Tel Aviv Nights

2008-08-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I made Aliyah August 2007 from Portland, Oregon, USA and lived in Jerusalem for one year. During that first year I wrote about my "misadventures" in the Holy Land in my first blog, "Life In Kvetchistan". Being a new Israeli, I decided to be as Israeli as possible and be very honest, blunt and open about all my experiences. I received numerous favorable responses from everyone that wrote me except 50% of the Israelis(mostly the religious). After just non-stop emails from this group, The Orthodox and Religious, I decided to end writing on my blog. Now, after a year in Jerusalem, I moved to Tel Aviv and back to the normal Western World with normal people, I have decided to restart my writing about my experiences of living in my new country, Israel. Now, I love living in Tel Aviv, but it has it's problems too. Being Israeli, I will always give my raw, pull no punches, direct and honest view of Life and people in Israel. Israelis are my new family and I care very much about my new country and my new family so I hold nothing back. Read what I have to say, analyze it, digest it, let it swirl around in your brain awhile before ya spit it out. All comments are welcome as usual and expected. So get ready Israel and especially Tel Aviv, cause here it comes, life, people, and everything in Israel as I see it.
First, Tel Aviv is ideally a potentially great city. According to Wikipedia, it is listed as the most expensive city in the Middle East and the 14th most expensive city in the World, even ahead of New York. It is the 2nd largest city in Israel with a population of 384,400, but the metro population is 3.15million, nearly half of Israel's population. Tel Aviv started off in 1908, when a group of Jews from Jaffa purchased 5 hectares (12 acres) of dunes northeast of Jaffa which were divided into 60 plots. The goal of the group was to create "a Hebrew urban centre in a healthy environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics and modern hygiene. " In the short term they succeeded, but as for the long term they failed miserably. Tel Aviv and most of Israel for that matter is a dirty, trash cluttered, mosquito infested mess. Most homes don't even have mosquito screens over the windows and it is over 100yrs later.
In 1917, the Ottoman authorities expelled all the Jews of Tel Aviv, around 2,000 persons. In 1925, Patrick Geddes drew up a master plan for Tel Aviv that was adopted by the city council led by Meir Dizengoff. The core idea was the development of a Garden City. In this idea they partial succeeded. The total lack of fountains, orchards, flower gardens and green spaces in Tel Aviv may be not due to planning but lack of financial and natural resources. Still there are some nice tree lined and park areas such as Rothschild Blvd.
Tel Aviv is known as the "White City, because it has the worlds largest concentration of white Bauhaus style architecture. The term "White City" might have been applicable say 40-50 yrs ago and can be selectively and very rarely applied to some buildings in Tel Aviv today but the vast majority of Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv could be more appropriately termed "Dirty grey", "Peeling grey" or "Tijuana townhouses". Even in the most expensive areas of Tel Aviv, like Rothschild Blvd, the state of most buildings in the city is appalling, especially for the prices and rents charged. There a very few buildings where the paint is not peeling off, the roofs are collapsing, or the walls are falling in. Actually, I will just come right out and say it, the city looks like shit or at best "Beirut during the Lebanon War." It pains me to say the if Iran launched Scuds at Tel Aviv, it would be very difficult to find the actual hit sights from the missiles because of all the half falling apart and half demolished buildings. Maybe this is a new military secret. Hide in the rubble. That way the enemy is not sure where to zero their missiles in on.
Tel Aviv served as the temporary capital from May 1948 till December 1949. Being a coastal Mediterranean city in the Middle East, temperatures in Tel Aviv are warm and dry during the summer and mild and getting most of its rain during the winter. The beaches are one of the best attractions to Tel Aviv and are fairly well kept. Tel Aviv is the secular and cultural center of Israel.
So I moved to this potential pearl of a city 15August and am living near the New Bus station on the South side of town. It is the place where most working class people start off. It is populated mostly by Africans(legal and illegal), Asians(mostly Phillipino healthcare workers), Russian shop owners and probably organized crime mobsters and of course, Hookers.
For some odd reason, prostitution is not outlawed in Tel Aviv. Right or wrong the fact is that most of the women involved in prostitution in Israel are here against their own will. Usually, brought to Israel on a ruse, their passports a held by their Mafia pimps and they are drugged or beaten into complying and "working" their way back to Russia or the Ukraine. They are unable to go to the Police or other Israeli social services because their status here is illegal and they are afraid of jail time and don't speak the language. At best their existence is a low term "Hell". It is a national disgrace that the government allows this to happen to women, but what do you expect from a government dominated by sexist Orthodox religious men who make women shave their heads and wear wigs, walk behind their husbands, sit in the back of the bus and pump out 5-8 kids. This attitude toward non-Jewish women(which most hookers are) is just carried over. In the end the average women involved in prostitution in Israel, is stuck between a violent mafia pimp and a sexist government that cares little about their welfare. It is just these types of attitudes that the prophets lamented about outside the Gates of the Temple right before the destruction of the Temple and the Exile. Hopefully, we are not going down the same road again, 2,500+ yrs later. If we had any "Moral Spine"as a "Moral Nation"we would outlaw law this horrible practice, jail these Mafia pimps and give somekind of aid and counseling to these poor women.
Anyway, hope I haven't pissed off everyone in Tel Aviv/Israel already, cause I am just getting started. To reform a drug addict or alcoholic you don't get them to change their ways by telling them how great they are and stroking their ego. You go straight for the problem, expose it, talk about it, analyze it, devise a plan of attack and work on curing it. That is what I am attempting to do here. Now my life, by any means is in anyway perfect, but sometimes it is easier to see another's problems being and looking from the outside. That is why one goes to a psychotherapist and not ones family to help solve ones real problems.
Same here, I see an Israel, going down the wrong path(ask anyone here and they will agree with me). An Israel that has lost it's way. A country were vice, corruption and protectsia are the standard norm and not the exception(and everyone knows it). A country whose young persons have lost faith in everything and have devovled into rampant consumerism and selfish destructivism. A people that aren't really living but just exsisting. I see a whole nation of individuals that have very little respect for their country, their fellow Israelis and most importantly NO RESPECT FOR THEMSELVES.
Our story as Jews is a fasinating one. To go through what we have gone through and to arrive back where we started is an amazing journey. To go through the horrors of the Holocaust, near annilation in 3 wars and endless terror, we are lucky to be all mostly sane. Unfortuantely, we still carry the mental baggage of the past. We have left the "Ghetto" but the "Ghetto" is still with us and rules and controls us to this day.
Yes, their are the few exceptions of those that are doing well, and are happy and content, but in all my life I have never seen such unhappy and confused and lost people. For example, I have not yet met one Israeli man over 30 that is not angry, severely depressed, and does not drink excessively and smokes like a chimney. I see a nation living for the moment with no plan for tomorrow.
Now I don't pretend to have all the answers, I do see the problems and maybe by making Israelis face their problems head on they can change and seek answers to these very serious problems. This blog will always be honest and direct, no sugar coating here, no stroking egos. What I say will make you mad, it will make you angry, it will make you scream, it will make you hate me, curse me and sometimes wanna "kick my ass" but it will be the truth. Once read, once thought about, you know it will be the honest truth that you don't, can't or don't wanna see. Once read, what I say will be in your head and there it will stay, swishing around waiting for you to deal with.
If you are content and happy and think everything in Israel is just going fantastic, then by all means, don't read my blog. This blog will make you have headaches and many a sleepless night. Again, I don't and won't have all the answers but just maybe between our being honest with each other and especially our "self" we can work to find solutions to the problems that I present here. Shalom haverim, Yadin

"Life In Kvetchistan 2" Tel Aviv Nights

Tel Aviv Nights