 There couldn’t have been a more perfect day to begin this trip than to celebrate the fact that God took a break after creating the world in a whirlwind swirl of imagination. So there’s a divine mandate to restore work-life balance and live well. It’s Shabbat in Jerusalem, stretching from the second half of Friday to the second half of Saturday, when Israelis are in an unwind mode, not even allowed to drive cars. Of course, there are the emergency services but what better excuse than to bond with your family and friends the good, old-fashioned way, walking over to your neighbours, running to the beach or taking a dip in the ocean. What good is God’s work if we don’t have the time to see and appreciate it, remind ourselves of his supreme abilities?
Remembrance is key to the Israeli consciousness and identity, be it God’s greatness, be it about building houses with Jerusalem stone that has held them together for centuries, be it about obsolete bathing alerts on Dead Sea salt flats which once had deeper waters, be it about not mixing dairy and meat in a kosher meal because that implies tampering with the life cycle as it is meant to be (you cannot kill a milch cow or its calf for continuity’s sake) or be it about remnants of tanks, symbolic of upsetting human conflict and intervention.
 If it’s about living wellness, you’ve got to come to Israel. Christ, even he followed the rules, loved wearing laurels and sitting under olive trees on Shabbat, probably having an earliest version of Jerusalem Heights, voted Israel’s best wine. And it’s because people remember and value their past heritage that they do the next best thing in these green times, reuse and recycle. Life still oozes out of prehistoric walls in Jerusalem’s bazaars and quarters. The Shmail restaurant continues to look like a railway station from the Ottoman period, the platforms now swanky diners and the tracks overlaid with fern, grass and trees. And in the posh Mamila Boulevard of modern Jerusalem, high-rises advertise special Sukkah terraces. In a tribute to their wanderer predecessors, Jews set aside seven days in October to live outside their houses, under the blue skies and amid nature in tents. You can do that on a 30th floor terrace extension of your apartment. We get our first lesson in including the old and the new, co-existing rather than overtaking each other.
 OH JERUSALEM! This isn’t part of the plan, taking a shortcut from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the Al-Aqsa mosque in old Jerusalem. But a Muslim colleague is keen to pay obeisance to both Jesus and prophet Mohammad at the shrines from where they are believed to have ascended to heaven, having played out their saviour roles for humankind. Zivit, our official tour guide, gets an Arab souvenir shop owner to escort my colleague with an easy air of “it isn’t too much of a trouble.”
Since women aren’t allowed entry to the innards of the mosque, she devises an impromptu activity for us. She asks the owner’s son to regale us with his wares, a mix of Roman style pottery, Armenian ceramics, Arabic sheeshas, Alladin lamps, spices and stones, even Dead Sea spa products and some exhibitionist pop art on T-shirts.
 We hardly miss the time our colleague takes to finish his prayers. A young colleague even manages to get herself wooed. “Looking for a rich husband, have 10,000 camels and one donkey,” yells a cellphone-toting suitor. On the way out of the church, Zivit takes us past the many stations that Jesus passed carrying the cross on his last lap to crucifixion, the wall where he outstretched his palm for support, the house where a woman wiped the sweat and blood off his face with a cloth, all sacred for the devout. These have now been converted to chapels by the many Christian sects, seeking legitimacy and power by virtue of their closeness to the Lord’s final journey and ascension from the Lions’ Gate, from where the Israeli troops entered the city in 1967. These are also the Arab quarters and its inmates walk Christ’s footsteps in their daily battle of survival, clumps of grotto homes, the living area huddled above their small businesses and shops. Then there is the orthodox Jew in his sombre black outfit, adjusting the tendrils of his sideburns while sizing up lemons at a fruit stall.
We have another crisis. My camera batteries decide to redden and die out. I need a new set on the go. Zivit takes a detour, she knows a guy who can be trusted for not selling fakes to foreigners. In the rush to get things done, I nevertheless stop at a Hebrew plaque, a memorial to a young Jew who had been killed by Arabs in one of the many clashes that are too common to count. Jews stop here; the Arabs, perceived to be the perpetrators, let them be. Meanwhile, Zivit, whose son is doing a stint with the Israeli Navy at Haifa and was exposed to rocket attacks from Lebanon, surprises all of us. She takes us to a music shop which has the best collection of Palestinian albums. She recommends a few and breaks into a jubilant jig when the boy behind the counter plays her favourite.
 It’s easy to get lost in the maze of lanes and bylanes of the old Ottoman bazaar in Jerusalem. It’s even easier to lose identities. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druzes seem to be meshed together in shared activity, almost as if they are blood brothers who may fight for their destinies till eternity, who cannot tolerate the success of the other but cannot do without each other nevertheless. A raging war over claims to an ancient land has not been able to affect Jerusalem’s classical character though it has changed profiles everywhere else.
Jerusalem almost lives out magic realism on a daily basis, where myth and reality collide and you don’t know which is which. Rationalists attribute it to a psychological disorder called the “Jerusalem syndrome.” True, the daily connectedness of a life beyond politics doesn’t quite make media headlines that territorial abhorrence breeds. But as author Shifra Horn, who lives in a 600-year-old house built by Georgian Christian monks, says, “Living in Jerusalem is like living a dream.” And while Arabs and Jews continue to contest their claims to it, it is also a symbol of a new thinking that’s gaining credibility among everybody, particularly the youth, that “enough is enough, let’s end the mess.” It is evident in the hysteric campaign to free Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, who’s been held hostage by the Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2006. There are 24X7 vigils outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, forcing a moderate line of thinking in the government which has come round to the possibility of negotiating a release through exchange of Palestinian prisoners. It is articulated in an inside page story on how the national budget is for the first time increasing spending on leisure, tourism and culture, neutral assets that rise above the conflict. It is palpable in the Arab quarters where a pragmatic Mohammad rolls out a shawarma with the advice, “Peace means good business and tourists. That’s all I need.”
 It is explained by middle-aged Ruby, who’s returning from a vacation in Sri Lanka and claps as the flight begins its descent to the Ben Gurion airport. She is celebrating a return to her homeland. When your identity is challenged in a boxed perimeter, one that you rescue from an Auschwitz number 174517, you cling to it desperately. “Even Sri Lanka is three times bigger,” she says. But she doesn’t forget to point out the Green Line and the Palestinian Territories. Not to imply “they are pests,” but more like “they also exist.” And for all the pervasive siege mentality and a world opinion that’s seldom charitable to Israel despite its tom-tomming of soft power courtesy its liberal intellect, banking, science and agriculture, Zivit likes to describe her people as the Sabra, a fruit which is thorny outside but soft inside.
 Nowhere is this culture mash more tangible than on the Mount of Olive from where the old city of Jerusalem furls out in the silken sheen of a golden sun. Maybe it glows other-worldly from a communion of faiths. From here, the city of David leads up to the Dome of The Rock, where Prophet Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven. The Church of the Holy Sephulcre rises just behind, where Christ was raised from the dead and then went to heaven. One city gate, the Golden Gate, is still shut, awaiting the return of a messiah, a Cohen Jew, to deliver humankind from all ills. Jews believe that he will raise the dead and so their graveyard leading up to it has become the most cherished and expensive piece of hallowed land in the world. The Arabs have their cemetery too, to prevent the messiah and are awaiting word of their own prophet. The Templars, made famous by the Da Vinci Code, have their red-roofed colony. And then there’s the Western Wall, remnants of the Jewish Second Temple built by Herod commemorating another sacrifice, of Abraham offering his son Issac to God.
Sooner or later this expectation of witnessing so many epoch-changing moments weighs heavily upon you. And we become believers, almost entranced, may be reincarnations of true devotees. Why else would I want Zivit to take me to Bethany, where the young Jesus stayed and from where he walked up to the old city for prayers? How else do I explain the heavy shadow under the olive groves of Gethsemani church where Jesus halted, wept and prayed his last night, knowing fully well that he had been betrayed by Judas Iscariot (he identified Jesus by kissing him on the cheek) and that the Romans would arrest him the next day? How else can I feel his sorrowful breath, the one he must have gulped out in distress knowing that his followers, Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, fell asleep even when he asked them to keep him company? How else do I feel the anguish when he said, “Sleep on now. Enjoy your rest! The hour is on us when the Son of Man is to be handed over to the power of evil men. Get up! Let us be on our way! See my betrayer is here.” And when I touch the rock inside the Church of Sepulchre which cracked when he fell with his cross, do I sense heaven and earth move a little? When I touch the stone where his body was anointed or the altar where his body was kept, do I believe in renewing my values for the sacrifice he made? They say God’s will has no why above it. So I am at a loss for words while penning down a wish and sticking it in between the wedges of timeless rocks on the Western Wall. I don’t make a material wish. This place doesn’t let you. And as Jerusalem retires for the night, the skyline glowing like candles in the wind, I don’t know why a star shines over a signage which points to Bethlehem. That is a good sign indeed in Ir Shalom, the City of Peace. All prophets have been saying the same thing.  HEROES AND SOLDIERS The overcrowded texture of a pluralistic Jerusalem swiftly melts away into the desert cliffs - windswept and arid, red and stark, naked and sculpted. We drive past the terrain, speckled with tents and caves where the Bedouins live. They have pretty much preserved the old way of living in between crumbling rocks though they are building their future by signing up as construction labour in the Army. “Life here moves shoye shoye (slowly, slowly)” Zivit tells us. But the smart highway passing through it has brought business to locals. We meet Isah who has two wives and some camels, one of which he uses to give tourists a ride at Sea Level point. From here, the land sinks to the depths of the Dead Sea. Isah may have changed with the times but is extremely loyal to Sushi, a longeyelashed beauty who is carrying on the tradition of his father, patiently trotting out guests. But Isah loves Sushi a bit more because, according to him, “she smiles” when they make good money.
 The descent to the Dead Sea may not seem particularly eventful but does depict some fairly cataclysmic times. Of a time when the sea was just a bay of the Mediterranean. It was reduced to being a leftover lake as the earth belched and turned after a series of seismic rifts and moving mountains. Then of course, the sea dwindled over time. Now it is receding faster, probably by one-and-a-half metres every year, because the water draining from the Jordan river or the natural freshwater springs aren’t enough to recharge it. Also it is in the rain shadow area of the Judaean hills that accounts for its solitary, bleak existence. But it is precisely this geographical isolation that made it a haven for early monks and scholastic sects. They lived in caves born out of blowholes formed by subterranean springs, much like our Buddhist sects in the bland, anthill valleys of Ladakh. One of the Jewish sects living here between 2nd century BC and 1st century was the Essenes. They led a communal life dedicated to ascetism, voluntary poverty and abstinence from worldly pleasures. They believed in equality and freedom, a celibate life, eschewed violence and commerce and like Hindus, swore by immortality of the soul. Dedicated to keen academic pursuits and library research, these mystics are believed to be the author of what are now famously known as the Dead Sea scrolls. These are about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and the 1950s. “Apparently, some Bedouins chanced upon some ancient parchments and sold them in the markets. Then scholars flocked here and the government bought them. Realising that these high value papers could be abused, the Bedouins even destroyed much of them.”
 The Essene library may have been lost but their way of life hasn’t. A vegetarian community which believed in several purification rituals, they emulated two things: farming and rainwater harvesting at catchment and storage. Something that has been perfected at the Engede retreat, a farmer’s collective or kibbutz, set up by young Jews fired by a socialistic dream of shaping the destiny of a fledgling nation, even working the barren earth to make it green. Mythology has it that like the new messiah, the Dead Sea will live again (now even algae don’t thrive in it) with the water of life flowing out of Jerusalem.
Engede is like an oasis, beginning with the blue curl of the Dead Sea rubbing against the Jordanian mountains on the other side. It’s hard to believe that nothing lives in its tempting waters, skirted by an evanescent green halo (nothing but salt hills at the edges reflecting the sun). Its mystic waters are tempting but you don’t jump in, stilled as you are by its eternal silence with not even a whisper of a ripple, not even a drift. As we spiral up the plateau, we get the first view of palm groves. Then come the sycamores and figs and a tropical Japanese garden, lush against the blue sky. Though kibbutzes began as communes with the motto of “one for all, all for one” and professed an equitable, shared, arboreal life, now its members draw salaries, work outside, have individual houses and can even open a farm, like Engede, to homestay programmes. Seventy five-year-old Meir Ron recalls with pride his early days as a 20-year-old Army returnee, “The rainfall was 50 mm, next to nothing. So we had to irrigate the land, diverting rainwater runoff from the plateaus and channelling sweet water from natural springs in the canyons. Oh yes, I dirtied my hands till my vision came true.”
 Today, Engede, which offers spa cottages, has over 1,000 species of plants. It’s a marvel of modern drip irrigation which sends only that much piped water a plant needs, often mixed with fertilisers. Ron also believes in putting herb clusters and grass around trees so that they replenish the soil and cover up the earth. He injects some humour into his botany lessons. “Here’s the Sodom Apple from Sudan, whose seeds are poisonous, the proverbial forbidden fruit. And here’s the mother-in- law throne, a hydra-headed cactus, one of 50 species.” Ron and his community have brought palms from all over the world, a rare oleander from Madagascar, trees from Amazon, the African baobabs with their fat trunks that store water and fruits which have more vitamin C than an orange and more calcium than cow’s milk! Considering Engede supplies fruits, vegetables and 15,000 litres of cow milk a year to Tel Aviv, this oasis is like a slice of paradise. Apparently, Ron wasn’t the first earth warrior. People from the Stone Age have been trying their luck out at Engede.
 For nothing is Israel called a land of milk and honey. And if Engede is an example, then we should pay tribute to Roman king Herod who chose the broken heights of the desert to build a spectacular fortress and a three-terraced palace hewn out of a hanging precipice. Masada was not only a king’s retreat, a showpiece of the best architecture and engineering of his time, but also a strategic stronghold, poised on a plateau that is easily disconnected from the others by sinous gorges. Josephus Flavius wrote of the climb: “There is nothing but destruction in case your feet slip, for on each side there is a vastly deep chasm and precipice, sufficient to quell the courage of everybody by the terror it infuses in the mind.”
Of course, it is a lot comforting to zoom up on a cable car and be greeted by a marvel of Herod’s master planners. There are dolomite quarries, the Northern Palace complex with coloured frescoes in classical geometric motifs, huge granaries and subterranean, plastered cisterns fed by the water trickling down from natural crevices. Then there are the bathhouses, an important aspect of Roman social and cultural life to which Herod aspired. It is here that his guests bathed, talked and exercised. There are the dry and wet sauna areas. The hot room had a double floor. The upper floor stood on brick and stone columns while hot vapour, diverted from a boiling cauldron, flowed underneath and rose through clay pipes embedded in the wall. Herod had a special wine servant, and among the delicacies served at Masada was a fish sauce known as garum, brought in all the way from Spain. Apple liqueur came from Italy. Traces were found by archaeologists in broken jars. Of course, you would have to go to Caeseria if you thought of Roman entertainment on a grand scale, what with its amphitheatres, more lavish baths and hippodromes for chariot races.
 But luxury doesn’t define Masada, Herod didn’t partake much of it anyway. Human endeavour does. It was the last bastion of Jewish freedom fighters against the Romans, its fall meant the destruction of Judaea in the Second Temple period. Around 70 AD, the Romans laid siege, their encampments still visible. The rebels held out but had little hope when the Romans rammed the ramparts. So the Jews chose martyrdom over slavery, doing a draw of lots with their names on shards of clay to decide who would play executioner and kill himself in the end. Each fighter died hugging his wife and child. Masada is engraved deeply in the Jewish consciousness for it sends out the powerful message that heroism is not always about fights, it is about the choice of suffering. Which is why climbing to Masada along the snake path is considered a rite of passage for Army trainees. Even American Jews, who are probably two generations removed from their origin, take full pride in Masada and choose to trek up.
The sun’s beams and shafts get trapped in the furrows and ridges around the plateau and Herod’s dream palace seems to be on fire, glowing amber in the day’s last light. As we drive away, we find earlier columns and pillars, weather-beaten warriors, reduced to stumps. What could better typify the descent from a pinnacle, the crumbling decimation of pride. The Dead Sea plays witness, mica-steady, reflecting an exact mirror image of the rose-hued Jordanian hills in the water. It’s almost like plunging into the depths of a reverse universe. And you don’t want to put your foot on it for fear of falling. A herd of ibex crosses our road and tristams keep us company overhead. Who says life is over?
It’s not always about survival of the fittest as testimonials at the Yad Vashem or Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial will tell you. It is about the survival of will like the unflinching rebels of Masada. It is about 14-year-old Petr Ginz’s drawings, stories, poems, articles and paintings that document life in a concentration camp; it is about Dr Poczler who left behind a watch to tell his story, who was misled into a Nazi death trap, thinking he was in for another day of hard labour; it is about the many who thought they were being disinfected in a shower when they were being suffocated by a chemical ironically called Gift Gas; it is about the camp inmate who suppressed his natural urges; “I didn’t want to urinate because I wanted to exercise self-control. At least that was within my control. Ultimately I gave up, thinking my legs would get warm in the cold.” Or the triumph in the account of another inmate: “In the break between pain, in the shadow of the chimneys, there was happiness.” THE DEAD SEA Zivit says though recharge efforts are on, like digging link tunnels from the Mediterranean and Red seas and temporarily moving water from the north to keep the spa economy of the south alive, the Dead Sea isn’t going anywhere. Its water table is still 600 metres deep. Remember, in 1980 it turned red because of the birth of algae and bacteria after some heavy rains! For now though, it is a shrine to eternal health.
The posh Crown Plaza hotel, with its Hawaiian look and feel, is buzzing with tourists, age and nationality no bar. You see, the hypersalinity of the water means you will float, regardless of whether you can swim or not, regardless of whether your joints will creak or not. We take a deep breath, the barometric pressure airs out our lungs easier. The water feels like glycerine, sheathing the skin with its oily goodness. It certainly soothes my sun rashes in minutes. Zivit says she brings her teenage daughter here often. The salts are soporific too, lulling you to sleep under the sun in no time. Some ecstatic tourists imitate the by now publicised image of a buoyant man reading a newspaper while others scoop out pouches of salt to take home. Of course, you have to be careful to keep your head above water; the salt could blind your eyes!
The restorative spa sea, if you could call it that, has spawned an entire global industry. Today the Dead Sea Region is prized national heritage. Plants between the Dead Sea and the cool Hebron Hills grow under exceptional stress, due to stark climatic transitions over 16 miles. So they acquire characteristics, become rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants, which are good for skin diseases, hair fall, rheumatic pains and slow down ageing. Dead Sea’s life-giving cosmetology is still being researched for medicinal cures. In the end, you may not walk on water like Jesus but you could become a miracle. ART WALKS  Miraculous is the assimilation of diverse thoughts, ideologies, politics and opinion in the arts. May be because it is a non-disputed territory, it witnesses an unprecedented cross-absorption, openness and outpouring. As film producer Sylvain Biegeleisen points out, “Filmmakers are allowed freedom in their creative space. The ghetto mentality completely breaks down here to make way for a humane understanding. Please understand that in our sub-conscious, there is a deep-rooted trauma. And fear kills trust. Our effort is to rebuild it. The human face of the conflict is evident in Waltz with Bashir, a cartoon satire on the war with Lebanon, while Beaufort, which won the first prize at Cannes, talked about the life of soldiers stuck in a tank. We had a project called People-to-People, whereby 10 Palestinian and Israeli kids interact with each other. For 12 years, I have been encouraging students from both sides to make a film on the same subject, even the peace process.”
Sylvain has himself thrown stones at his own soldiers when he didn’t agree with their tactics. “Palestinians get medical treatment at the cost of the Israeli government. Palestinian and Israeli doctors work together across borders. But who wants to talk about this? My child is in the Army and he is fed up with Gaza, he abhors violence. Palestinian people want change though the political leadership doesn’t want it because it will lose its relevance. There is a subtle slow change. We consider ourselves sailing on the Titanic which is leaking slowly. There are bigger challenges like global climate change and resource deprivation which will make regional conflicts totally irrelevant. The hybrid car has come on the road despite big corporations thwarting it. The roadmap may seem easy but it takes time to implement a change of mindset,” he surmises. Besides conflicts, there are deeper societal conflicts within the Jewish community that are finding expression in films. “Religious society is hermetic. Yet a former orthodox woman gave a camera to an erstwhile colleague to go back where she came from and document life there. Last year I made a film on Indian Jews to highlight the slow integration of recent settlers in their promised land. It’s about a girl who lives in a camp on arrival but films the life of a prosperous neighbour and sends them as images of her own good life back home to her grandmother. Her sister tells her she is living a lie. The girl says she doesn’t want to upset her grandmother by telling her about their real status. So you see, the speaking has begun but it isn’t easy.”
 Sylvain believes in reaching God through music and dance. It perhaps explains why after great litterateurs and scientists, Israelis pride themselves in exporting the world’s best DJs. And if music and dance be the language of a new generation, then one has to watch a show of Mayumana. It is a polyglot dance troupe that combines elements from most of the visual and performing arts and welds them with world music, beats, movements and humour. In military fatigues and bunkers and drums as props, they stomp, writhe and glide, interspersing forceful movements of a regimented, alert, on-the-dot existence with some arias of soft love and emotion. They want to break free. They don’t talk but use phonetics to share a universality of thought with the audience.
Sylvain senses that young people want change and are choosing careers independent of the Army though there may not be a discernible movement. So Mayumana is some sort of a national anthem, the group picking up followers as they perform across schools and colleges. And if the Yad Vashem uses a multimedia installation work as a medium of story-telling, then it has already had its intended effect. A group of Palestinian youngsters after a recent tour said, “We are immersed only in our suffering and problems and forget there is suffering on the other side too. There are people who have suffered more than us.”
 It’s in the Arab quarters of Haifa that integration seems possible, not because it has traditionally been a leftist liberal stronghold but because of the spirit of Arab writer Emile Habibi, who was loyal to the Palestinian experience while proudly staying back in Israel and singing constant paeans to his hometown. His tombstone proclaims, “I remain in Haifa.” He got the highest honour from both Israel and Palestine and he accepted both, reflecting his belief in co-existence. “A dialogue of prizes is better than dialogue of stones and bullets,” he would say. Ironically, one of Hezbollah’s missiles decimated the building of Al-Ittihad, the newspaper he edited for 45 years, in the 2006 Lebanon war. And though Nasrullah asked Arabs to vacate Haifa and tried to ward them off from his Katyushas, they stayed put and told the mayor they would fight the Lebanese Army.
In Haifa, nobody talks about Arab-Jew co-existence, they simply live it and once a year celebrate it on the Holiest of Holy Days, an approximation of Ramadan, Hanukkah and Christmas. Yes, a shop belts out “Jingle Bells” in Arabic. The multicultural festival, largely a people’s effort that is encouraged by the municipality, welcomes artists from every hue who put up an open air art gallery on various themes. The art works — be they paintings, sculptures or installations — adorn the walls of regular homes and alleys and are never dismantled. Today, the tourism authorities promote walking tours from Habibi’s house not only to send out a message of tolerance but to woo back Arabs who left out of fear. It’s mostly pop art but very powerful. There’s a series of arches with coloured bands of the Israeli and Palestinian flags, receding into the horizon of hope. A giant abacus at an intersection counts the days to peace, an open-ended safety pin hugs the contours of the Mediterranean Sea to indicate it is still unsafe, a key dangles from a hook next to an elaborate door without a keyhole symbolising the Arabs’ wait to return. And on the theme of comfort, the artist paints kids’ shoes that would rather step on a soft carpet. Messaging is not always poignant, it’s even in your face. Like the sloganeering T-shirts in old Jerusalem. One that has “Bin Laden and Family” emblazoned all over with pictures of Saddam Hussein and Bush Jr sitting on the lap of Bush Sr. Assimilation on the philosophical scale is also about balancing military precision with the hedonism and the global outlook of Tel Aviv. FOOD DIPLOMACY The Jewish philosophy is wrapped up in a mosaic art tablet in old Jerusalem which depicts five loaves and two fish. The caption goes something like, “Even if you have this much, you can break it up to give it to enough people.” Food is about sharing. Clearly, every kind of clannish propriety surrenders itself on the dining table. There is actually nothing called Israeli food, a spread accommodating the best of Lebanon, Morocco, Iraq, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Yemen and stewing them together in a culture cauldron. Kebabs, breads and falafels are favourites on both sides.
In Tel Aviv, the Farmer’s Market is a gastronomic experience and a weekend attraction like going to the movies. Food writer Janna Gur, a Russian immigrant from long past, tells us how most European Jews used to their fatty broths, potatoes and meat, have had no trouble adapting to local Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food practices. “I remember we were in Ramallah, my deputy was pregnant and the political scenario was tense. But the Palestinians were welcoming, they want more Israelis to come and sample their food.”
Kibbutzes, too, shaped the palate. So today, an Israeli breakfast is made up entirely of farm-fresh garden salads instead of European cold cuts. As Gur told us, “People worked at the farms since daybreak and by breakfast were so hungry that they needed a feast-like spread. Yet choices were limited. Only fruits and vegetables, may be a little bit of dairy and bread. Thus was born the lavish Israeli breakfast spread with a variety of fruit and vegetable salads. And our children are so used to growing up on them that salads these days are their most preferred snack.” Today, salads and yogurts are Israel’s export to a global wellness breakfast menu. Or you could consider experiments by restaurants like the Lilit, a posh eatery in Tel Aviv, which ropes in youth at risk and provides them real opportunities to integrate into society in a positive way, through catering. MULTI-FAITH CITADELS  Haifa is not only Israel’s biggest infotech centre but teaches all-faith acceptance through two of its most famous shrines, the Baha’i Garden and the Church of Stella Maris set up by the Crusaders on Mount Carmel. Baha’is espouse unity of all religions and believe that messiahs like Moses, Jesus and Mohammad were sent at different times to fit changing social needs but spread the same message. The order’s liberal founder Bab was hounded and killed and his followers came here to escape persecution in Persia in the mid 19th century. Baha’allah, the exiled leader, who died in Acre, had pointed to Mount Carmel as a resting place for the Bab whose remains were secretly ferried by devotees. Today, the shrine is wrapped by terrace gardens that almost cascade down to the sea. With shapely cypresses and luscious groves, it combines the tenets of a Persian garden with Corinthian columns and oriental arches, an aesthetic blend of civilisations. Zivit is a practising Jew but works intently with the Baha’is and often does the pilgrim walk from the steps below to the summit to anchor herself in the chaos around. Wonder of wonders, the Hezbollah rockets never landed here.
Jews, Christians and Muslim pilgrims flock to the Stella Maris Church of the Carmelite order for its seemingly all encompassing appeal. This reveres Prophet Elijah who had once challenged the devotees of all Gods to invoke their blessings in lighting a fire on a stack of wood. Everybody failed to imbibe divine grace. Then Elijah sprinkled water and miraculously lit a fire. Clearly a lesson for the purity of soul above all faiths, the church, true to the saint’s honour, drew pilgrims from all over. Among the first nuns was a German Jew. Even a Muslim woman once became a follower. Stella Maris is stark and simple, the prophet’s image ensconced in a cave, his goodness now a groundswell of charities for locals.
In fact, it is in Tel Aviv that a global identity is being shaped furiously over the last 100 years. Growing out of the antipathy of the Arab residents of Jaffa to accommodate post-war settlers, Tel Aviv was a refugee’s dream to get out of his suitcase and rewrite his destiny. There was a time when one Dr Hissin did his rounds of the town on a donkey, when people exulted at the first street lamp, when they staked their all to get a drainage system and a housing colony going, when a group of poets dreamt under moonlight. Courtesy the Bauhaus style, a modernist, functional architecture that uses a lot of natural light and white facades, Tel Aviv has got UNESCO status as a world heritage city. The uncluttered look dominates Tel Aviv’s design philosophy, be it in the usually geometric jewellery and uncomplicated and mellow silhouettes of fashion designers. The ultimate is the G Tel Aviv Tower, a residential luxury condominium, for only 37 buyers at $2,400,000. The penthouse is designed like a villa suspended in the sky, symbolically cutting loose from earthly inhibitions. Tel Aviv’s polyglot character has been continuously shaped by waves of Jewish immigrants, leading to gentrification of old localities like Neveh Tzedek and converting them into a mini New York with Chihuahua walkers, high fashion on Sheinkein Street and elegant cafes and boutiques.
Tel Aviv has a self-made identity and celebrates its free spirit everyday, every moment. Be it the father playing with his son near the seafront on Shabbat, fishing and quad-biking on the wooden promenade at midnight, carelessly lying about in a winter noon, shopping at 3 am, partying till 5 am and stealing a kiss on a wave-swept promontory somewhere in between, it is “cool.” Just too cool and breathe-easy.
Where else in the world would you find a man in flippers, fishing gear and a head lamp help you cross the road at 2 am and tell you how he had found his most profound moment at the Golden Temple in Amritsar? Or how he now wants to visit the temples in Kerala? |
Tel Aviv
Israel
