accusing Shlomit of destroying the peace process by building her sukkah, which she will proceed to build anyway. (I did say “heavy-handed”, didn’t I?) Oh well, as you watch, bear in mind that there’s no word in Hebrew for “subtlety”.
Nostalgia Sunday – The Levant Fair
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel
Sukkot is festival and exhibition season in Israel which means everything will be celebrated, feted and displayed over the coming weeks. But, though they may not know it, they owe a debt to the granddaddy of all Israeli events, the Levant Fair.
Fairs in the Yishuv, the early Jewish settlement, first started in the 1920s as agricultural exhibitions but by the second half of the decade their nature had changed to commercial and industrial. According to Levant Fair collector and historian Dr. Arthur H. Groten, “The need to promote the Palestine of the Yishuv, as the Jews of Palestine were called, as a vital economic link between West and East reflected the cosmopolitan attitude of many of the new immigrants…”
The 1932 Palestine and Near East Fair was the first to be called a “Levant Fair” and “was the first to have official foreign governmental representation including Great Britain, U.S.S.R, Egypt, Cyprus, Romania, Turkey, Switzerland, Poland, Latvia and Bulgaria. 831 foreign firms exhibited and 285,000 people attended.”
It was that year that the fair adopted a new mascot: a flying camel. (Groten relates “an apocryphal tale” that when Tel Aviv’s Mayor Meir Dizengoff said to his colleague, the Mayor of Jaffa that he wished for his city to host a Levant Fair similar to those held throughout the Near East, “he was told that it would happen ‘when camels fly’”). True or not, the logo was much loved; it appeared on stamps, and is still used today by the Israel Trade Fairs & Convention Center.
But things really got going in 1934, “through the construction of an entirely new complex on the banks of the Yarkon River by a group of young architects, trained in Europe, many at the Bauhaus, under the direction of Arieh El-Hanani. The fairgrounds were an integrated assemblage of International Style buildings. In fact, it was the largest such integrated grouping ever constructed… Over 600,000 visitors paid to attend an event that included 36 foreign governments and 2200 firms (1500 being foreign).”
El-Hanani also designed the sculpture “Hapoel HaIvri” (The Jewish Worker), one of the Yishuv’s first works of urban public art.
On a personal note: my Israeli mother was born in Jerusalem in 1929; five years later, her family came to live in Tel Aviv. So I like to think that maybe, just maybe, she was one of the children who climbed on the statue, sat on her mother’s knee during the opening ceremony audience or rode the “Luna Park” carousel.
The last fair, held in 1936, was not well-attended due to the increasingly troubled situation in Europe, the rise of Nazism and the war against the Jews, as well as the Arab revolt.
Over the years, the fairgrounds fell into disrepair and the pavilions used mainly as ceramic and tile warehouses. The port closed to ships in 1965. The fairgrounds were moved to North Tel Aviv. Only in 2001 did reconstruction of the historic Tel Aviv port commence and with it, the rehabilitation of the Bauhaus structures — those few that remain. However, the statue of a flying camel still sits atop a flagpole at the main entrance and the modernist statue of the Hebrew Worker has also survived.
Today’s photos come mainly from the G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, a rich source of historical images of the Middle East photographed from 1898 to 1946.
For more about the early days of Tel Aviv, see “City of Work and Prosperity”: The Levant Fair, part of the Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv Collection at Stanford University. And there are more great photographs of the Levant Fair on a site called Abraham Stern’s Tel Aviv.
Also, check out Dr. Arthur H. Groten’s wonderful collection of stamps, ephemera and additional photos of the fair in his online paper, Semiotics and the Levant Fairs of Palestine. It is an amazing and enjoyable read.
Nostalgia Sunday – Class photos
Filed under: A New Reality, design, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, War
For decades, the class photo-collage — tmunat mahzor — was the way Israelis marked school graduations. It still is. Unlike the US with is pricey yearbooks, (which have their own historical reasons for coming into being), by grouping them together. the Israeli class photo was a relatively inexpensive way to derive maximum impact from small-sized individual portraits.
In the early days, the graphics were lovingly, if amateurishly, hand-drawn, as in this class photo of the 1929 graduating class of Tel Aviv’s legendary Herzliya Gymnasium.
The collage also documented historical events. The Ramat Gan elementary school’s grade 8-II honored its graduation in 1948 with the words “The first in the State of Israel”.
As the tradition entered its second generation, layout was handed over to the professionals as in this photo-collage of the Acre Naval Academy’s 1957 graduating class.
And mid-century modern was the graphic style of choice.
Even today, there are still photographers in Israel who specialize in creating this style of class photo-collage. Of course, the cameras are digital and the layout (and airbrushing!) is done with Photoshop or similar programs. But the spirit of the thing persists. Here’s the Herzliya Gymnasium senior class, circa 2004.
This last one doesn’t have a lot going for it graphically but it’s very special to me because it’s my eighth grade class photo from 1973-4, marking our graduation from primary school. (You can click on it to get a better look).
Each child was given the large group photo-collage, plus a small white paper packet that contained the individual passport-sized portraits.
1973-4 was of course, the year of the Yom Kippur War. But it was also the year my family spent in Israel; a significant year for me at the end of which I decided Israel was a pretty good place to live. And, as Yom Kippur rolls around again, with this week as time to reflect, perhaps even reconsider, I have to say: I still think so.
Nostalgia Sunday – Shana Tova postcards
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
This year, the Israel Postal Company has launched a campaign urging people to send New Year greetings by mail. “Bring back the excitement,” exhorts the leaflet stuffed in our mailbox (inserted by hand and not by mail, I should note). “Facebook, MMS, SMS – they’re not personal. It’s no longer exciting. Now more than ever in the digital age, let’s return to the hand-written postal greeting card. For personal attention and creative expression.”
The brochure comes with a postcard attached and instructions: “Detach this greeting card, write a moving greeting, stick on a stamp and send to your loved ones.” I found the last two steps particularly amusing. Apparently people no longer know how to do this.
The Postal Company has also designed a set of five postcards inspired by the era of good old fashioned snail mail. (Classic examples from previous Israelity postings can be viewed here and here). They’re available for purchase at post offices and agencies in Israel or online through their Hebrew and English-language websites. Each one contains a different New Year’s greeting. For example: May You Be Inscribed and Sealed for A Good New Year:
A Year of Flourishing and Prosperity:
A Good and Sweet New Year!
All of this and more do I wish for Israelity’s readers: a year of happiness, prosperity and above all, good health. Shana Tova!
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