We headed out for a family scavenger hunt in the first neighborhood of Tel Aviv (now 100 years old). After about 4.2 minutes of sweating, our group (Dollingers and Jaffes) decided to duck into a restaurant for some cool liquid refreshment. Game Over.
Until...we asked a simple-minded question of our server: Where is Independence Hall? She looked perplexed, not known WHERE the Hall was located NOR EVEN WHAT IT WAS. We explained to her, "It's the place where Ben Gurion declared independence." She'd had no clue and went to ask the other guys working there the same question. They had no idea. Incredulous, I walked over to the bar and quizzed these young Israelis on how it was that they could be raised in the Israeli educational system and NOT know where it was, nor even that it existed. They shrugged. With Noah Jaffe on the video camera, we forged back into the heat, stopping random Israelis to ask them where we could find Independence Hall. If they didn't know, we asked them what it was. If they didn't know that, we taught them and asked why they didn't know. Most of the older Israelis knew exactly what it was; few of the younger Israelis did. Oy.
In true (or semi-true) Borat style, we took ourselves RIGHT IN FRONT on Independence Hall and started asking Israelis right there if they'd heard of it :) (They had though they couldn't recall the last time they went in).
We toured the Hall and it was quite impactful for those in our group, especially as the assembled group of tourists began to sing Hatkivah spontaneously when the original 1948 recording of the Israel orchestra was played. Noah is making a movie of the interviews if you're interested...
We spent the afternoon in the cool air conditioning of the hotel, catching up on email, blog, and sleep. Yeah.
In the evening, we head to Yafo, where we spent some time in the Shook, eating some baked goods from Abulafia (sp?), and then headed to "The Old Man and the Sea" for an immense dinner.
Two years ago, we attended a concert by Mayumana with David Broza. This time, it was just Mayumana. For an hour and a half, we experienced the Israeli version of Stomp (but with music and singing as well as dance). It was spectacular....and the curtain call had the 10 cast members, drums in hand, just walking off the stage, out of the auditorium, encouraging the audience to follow them outside, where they continued the concert for another 15 minutes in the parking lot.
Lailah tov.
No comments:
Post a Comment