16 Bicycles

The weather is no longer suitable for walking barefoot on the sand by the sea, and the beautiful rainless days are ideal for bicycle trips. I have been watching people riding bicycles for a long time – on highways and by the side of roads, or when their bicycles are hanging on the rear of their cars, and If I had not been wary of becoming another fan of this latest fashion, I would have become one myself a long time ago. Finally I succumbed to the temptation, got on my bicycle and rode to the fields.

Earlier I had checked out the relevant internet sites and learned something about bicycles manufacturers and shock absorbers (I am particularly interested in this because of my problematic back). At long last I crossed the Rubicon and purchased a modest mountain bicycle. Here it is on my first Saturday excursion in the fields between Kibbutz Mishmarot and Kfar Glickson. I went alone, with only a water bottle and a map. It was a pleasure.

The scenery seen riding through fields is surprising, and the difference in the conception of space is even more surprising. The driver on roads has a totally false conception of the region we live in, of distances or directions. If you glance at a map you see that settlements quite close to each other are joined by roads that frequently make detours of tens of kilometers. In spite of the fact that everyone knows that long distances on highways are not necessarily long distances as the crow flies, it is nevertheless the roads that create our conception of distances, to say nothing of the fact that they completely confuse our sense of direction by their many curves. Riding on a bicycle through fields between settlements teaches us the correct direction and distance between settlements and corrects the false concept the roads created for us.

15 Fortress Yechiam

A few months ago I was scheduled to enjoy a weekend in the Galil. For obvious reason (the War) that plan did not materialize. However, lately I managed to take that vacation. I went to a moshav near Nahariya. On one of my vacation days I traveled to Fortress Yechiam. I am interested in the history of the Middle Ages, especially in its architecture, for example the great cathedrals in Europe. The crusaders left behind them in Israel impressive citadels and fortresses.

Yechiam is one of them. Although the fortress the crusaders built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is almost completely destroyed and what remains today is a reconstruction from the eighteenth century. None the less there is an impressive tower from Crusader times. Its stone stairs wind between thick walls and shooting slots. The scene from the top of the tower is simply breathtaking.

I took this photograph near the entrance of the tower. I stood with my back to the tower and photographed while facing west. Notice the beautiful arc, the shaded interior stone wall, the hinted rear curve, and of course the tree growing inside the building. The reconstruction was done accurately and artistically. Consequently the building does not look like a shattered ruin or like a polished toy. The tree growing within the structure provides color, shade and a calm atmosphere that softens the stony grimness and enables us to forget that the building is a military installation.

On my way to fortress Yechiam I went to see the statue dedicated to the memory of Haganah fighters who died in the Yechiam convoy before independence. Ninety Haganah members traveled to embattled Yechiam. Their convoy was ambushed and more than half of the fighters were killed. The death toll on that day was forty seven. At that time the population of the Jewish community was about one tenth of what it is today. Those facts help us to consider realistically the meaning of existentialist war – its geography and its price.

14 Wispelwey

Months have passed since I heard Peter Wispelwey play at the Jerusalem Theater one evening as part of the Israel Festival – the six suites for cello solo by J.S. Bach, and I still hear the sounds of his playing. Wispelwey plays discreetly but also with confidence and elegance. He is one of the greatest contemporary cellists and one of the musicians leading the revolution that was called "authentic" which in essence is a reaction to nineteenth century music and the romantic performing tradition which persisted until the middle of the twentieth century. He plays with a little vibrato, has a rough, warm tone, and refrains from excessive demonstrativeness, however, and a declaratory tone. His playing is free and it seems as if he is talking to the audience without losing the authoritative status of an exemplary artist.

Whoever has played an instrument can not help thinking of such perfection and how it is achieved. I had two excellent violin teaches, Avigdor Zamir and Israel Amidan. They taught me two things: one is absolute concentration on what you are doing. If you can reach the point of concentrating all your ability and strength on what you are doing at the moment and at that time forget everything else – what you can achieve is amazing. The second thing I learned is that nothing is so complicated that it can not be done – there are only complex activities. If one breaks down any task into its component parts and learns to perform every simple one of them, it will be possible to do the complex task step by step when you are master of every detail. What then is the secret of an all but perfect performance (except for the talent)? Concentration and hard work.

13 Tuesday evening eight o'clock

Every Tuesday evening at eight o'clock, for six years now, I am in Tell Aviv at the home of Rafi Lavi. Yes, Rafi Lavi the Painter. Until recently our group of ardent music lovers met at his place on Jonah Street but now we meet at his new home in Oliphant Street. Rafi is a music freak. He has more than ten thousand discs and continues to buy more and more. This enables him to prepare a program each week in which we hear a musical work – a short part of it – in between ten and twenty different performances. We Then evaluate them and give reasons for our preferences, if we so desire.

Only at the end of the evening does Rafi (or Amir Mandel who lately has been helping to prepare these evenings) disclose who the performers were. Almost always there are surprises. A famous violinist is not viewed favorably, a pianist whom no one has heard of is everyone's favorite, or a performance that I have at home and which I thought was the best – and now I found only bad words for it. Listening to music in that way is very intensive and requires one to make fine distinctions. And if you think that six years is a long time, consider the fact that this group exists for more than fifteen years and there are those who remind me that I am one of the newcomers.

12 In the Spice Store

There are certain items that I never buy in the large stores where buying is a neon illuminated "experience" accompanied by background music and loud speaker announcements of sales in the meat or bakery department. Spices and peanuts, for example, I buy in a spice store located in the center of the moshava (village). You can see the peanuts I bought laying on the scale. I like to take a break at noon time and go for a walk. On my way back from the post office (where I receive the books that are sent to me for evaluation) I stop at the bakery and buy good bread (I slice it myself, place the slices in a number of small nylon bags and put them in the freezer). Afterwards I pass the Cash Dispenser, the toy shop – and reach the spice store.

From my daughter I learned to buy dried tomatoes and soak them in olive oil. For my mother I buy crushed oats. For myself I buy peanuts and roast them at low temperature in a toaster oven without salt or oil, as well as various types of Herbal Teas that are in jars which can be seen in the lower left hand corner of the picture. I buy black pepper as well, either whole or crushed, which I grind in a table mill at meal time. And za'atar as well. At times I also buy a jar of honey. The honey from our region is delicious and it can be found here (but also in supermarkets which provide shopping carts for the price of five shekel as well as background music).

After that I pass the wholesale beverage store, the computer store, the pizza parlor, and the picture frame shop. Finally I return home. Today the skies were clear and the air was fragrant with the smell of the earth and trees after the rain. The walk was invigorating. I put my purchases on the kitchen counter, went up to the second floor, sat down opposite my computer and wrote these words before going back to work.

11 On a bench in Kupat Holim

I spent a morning in Kupat Holim (Health Clinic). Like the Prime Minister, I too go for periodic check-ups. And I am also in good shape, thank you. Since the examination required a stay of about two hours, I took a seat on a bench midway between a lab and a dental hygienist's room (at one corner a circular mirror had been installed) and carefully took out the morning newspaper. Immediately a thick colored leaflet entitled "Cream" fell out. I picked it up and threw it into a nearby waste basket. (Never mind what happened when I got home.) I started to read the paper but trying to hold it by my fingertips in order not to get my fingers dirty, soon got on my nerves. I put down the paper and took out the biography of Charlemagne: a strange, capricious and enthusiastic acquisition from the recent "book fair". This book, like so many others before it, is on its way to my shelf of much loved books that I have not and will not read. I took it with me primarily because it is a thin volume that fits nicely into my bag, unlike "A Suitable Boy" which is waiting on my night table. Tired of that I switched to something much more to my liking – Garrison Keillor.

Ah, Garrison Keillor. My cell phone, which is now also my camera as well as my walkman, has been loaded these past two weeks with 4 disks on which Keillor reads in his charming, sensitive, intelligent and ironic voice the stories of Lake Wobegon, his imaginary home town in Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children above average. Recently Keillor's story has been turned into a film directed by Robert Altman. I can hardly wait to see it.

10 Clouds

Since the days I used to fly thru the clouds I especially like the cumulonimbus clouds that develop vertically, when they do not blanket the entire sky and it is possible to see clearly their straight base and their shooting peaks in varying formations. Next to their brilliant whiteness, the sky seems all the more blue. Our skies are free of clouds a large part of the year, and in the summer the sun is so strong that it seems as if the sky is white.
The development of the cumulonimbus clouds is somewhat difficult to ascertain from the ground, and commercial airplanes fly rapidly above them to steady themselves at high altitude, from where the clouds look like an ambiguous carpet. But when you fly at cloud level – their vertical development can extend thousands of feet – the large clusters resemble gigantic cotton mountains, and the sun shinning above them gives these clouds a plastic quality that creates the illusion that they are made of solid matter. Flight between masses of such clouds in a small swift plane that enables observation of their forms – to climb above them and then dive in between them – is an experience that defies description. It is a long time already since I flew a plane, and I do not miss the experience generally. But when I see these clouds in the sky, the desire to fly to them and through them, overcomes me. Look at them above the tile roof and the tops of the cypress trees, they look like whipped cream. They send me greetings from long ago and I smile at them in return.

9 The Road to Benyamina

The road between Pardes Hannah and Benyamina is a time tunnel to me. On entering it, with the trees on both sides, light and shade hit my eyes alternately, and for a moment it seems as if I have returned to the Israel of my youth – a time when the plains were blanketed with orange groves that were usually fringed with fir trees and every little path wound its way lined by trees. I remember, for example, the huge eucalyptus trees along the road between Gedera and Hazor junction. Today it is a wide two-lane road but in my imagination it is still the same narrow road on which I walked in the shade of the trees holding my violin on my way home. A few years ago, in Ile de France and Normandy, I saw vast fields crossed by narrow lanes lined with shade trees that could be seen from a distance. In Israel, the rows of trees along the roads have almost completely disappeared. When the orange groves disappeared, the rows of fir trees disappeared with them. The sabra (cactus) fences to which we used to go in order to pick the sweet fruit disappeared long before (Just writing about sabras causes my palms to "feel" their thin fuzzy thorns).
Thus the road to Benyamina represents a little treasure from the past. It is a reminder of times gone by. It is impossible to stop development and broad roads are a necessity. Nevertheless it makes me sad to see that every new road is the end of a beautiful line of trees. Every time I go on the road to Benyamina I am thankful that the road, with the trees on its sides, still exists.

8 Tel Aviv before Sunset

The most beautiful hour is the hour before sunset. Once a week I manage to view the streets and houses of Tel Aviv at this magic hour of gently slanting sunlight. Opposite them electric lights already shine and the windows sparkle either because of the sunlight or because of the electric lights in the houses and offices. Tel Aviv is fascinating because of its combination of old and new. The skyscrapers which are shooting up so quickly there give her an aspect of power and audacity. Its horizon somewhat resembles that of large modern cities. For example, the entrance to Tel Aviv from the north in the evening is entrance into a metropolis. I regard the concentration of houses near the Diamond Exchange, look at the Azrieli Towers and the Government Administration Center. Such observation enables me to feel the pulse of the city that finds expression in this architectural "explosion".
However, at the heart of the city and close to these self same symbols of power, are many old houses – some of whom are beautiful. Sometimes the combination of the ultra-modern and the noble modesty of the old create a unique beauty. In the center of the photo we see an old tile roof, a strange drainpipe, and a protruding porch of an old house. Notice how all this balances all that is new in the background. Remove the old and the result is an uninteresting modern city scene. However, if you remove the background, the result is merely an old house whose tile roof is about to fall apart. But together they create the marvel which is Tel Aviv in her finest hour.

7 What we were

Look at the fresco by Yohanan Simon which is now in Kibutz Gan Shmuel's dinning hall. Formerly it was part of the "Renaissance" School in Sao Polo, Brazil. The wall has been demolished but the parts of the wall on which the fresco was painted were carefully collected, restored by experts and reconstructed in the Kibutz that inspired it. The style is naive and optimistic, almost childish, and expresses all the hopes of the early l950's (it was painted in l954) not long after the establishment of the state of Israel. At that time kibutz youth (the fresco's subject) were a source of pride and were seen by many as the symbol of the new state.
Look at the children playing, working, making music, dancing. Look at them reading books, planting trees, picking oranges and waving flags. Look at the light and the joyous activity enfolding them all and think of what was here not long ago. What grand hopes, what joy.
If today this painting seems a little childish, perhaps because unlimited optimism and exuberant joy we keep for children's rooms and outside of them we put on a grey mask of stubborn strength that shows no trace of a smile. This painting from a period of great hopes reminds us of what we were and what we still may become.

6 Haruvim Street

This is Haruvim (Carob) Street, the street on which I live. Indeed there are a few Carob trees on it, but the street's main attraction are the gigantic Ficus trees that once made an impressive green canopy over the road. When I came to Pardes Hana looking for a house to live in, I walked under the magical trees and fell in love with the street. It is in an ideal location, within walking distance of the town's center, post office, banks, "Hagoren" (The Barn) bakery and the Central bus station. Lately this has been closed and is now an asphalt wasteland and an environmental eyesore since it has been turned into a weekly market every Thursday, with terrible traffic jams and cars parked the length and width of the entire area. Aside from the excellent location, the trees transformed the street into a little corner of a dream. As you walked under the canopy of the gigantic trees, with the dimness created by the lofty branches, you realized that you had left the world of thorns, weeds and shade less earth of large parts of the surrounding country side behind, and felt that suddenly you were in another world in which ancient gigantic trees rest contentedly over peaceful streets and houses. Nirvana.
But all that is only a vanished dream. Considerations which I find hard to justify, overcame the dream and the beauty. The saw came and in a single day cut down the street's pride and glory. The trees will grow again, perhaps, but many years will pass before the street will regain its former beauty, if at all. And that is a shame.

5 Swimming - then and now

This is my swimming pool. That is to say the pool I swim in summer and winter – 40 lengths and now with Training Fins even 50–60. I swim three styles very well. Once I was an excellent swimmer.
Yes, once I was the regional breast stroke champion in a tough region that included, among others, strong teams of Na'an, Giv'at Brenner, Kvutzat Schiller, Hatzor and Kfar Menachem. And one summer I even trained with Romania's butterfly swimming champion. He was in our Ulpan and took upon himself the training of our swimming team. Just imagine, one summer we were champions in the prevailing communist style – personal discipline and hard work. But what I learned from Karol when I was l4–l5 years old, I never forgot. For instance, that with professional training and hard work there is no limit to what can be achieved. Only two violin teachers taught me more than that, but that is another story.

4 I like coffee

I like coffee – at least two cups a day – prepared in a Bialti Brikka Espresso Maker, and sometimes by placing a simple filter on the cup, if I want the coffee as a hot drink and not as a concentrated one. I buy my coffee at the coffee shop in Gan Shmuel Center – 500 gram of "Coffee of the House" to which I add 100 gram of a kind of coffee beans that add a deeper color and coarser texture. I grind the coffee beans in a simple knife grinder (the experts use a coffee mill) just before using them.
I like the smell of the coffee and enjoy the process of preparing it. I once received a present of an expensive Espresso Machine, but decided to do without it, because I could not part with my Brikka. I can hardly bear instant coffee and I always wonder how so many Israelis abroad long for this insipid instant coffee they became accustomed to in their youth. To my joy, the coffee culture has developed considerably in the past decade. I noticed this revolution when I worked in Tel Aviv near "Ilan's Café" and "Café Joe", and would stop by often to be amazed at the remarkable variety and the intoxicating aroma, as well as by new ways of preparing coffee. On my way home from the swimming pool I briefly park my motorcycle next to the coffee house and return home with two bags of the black treasure whose taste is heaven.

3 The Synagogue and the Secular State

Lately, in connection with my work, I had the opportunity to observe the subject of the constitution that was proposed in Israel's early years but never adopted. Especially the role of the public religious leaders, who in the beginning were in the forefront of the advocates of this proposal but afterwards changed their minds, and to this day are reputed to be the ones responsible for the endeavor's failure. The argument about the constitution became intense when all the parties involved in drafting the constitution began to regard it not only as a minimal plan for regulating life in the state and government practices, but as an ideological-educational instrument to impose a world outlook. When matters reached this point, there was no way to bridge the gap between secularists and the religious. Afterwards many in the religious community regretted this, because the arrangements in the constitution that could have been finalized remained unresolved, and only the famous status quo that everyone used in an attempt to gain some advantage, remained as a defense of "religious achievements" in public life.
I am reminded of this when I think of the one day in the year on which the entire Jewish community agrees – today more than ever – that it should act (in public) according to Jewish religious practice. People who the entire year are accustomed to spend their Shabat (Sabbath) going to the sea, shopping in the shopping centers, going on trips or watch soccer games do not protest (and most of them accept willingly) this special day on which traffic on the roads ceases and the world seems to stop for a long 24 hours. One day is not much in comparison with secular life all year, but then again it is not little. This is so mainly because of the conciliatory spirit in which those who have distanced themselves from the synagogue and Yom Kippur practices, receive the holiday.
Here is the synagogue. Soon, on the evening of Yom Kippur, it will be filled to capacity. Gmar Chatima Tova.

2 "Happy New Year" greetings of long ago

Once upon a time, before singing New Year's cards with moving parts popped up on computers, before text messages and songs were transmitted to our mobile phones, and even the telephone was a rarity – hand written mail would come to every town (a children's song tells about the red mail van arriving today) and connect us to the rest of the world. People wrote letters with pens, and when the holiday arrived everyone sent "Happy New Year" greetings. The city streets teemed with stalls selling thousands of greeting cards sprinkled with gold and silver, with pictures of children or soldiers, with tanks or flowers.
These greeting cards were characterized primarily by naivety, hope and a fervent wish that the new state would be a new beginning and would overcome memories of the past. Here we see children walking in the fields hand in hand. Their figures are disproportional large and it seems as if they are floating. The simple houses and the water tower indicate the new settlement. All around it are green areas and bare hills that are awaiting "Keren Kayemet L'Israel" forestation projects. There are no others to share the land with and no sign of an old village. This is a picture of national rebirth on virgin soil – the essence of the image of an empty country absorbing gladly the children of the dream, its redeemers.
The picture exudes innocence and hope. This is a "Happy New Year" of harmony with friendly nature, of faith in the children's future and the hope that the children (to whom the staff has been passed) will create a new world – the young state of Israel.

1 Introduction - the most beautiful scenery

My personal column, to which these words are the introduction, will appear weekly, consisting of a photograph taken with my cell phone camera and a few reflections on various aspects of daily life. My modest goal is to document things we constantly see but rarely give them a thought. The little camera, present always, will be an aid in observing discreetly the commonplace and revealing it in a new light.
At least two days a week, during the warm summer months, I walk along the beach at sunset. Our sunsets as seen from the beach of Sdot Yam revealing the sun sinking into the sea, are the most beautiful. At the end of his book "The Little Prince", Antoine de Saint Exupéry drew scenery of two lines (and a star), and declared it to be the most beautiful scenery in the world. For me the most beautiful sight is the sunset in the sea. I have seen hundreds and I will never get enough of them.