Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > May > 19 > Entry
Escaping from Israel — or finding it — in Tel Aviv?
In Tel Aviv, thousands of residents were touring historic homes and “architecturally significant” buildings in the second annual Houses From Within Tour.
From neighborhood to neighborhood they strolled, beneath a gentle sun, amidst sidewalk cafes bustling on the Jewish Sabbath, discovering anew the urban spaces of Israel’s metropolis.
It was downright normal. For a moment, I felt as if I was seven time zones away.
Among more than 120 sites: the modest 1930s apartment of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion; the Heichal Yeyuda Synagogue that resembles a giant sea shell; the just-restored 1924 home of Israel’s national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik; and the Square Building, a recently-completed 42-floor hotel and office tower.
Outside 46 HaCarmel St., close to 100 people queued up to see Jerome Mandel’s restored three-floor 1928 apartment. Like much of Tel Aviv’s early construction, it was designed in the modernist Bauhaus style.
It had fallen into disrepair before Mandel and his wife bought it a few years ago. Its most distinctive features: large picture windows, 12-foot high ceilings and original, multi-colored floor tiles.
HaCarmel Street is home to a colorful, but loud, outdoor market, which over the years made the area less desirable. “Doesn’t the noise outside bother you?” the Tel Avivians wanted to know. “I get up at 6 and the buzz starts about 15 minutes later,” he explains. “It’s not as noisy as the sound of an ambulance, or the sound a bus or the sound of a car.”
In fact, Jerome insisted he quite enjoyed walking down his steps into the shuk — the Hebrew word for market — and buying three tomatoes.
An hour later, I returned to Jerusalem, to the real world — or was it? — to interview a visiting U.S. congressman.
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