May 27th, 2009 at 2:54 pm (Time Warp Israel Travel Diary)
Israel Travel Diary from 1955
On November 4, 1955, TG sailed on the ship Christopher Columbus from New York to Haifa, Israel, by way of Casablanca, Tangiers, and Gibraltar. She arrived in Haifa and settled in for a 6 month visit to family members and a tour of Israel.
We found this diary among family papers. The cool thing about the entries is that TG met with people who would later become prominent in Israel and often achieve world wide fame. Check out the links to see the connections we found. Another cool aspect to the diary is the look we get at towns, cities, places in Israel in 1955/1956 when Israel was less than 10 years old. How things have changed! When TG visited the southern city of Eilat on the Red Sea, she commented that the town had only 2 hotels – and these had no hot running water. Eilat in 2009 is a resort town with 5-star luxury hotels, restaurants, shops, beaches, diving sites, yachts – quite a difference. To TG’s credit, she notes that one day Eilat will grow and prosper.
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May 26th, 2009 at 9:44 am (Churches in Israel)
I finally managed to enter St. Peter’s Church in Old Jaffa. The opening hours are very restricted and since I do not live in the area, somehow I was never there on time. Until one day… an early morning appointment in Tel Aviv on a sunny winter day had me walking through the square. Luck was shining down upon me: the Church was open and welcoming.
Photos of the interior of the church are forbidden, but here are some exterior shots to whet the appetite. An isle of tranquility, the silent visitors could hear strains of classical music wafting across the high beamed church space.
Next door to the entrance to the Church is a closed door leading to St. Peter’s Monastery.
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May 14th, 2009 at 3:09 pm (Israel by the Book)
Very exciting! Tour Israel by the book: the tour follows the autobiography of Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, through Jerusalem, and the classic, O Jerusalem, by Larry Collins and Dominque LaPierre.
Contact Drive-Israel.com for details.
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May 10th, 2009 at 3:12 pm (Israel by the Book)
Oz, born in Jerusalem in 1939, now lives in Arad and teaches at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He has been a visiting Fellow at Oxford and a visiting professor at Princeton. Dressed in a brown turtleneck and sports coat, Oz said that the “news are not awful” despite the reports from CNN. He urged the audience not to be completely devoted to the news broadcasts but to leave time to experience the entire range of human emotions from love to loneliness. “Otherwise,” Oz said, “we have given in to the fanatics who seek complete attention to their cause.” The Israel that hardly ever makes it to the news broadcast, “is an Israel where people are tempermental, noisy, hedonistic and secular to the bone. Israelis are great talkers and poor listeners, a country of 6.5 million prime ministers! I love Israel,” Oz said, “even when I cannot stand it!”
Oz spoke about the “great and simple things” in life such as loss, love, loneliness, rage, compassion. Oz took five years to write The Same Sea and he even went to Cypress alone to be able to concentrate on it. But there at the end of each day of writing, he found himself making notes and sketches, writing verse and rhymes and he realized that this was how the book had to be written, not only to tell a story, but also to “sing and dance.” His goal became to write a novel taken back to its “gutsy roots of shameless storytelling”. It is also a very personal story, at once both fiction and confession. The story is set in Bat Yam and tells the story of a prodigal son, his beautiful girlfriend, his father, sex and ghosts. The tale transcends politics and tells of the possibilities of more than forgiveness, but indeed of momentary communion between enemies. But it is not a political book and Oz pleaded with the audience not to read it as a political text.
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