Images, Buildings, and Names

With all due respect to Garrison Keillor, it has not been a quiet few weeks in eretz (land) war-be-gone. We have been very busy, continuing to soak in the sights, sounds, and smells of Tel Aviv and branching out by bus and train to Jerusalem (both of us) and Haifa (me).
Last week we made a Shabbat afternoon excursion to the Tel Aviv Art museum which houses an extensive permanent collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art donated by a Jewish Swiss family. Two special exhibits were also on display. “Art at Home, the Home as Art,” featured mixed media by Israeli and international artists, including a fabulous garden-themed bed designed by Max Ernst and a beautiful modernist set of silverware incorporating design elements from the violin (the curves, f-holes and bridge). Also amazing were the tapestries by Agam and other artists with abstract and figurative motifs (scrolls, ladders) in vibrant colors. Another special exhibit, “The Mound of Things” showed the work of Tsibi Geva, a multi prize-winning artist who epitomizes mainstream Israeli taste (according to a critic writing in HaAretz). Canvases (some very large) from several of his themed series of paintings done over the last twenty years of terrazzo floors, birds, flower, keffiyeh (head covering) and abstract designs of backgammon boards, fences, and shutters or window grilles were arrayed around the perimeter of the gallery space. I could see that the paintings were trying to address issues about Israeli identity-- the land, nature, people, constructed habitats and the meanings with which Israelis have imbued these things--but the exhibit as a whole didn't move me. In the center of the gallery stood a formation of high wall built of grey concrete construction blocks in the shape of the Hebrew letter “het” (looks like a square with the bottom side open). The newspaper critic in HaAretz wrote that this was a pale echo of a stone wall by Sharon Keren and Gabi Klasmer shown at the Israel Museum in 1975 and built for the artists by Palestinian construction workers. Obviously, the artist was making a political reference with this current construction but his rendition of the wall wasn't particularly illuminating for me.

We had another opportunity to think about the cultural and historical construction of the country at the Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) Museum. This museum consists of a number of exhibit pavilions scattered over a large park area near the university. We strolled through the grounds planted with native trees, plants, and herbs and viewed the somewhat quixotic collection of exhibits: a history of coinage from ancient to modern times; the history of postal service before and following statehood; ancient ceramics/ pottery; a judged show of contemporary clay works; artifacts and photos tracing Edmund Rothschild's travels to Palestine and his contribution to the building of several towns and the development of the wine industry in pre-state Israel; artifacts and tools from an excavation of a copper age site; old and modern glassworks; a collection of sundials; and, in the ethnography and culture pavilion, ritual and household objects from Jewish life around the world (menorahs, marriage contracts, Shabbat candlesticks, Kiddush cups, and a fabulous restored ark from an 18th century Italian synagogue) organized around the yearly cycle of holidays. Perhaps the most unusual display at this museum was in the "Song of Cement" exhibit. Outside the pavilion stood a cement mixer and inside, ranged around the walls, were photographs depicting the role of cement in building the state of Israel from the pioneer days to the present. In a small area to the rear behind a partial partition was a group of photos of the “separation” walls done by contemporary artists. These large color photos had more overtly political themes. Their inclusion created an interesting juxtaposition to the other black and white documentary photos and highlighted the tensions around the multiple meanings of “construction” in Israel.

This got me thinking about how certain versions of history and culture have become part of the physical reality of the country. In a previous message I jokingly suggested that Bavli sounds like Beverly, as in the “Beverly Hills of Tel Aviv”. What sacrilege! During a long walk in HaYarkon park, Nitzana, our landlady’s daughter, enlightened me about the meaning of Bavli and the derivation of the street names in the neighborhood. I had already noticed that many streets were called Rav (rabbi) so and so, as in Rav Toledano at our corner. Now it all became clear. Bavli refers to Babylonia, as in the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli), and some of the streets are named after the scholars who contributed to this work. Other streets are named for the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi), Sanhedrin (supreme court of ancient Israel) and Knesset Gadol (great assembly in ancient Jerusalem). All the major boulevards in Tel Aviv are named after men who were prominent in the history of the city and the state- Dizingoff (first mayor of Tel Aviv); Allenby (British general who led force that conquered Palestine), Ben Yehuda (reviver of Hebrew as a modern language), Rothschild (Jewish philanthropist and businessman) and a host of others.

Through the street names you can trace the history of Tel Aviv, the state of Israel, and the Jewish people. The significance of these names, however, is lost on some young Israelis, according to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post. In the seaside town of Netanya not far from Tel Aviv a local survey found a sample of the city’s teens to be woefully ignorant about the historical figures after whom a number of major streets are named. According to the Post, over one third of the 160 teens who took the survey thought that Rehov Dizengoff (Dizengoff St.) was named after Israel’s first shopping mall, the Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv, rather than that city’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. More than half said Rehov Ramban was named after “a well-known hospital” in Haifa (Ramban Hospital) rather than the medieval scholar Rabbi Moshe Ben Nahman (Nahmanides). For Rehov Tel Hai, a street that has a lion statue to commemorate the 1920 battle at Tel Hai in which Joseph Trumpeldor and other Jewish fighters lost their lives, 75% of the teens chose the response, “a garden of statues which contains a famous statue of a lion.” Aghast at this ignorance about Jewish and modern Israeli history , a local councilman is calling for the city to put up signs to explain the history behind the names of the local streets. The city already put up about 30 signs on major streets but the councilman thinks these are insufficiently detailed and “an insult to the intelligence of residents.” He wants the city to reallocate the 500,00 NewIsraeli Shekels (about $125,00) currently earmarked for statues to put up "more respectable and prominent" signs. He said, “Those who do not know their past are likely to lose their future.” Wow! That statement opens up a can of worms. Whose past? What version of the past? To be continued……