Today I woke up relatively early and met Lisa in the lobby at 10. We left Clore and grabbed a sherut to Tel Aviv, getting off at the central bus station and grabbing a local sherut to our first destination: the
Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Since a few of the rooms were closed for repainting and renovation, we got in for half price! Lisa also ran into a couple she knows from home as we were buying tickets at the front desk. It's a small world...
We wandered through the museum, which actually had a very extensive collection! There were a bunch of works by Picasso, Monet, Renoir, and other staples, and a section devoted to Chagal which we both really enjoyed. Lisa isn't a huge fan of very modern/nonrepresentational art, but I actually enjoy it, so there was one room which I think I was more reluctant to leave than she was. My favorite one was...well I don't remember what it was called, but the medium was soot on a wall, and it was an impression of two bookshelves full of books, as if the shelves and books had burned and left a slightly smeared outline of where they had been. I loved it.
Our next stop from there was the more classical section. It happened to be housed in the basement, which Lisa and I both found sort of odd, but it was great. There was also a room full of fully furnished and decorated doll house rooms, which Lisa got a huge kick out of. Once we finished the basement, we were basically done, so we exited and grabbed some iced coffee before moving on.
We then walked from the art museum to the
Nachalat Benyamin, a craft fair every Tuesday and Friday downtown. Before walking along the tables, we took a detour through the shook, which turned out to have some very interesting items for sale (I'll include pictures in the next entry). I bought a pair of aviators, because I had forgotten my sunglasses (and everyone should have fake Ray Bans). We continued down the narrow walkway until we came to the next block, and walked one block left to find ourselves in the middle of the craft fair.
Lisa and I had a great time looking at jewelry and other fun stuff. We decided to walk up and down the entire length of the street before buying anything, then as we backtracked made our final decisions. Lisa bought a necklace and earrings at different tables. I bought a necklace at the same place, but earrings at another seller's table. There was some really cool stuff which I would have liked to get, had I had an unlimited budget (including some beautiful long silver earrings and a ring fashioned from a bolt) or unlimited space (some vintage/retro canvas posters in Hebrew), but we both had to pass up a few appealing purchases.
After we had wandered the whole thing twice, we got a call from Rachel, Barbara, and Alissa, and waited for them at the entrance. As we hung out, we were solicited by two adjacent juice-stand operators, both yelling and hoping to win our business. The others arrived as Lisa and I were still debating, so we decided to each go to one. Lisa got strawberry orange, which was very refreshing. I got mango banana strawberry, which was delicious but very thick. Daniela also walked by as we were sipping our juice. It's crazy that how many people you can accidentally run into here. We chatted for a few minutes, then she moved on and we decided to walk back towards the mall at Dizengoff center to cool down for a bit. Lisa and I then caught a bus back to the central bus station, so she could head back to Rehovot and I could catch another bus to Bar Ilan University for Itamar's going away shabbat extravaganza.
[As background, Itamar is the composer/clarinet player who is Dave's roommate. Dave is Stephen's friend from MIT who is living here for three years to decide about making aliyah. Stephen, Joel and I ended up at their place for my first shabbat in Israel. Itamar is moving back to Canada after 9 years in Israel, during which he got two bachelor's degrees at Bar Ilan, to pursue a master's at McGill.]
I think the bus I got onto was the last one, as the terminal was deserted. It was a local bus, so was on the seventh (!) floor of the bus terminal. The ride was rather long, as it wound through downtown, and let me off basically on the side of a highway. Luckily I surmised that we were on the southbound portion of the highway, and I knew that Bar Ilan was to the east, so I crossed on the pedestrian overpass and called Itamar. He told me I was on the right track, so I continued, eventually finding the main gate, from which I knew how to reach Itamar's building.
We went up to the roof so he could have a last(ish) cigarrette before Shabbat. We stood there talking, contemplating life and gazing out over Tel Aviv in the distance past the campus. One brief interruption came in the form of a "neighbor" of Itamar's who finds his rooftop cigarrette conversations noisy and disrputive. He opened the door to the roof and asked Itamar, "I thought you were moving to Toronto." Itamar jokingly replied, "Nope, changed my mind." "OH. Hope you leave soon," said the neighbor before going back inside. We moved to the other side of the roof and resumed our chat for a bit, then headed back downstairs.
Itamar had packed most of his music, but found a book of clarinet duets where the bottom parts weren't so bad, so we broke out his clarinet and bass clarinet and played about 8 of them. It was really fun! I haven't played the clarinet in so long because of conducting and stuff, and it was really nice to sightread and play with someone else. People were coming in and out of the apartment the entire time, dropping off food for dinner and just saying hi. Eventually it was time for services. We made sure there were enough chairs in the living room (25) before heading out.
Afterwards, as everyone filed into the apartment, it was almost unbearably stuffy. Someone suggested eating in the nearby park, and the majority voted to adopt this plan, so we washed our hands, said kiddush, passed challah around, and then everyone grabbed something and we headed to the park. There were many benches, so we lined the food and drinks along them and everyone dove in. People really made an effort to cook, and everything was delicious. There was a temporary issue of missing forks, but once this was solved the meal was complete.
I tried to meet as many people as I could as we ate, but I am horrible with names. I sat to eat with a group whose names I mostly remembered, but after many people finished they shed their shoes and started playing on the playground equipment. There was a beam on two springs, and the challenge was to walk across it (which I failed to do). Another popular item was what Dave, Ariel and I decided was a swing-see saw-viking ship-glider thingie.
Eventually things calmed down a bit and got slightly more serious: serious in that we settled into a large cirgle and went around saying some sort of goodbye to Itamar, only slightly in that we used an empty Prigat bottle as a "microphone." It was really nice. Most of the people had known Itamar for years and had great things to say. On the other hand, many people, like me, had only met him recently, and said so. Itamar is the kind of person who brings people together. The group was large, and composed of many smaller groups, but all were conencted by Itamar's shabbat dinners and his contagious charisma. He will definitely be missed.
After the speeches we all cleaned up. Many people broke off at this point, but a core group stood near Itamar's building chatting for even longer. It was at this point when a particularly interesting discussion about teleportation came up: Josh (a former roommate of Itamar's), Dave and I debated whether teleportation would be considered ok for shabbat. The verdict is that it depends on the mechanism: if it's through a wormhole, fine, but if it involves disassembling a human and assembling him from different protons, neutrons and electrons in another place, it constitutes building and is definitely not kosher.
Finally Josh, Dave, Itamar and I went up to Dave and Itamar's apartment. We sat around, eating frozen grapes (a delicious treat which is new to me!) and talking for what ended up being a few more hours before finally heading to bed. It was a great evening.
Pictures!
Museum construction...
