December 29

Tel Aviv is a new city – even by American terms.  It’s barely one hundred years old.  Nonetheless, layers of ideologies can be found at the same site. 

We stopped at a modern complex that was once two separate buildings for boys and girls education, then housed two rival factions of the pre-1948 Israeli military, and is now a ballet center. 

            The street patterns here are not a grid.  That was considered too much like a cross. 

            Other things are like America.  Models of synagogues from Europe have no outward sign of the Jewish faith.  That is also the case for the Lloyd St. synagogue in Baltimore.

            There is no question about the emotional highlight of the day.  The exhibit at the Rabin Center concludes with the funeral service.  I rememembered President Clinton’s “Shalom chaver [my friend]” but not the tearful eulogy from his granddaughter.