Nostalgia Sunday – Bialik Street cultural center

October 3, 2010 - 9:40 PM by · 1 Comment
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).

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Nostalgia Sunday – Sali Ariel’s Tel Aviv Bauhaus

March 29, 2009 - 5:27 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel 

As Tel Aviv’s centennial gets underway and the weather warms up, more and more festive events will be held to celebrate the occasion. One of these happened last night, when the Rozin Center Gallery opened the season with an exhibition of works by painter Sali Ariel.

sali_ariel_bauhaus_2

Originally from the States, Sali was a long-time Jerusalemite who made the move to Tel Aviv over a decade ago. As she got to know her new home, she noticed it was changing before her eyes. “I started seeing the Ramat Gan business district going up and all the big tall buildings on Rothschild Boulevard and while I don’t think that’s bad, I was afraid we would forget how Tel Aviv looked. I also felt inevitably, Tel Aviv had to change but I didn’t know if it was for better or for worse. I wanted to document it for people in the future so they would know how Tel Aviv was in our time.”

sali_ariel_balfour

Ariel feels she looked at Tel Aviv as an outsider, “because I had just moved from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv seemed to have a bright happy fun look about it. And maybe for that reason I didn’t see the trash and crumbliness, because I was comparing it to the serious and the grayness of Jerusalem, which I also love and think is beautiful, but very different.”

sali_ariel_shenkin

Ariel started out wandering Yarkon Park and trying to sketch the natural surroundings. “But whenever I started to paint trees there were buildings peeking out form behind. And when i started to paint buildings, shockingly, a lot of what i saw was green leafy stuff — they was sort of inseparable, the two.”

sali_ariel_nachmani

Ariel was not a Bauhaus aficionado when she started working on this theme. “I was just doing buildings that looked nice to me. And then i was offered an exhibit at the Bauhaus Center and have had several exhibits since then. It also turns out that many of the building that I like are Bauhaus — but not all. Some of them are the older buildings in what’s called oriental or eclectic style.”

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More works can be viewed at Sali Ariel’s website and the current exhibit will be on display at the Rozin Center Gallery in Ramat Aviv until April 22.

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Nostalgia Sunday

August 10, 2008 - 10:05 PM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Profiles 

Israeli band Ha-Click never gained a great following among the young Americans in Israel during the early 80s. Certainly, if you were into peace, love, understanding, Arik Einstein, David Broza, Yehudit Ravitz, Matti Caspi and any number of other Israeli soft rockers, something like Ha-Click (known in English as The Clique), fronted by a black-lipsticked, spiky-haired Dani Dothan, was not going to hold any appeal.

The Clique - album cover

On one hand, if you were into Punk and New Wave, Ha-Click and the Tel Aviv underground scene (clubs like Ha-Penguin on Allenby and Ha-Madregot on Dizengoff), were pretty tame compared to what was going on in New York and London at the time. On the other hand, these were people clawing at an entrenched culture establishment dominated by government-funded institutions, and creating an alternative art and music scene where none existed on a sleepy street of upholstery shops in central Tel Aviv. If it weren’t for Dothan, his brother Uri and a handful of other pioneers, there wouldn’t be Sheinkin Street today.

Inspired by New York’s SoHo district, the brothers Dothan moved into a dumpy apartment and set up an art gallery-cafe downstairs called Sheink-in. My friend Yael was one of the many young lovelies who served Nescafe and “botz” coffee there for a week or two. She can’t remember if she got paid or not, but money was not the point. The point was to be there. Other young artists were moving in all around the neighborhood; a small theater opened up, a plastics shop/gallery, an anarchist bookstore, a used record store; and on Purim the street was closed to traffic and the Adloyada parade – a Tel Aviv tradition from the 30s to the 60s – was revived by performance artists.

As Sheinkin gained in popularity, changes began to take place: Sheink-in closed down and Dothan opened up Tat-Rama, a high-level art gallery that also published a very large format, glossy magazine. Cafe Tamar – which still sells instant coffee and greasy cheesetoast under the watchful eye of proprietress and living legend Sarah Stern – became the hottest place in town to see and be seen. Sculptor Israel Hadany was commissioned to create a sculpture-fountain in the park at the lower end of the street. Tat-Rama closed down and a fast food delivery company moved in. The bookstore shut down and Cafe Cazze opened up, bringing in good coffee – finally! The Hadany fountain was paved over and replaced by a kiddie park. Hanging out at Cafe Tamar became cliche after Bananarama wannabees Mango sang a song about it. The Tel Aviv municipality gave the neighborhood a name – “Lev Tel Aviv”, the heart of Tel Aviv – and real estate prices inveitably started to rise.

I interviewed Dani Dothan about 15 years ago after he published a novel (a very good one, actually) about Jerusalem bohemians of the 1920s. He was resigned to the fact that Sheinkin had become, in his words, “a street of boutiques and restaurants”. It wasn’t exactly his vision, but he was certainly aware that it was due in part to his efforts. (He also explained to me that the difference between a “Sheinkiner” and a “Sheinkinist” was that of between buying and renting). He’s a very busy man and continues to stay on the cutting edge of Israeli popular culture: he wrote singer Dana International’s song “Diva“, which won the 1998 Eurovision, he directed Milkshake, a controversial cable talk show starring the irrepressible Zofit Grant (Mrs. Avraham Grant, as she’s known to UK football fans), and co-directed documentaries “The Ashkenazim“, and “The Blue Lamb“.

The Clique only reunited twice, in 1988 and 2004. Drummer Jean Jacques Goldberg passed away in 2006, so there’s not likely to be any more and in any case, reunion tours are pathetic, (sorry Johnny, but it’s true). A clip does occasionally show up on TV and that’s nice to watch, like this one of their big hit “Incubator” – and please note the prescient use of plastic sheeting, a decade before the first Gulf War made it part of our national consciouness.

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