White Night

There's a woman in shuk Ha-Karmel that comes up to you, with a ragged ponytail and two bottom front teeth and says, "Give me to eat. Give me to eat." Today I saw her just as I was going to the movies on Saturday afternoon. What a bummer! Someone should make a law or something against miserable people coming and ruining your lovely Saturday afternoon leisure time with their rude and inappropriate desire to eat. Wait, I think they're trying to pass a law like that in the Knesset these days.

Of all the "patriotic" laws being proposed in the Knesset recently the law against commemorating the Nakba (i.e. the Palestinian disaster) during Israeli Independence Day seems to me to be the most nefarious, striking an even lower blow than the law suggesting that a person's citizenship can be taken away if they are not loyal to Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.

This past Wednesday, one night before Shavuot, Tel Aviv had a huge secular pre-holiday party. Stores and cafes were open all night, Rock bands performed at Rabin square and there was ethnic music at Bialik square. They closed off Rothschild Boulevard to cars and filled it with tableaus of old time Tel Aviv: actors in glowing white dresses and top hats lit by florescent lights, a horse floated above us while the hired actor kicked his legs like a happy boy holding a bunch of helium balloons. Designer dresses from the twenties; around midnight a twenty piece band drove by in an open bus dressed in dandy suits playing "When the Saints Come Marching in."

The theme was white: white for the spring holiday dresses, white for the ricotta cheese I bought in the market from unshaved men smoking cigarettes, white for the city that never sleeps, white for purity, white for the Bauhaus architecture, white for whitewashing. It takes the zing out of my holiday when I consider legislation against someone else having a different holiday experience. Suddenly a casual Tel Aviv party looks a little less innocent, a little more enforced, and this endless barrage of holidays from Purim to Shavuot (Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day = not Nakba) starts to seem demonic. All the holiday programs on the radio interviewing people about their holiday customs make you feel like you're in a fun house hall of mirrors.

Walking up Sheinkin to meet my friends on Rothschild Blvd., I got stopped by a bomb scare. Everyone was waiting around, talking on their cellphones, while the police cut off foot traffic. After a few minutes there was a giant pop, like a champagne cork getting released, or a bomb, and the throngs of people started moving again. The only people to put their hands to their mouth were me and an American tourist who said, "What happened?!" Everyone else ignored the sound. I felt like a newbie. You can legislate against commemorating the Nakba, and then you can try and block out these bumps of fear and disorder and enjoy the goddamn party.