This is the sunset at Jaffa, on the southern edge of Downtown Tel Aviv, and as you can see it has an orange glow. That makes complete sense to the child in me, because when that child was all of me in London during the 1960s one of my absolute favorite things was the Jaffa Cake chocolate and orange biscuit. As beautiful as this image is, it cannot compare with the most beautiful thing that I experienced today, but no single photo, or even, a short series could do that. I’m referring to the entirely peaceful intermingling of (mostly young) Israelis and Arabs on and around the Tel Aviv beach. This is something that none of the countless press reports about Israeli life I read during the months between deciding that I would come to Israel and stepping out of the plane just over 24 hours ago. The only aggression I experienced was between two Israeli car drivers trying to go in opposite directions along the narrow harbor side road in Jaffa who got stuck into a stupid macho face-off.
By lunchtime I’d realized that the Israelis and the Palestinan Arabs are about as different as oranges and lemons – two fruits that are so closely related that some varieties of one look more like the other – so above is a picture of lemons. They’re preserved lemons at Manta Ray Restaurant where we had a delicious lunch. With it we drank a glass of the ‘Cuvée Blanc’ from Flam winery, which I’ll be visiting later on during my visit. It is the perfect answer to those people who say things like, “Israel can produce some good reds, but the climate is totally wrong for white wines.” In just 24 hours I’ve come to the conclusion that although Israel may be a small country (about the size of New Jersey, I think), it is far too complex to be reduced to any simple description along the lines of, “Israel is…”
Even the oranges and lemons metaphor I introduced above is way too limiting, so I thought I’d throw another fruit into the mix. I drank the sweet, tart and slightly tannic juice of these pomegranates as a mid-morning refreshment outside the Baroque Catholic Church of Jaffa. While I drank it, and thought about how the apple in the Garden of Eden was probably actually a pomegranate, I noticed that on the recently modernized square in front of the church I saw a sculpture by the British artist Henry Moore from the 1950s and a cannon that had been used in Jaffa during the Ottoman period (1515 – 1917). Here the religions and historical periods mingle in a way they don’t either in New York or Berlin. And in spite of all these realizations, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of this crossroads of so many cultures and eras.
