A church watch-cat

.

Guardian of the threshold?
A cat sits atop the gate next to a church in old Jaffa.

Immanuel Church was built in 1904 in Jaffa's American/German Colony. 
Its history is so interesting, and unique. 

The Protestant church holds services on Saturday in Hebrew and English.
On Sundays only in English. 

Linking this post to Camera-Critters and inSPIREd Sunday memes.
.
UPDATE: Just learned that today is Cat Day (well, in America at least).  Happy Cat Day! 
.

A painter and The Little Prince

.

P is for painting.
And inside the painter's workshop--the Little Prince! 

Seen on Wednesday in Tel Aviv's old and picturesque Florentine neighborhood.
.
(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
.

The city on the move

.

Coming . . . and going. 
The Ayalon freeway through Tel Aviv is always crowded (except on Yom Kippur when no one drives).

On any given weekday some 750,000 vehicles will be zipping along the Ayalon.
Well, except when they are crawling.

Yesterday I took the train to Tel Aviv, a much more relaxed way of getting to the big city.
.

Not-real cats

.

C is for constructed cats.

As if Israeli cities don't have enough stray cats roaming the streets, some Tel Aviv neighborhoods have added cat sculptures.
.
(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
.

Riding a zany zebra

.

A zany zebra, on wheels!
At a fancy-shmancy toy shop in HaTachana, Tel Aviv's old (1892) train station now repurposed into a shopping center and culture compound.

Linking to ABC Wednesday.
.

No room in the bin

.

Neve Shalom neighborhood of Tel Aviv on a Sabbath afternoon, when no one works, certainly not the garbage collectors.
And that's my visiting son shooting an unusual door, or maybe it was a cat.
.
(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
.

Tel Aviv cats and their photographer

.

My son is a professional photographer in Los Angeles.
Tel Aviv's MANY cats caught his interest when he came for a short visit to Israel in February.

We walked the little lanes of the older neighborhoods on a quiet Sabbath afternoon.

Schlaf-stunde, Shabbat nap-time for cats too.

Linking to Camera Critters.
.

Rent a bike in Tel Aviv

.

 After years of delays,  construction began yesterday on the huge project of digging a subway and light rail system for Tel Aviv. 
Residents anticipate the worst -- increased congestion on the streets, perpetual gridlock, big delays, loss of business to stores along the route, etc.
There is even fear that rats will come up and out of their underground burrows when the machines start excavating.

These green bicycle rental stations all around Tel Aviv  have been popular for years.
But now, everyone is asked to leave their cars at home and to ride a bike or take the bus in the city.
.
In Jerusalem we lived for years with the discomforts of torn up streets and detours and slowness as they slowly built the tram rails.
But we survived.
Here are some of my posts showing the light rail construction in Jerusalem:
 Torn up Jaffa Road
Mayor threatens the new Calatrava tram bridge
Laying the rails
Knee-deep in wet cement
Riding the tram, at last! 
Lots more posts under the label Tram (to your left)! 
.
(Linking to OurWorld Tuesday.)
.

The big city, too big

.

Took the train from Beer Sheva north to Tel Aviv today.
Just an hour and fifteen minutes, but you get off the train and you know you're not in the desert anymore.
Oof, humidity was 75% and temps in the low 30s, around 90 F.

Linking to Our World Tuesday.
.

The hanging gardens

.

The hanging gardens of old Tel Aviv.

.

Red flag at Jerusalem Beach

.

A pigeon lady feeding the birds in Tel Aviv.
You can enlarge the photo to see her bread bag.  

Where I'd like to be today -- Tel Aviv's "Jerusalem Beach."

It was a windy day when I took these pictures on June 27.
The red flag flew at our Mediterranean beaches to signal dangerous water conditions. 

Shabbat shalom from the hot dry desert today.
.
(Linking to Skywatch Friday and Camera Critters.)
.

Street furniture

.

Apparently lately Tel Aviv Municipality has been putting out lounge chairs along various sidewalks.
Could be more comfortable than that mega-bench. 
.
(Linking to OurWorld Tuesday.)
.

Independence Hall, Tel Aviv

.

Dizengoff,  Tel Aviv's first mayor,  loved to ride his horse down the local streets in the 1920s and 30s.

Next to the new (2009) statue on Rothschild Boulevard is the former house of Meir and Zina Dizengoff.
Today it is a museum commemorating the place where David Ben-Gurion signed the Declaration of Independence and declared Israel a State on May 14, 1948.
.

An unusual synagogue and a talking donkey

.

The Friday sun will soon set and you can feel the quiet and calm of the Sabbath Eve settling down on Israel (despite the fact that three Grad rockets were just fired into the south from Sinai).

Here is an unusual synagogue we found in Tel Aviv's historic Neve Zedek neighborhood exactly two weeks ago.
Look at those two arms coming out of the wall,  opening a Torah scroll case! 

And on the ground floor is this tree sprouting the most important Jewish books: Tanach (the Hebrew Bible), Talmud, Shulchan Aruch, Zohar (mystical Judaism), and the Siddur (our prayerbook).

The sign says the congregation, Sukkat Shalom, was founded in 1913. 
The door has the twelve tribes of Israel.

Inscribed above is "How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!"
This is the famous blessing which came out of Balaam's mouth when he was sent by the king Balak to curse the Israelites, and it is this week's Torah portion.
For donkey pictures and the biblical story of Balaam's talking ass, please see my posts here and here.
.
Shabbat shalom.
.

Art in ruins

.

Let's peek in and see what's behind that enticing sign that warns "Caution, abandoned and shut up building."

Lots of buildings in the older neighborhoods of Tel Aviv are now roofless and have their windows blocked up.

Ah, but the mural artist Dede (whose two-headed animals we saw in last week's post)
has given life to the crumbling wall!

The walls have ears (as the old saying goes), but now they have eyes too.
.
(Linking to Monday Murals, Our World Tuesday, and signs, signs.)
.

Trumpeldor Cemetery by night

.

My kind relative who hosted me for the weekend, her apartment overlooks Tel Aviv's historic Trumpeldor Cemetery.
It makes for a pretty quiet neighborhood, except for the frequent jets that come in over the Mediterranean (a block away) and fly over exactly overhead, some with landing gear already down, en route to Ben Gurion Airport.

Only a few plots remain and will go to top VIPs.
Since its founding in 1902, some 5,000 people have been buried there.
Tel Aviv was founded only later, in 1909.

You can see daytime shots of the cemetery and read more about it in my earlier posts:
"So many life stories in a small place" 
and
"Find a grave via SMS"
.
(Linking to inSPIREd Sunday, where bloggers share their photos of houses of worship and sometimes cemeteries.)
.

Rainbow flags of Tel Aviv

.

Tel Aviv has long been known in the world as a very gay-friendly city.

UPDATE/Correction: A reader adds that the rainbow flag in the photo above has nothing to do with gay pride. See more in the comments. 

Here are some of Tel Aviv's many rainbow flags that I photographed a week ago, way before yesterday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

You might be surprised by some things in the Wikipedia article LGBT rights in Israel.
.

Happening now: Tel Aviv's White Night

.

The man sleeping on this bench won't be getting much sleep tonight.
Tel Aviv is having its annual White Night with dozens of free outdoor and indoor  music and cultural events going on till morning.
UNESCO proclaimed Tel Aviv's White City a World Cultural Heritage site in 2003, and since then the White Night has happened every last Thursday of June.
In the White City district there will be decorative illumination of Bauhaus buildings, which is what the world recognition is all about. 
This year's White Night events are a tribute to European culture and are being held in cooperation with the European Union and its member states, featuring artists and chefs from Europe. 
See Ynetnews for a list of the activities.
. 
I'm back home in Meitar, getting a good night's sleep here in the quiet Negev desert.  :)
.

Indoor-outdoor trees

.

Modern Tel Aviv architecture on Hayarkon Street by the sea.
An open space for two trees.
.

Two heads are better than one.

.

Having spent the weekend in the BIG city Tel Aviv, I finally have some street art to contribute to Monday Murals.
Click a few times to see the big picture. 

On his website Dede shares other examples of his "WildLife."

Here's more about him from the same website:

Dede 

Is a Tel-Aviv-based conceptual artist who utilizes various mediums to communicate within the public arena. He has been displaying his art on the streets of Tel-Aviv and other cities worldwide since 2006.
A self-proclaimed ‘urban tourist’, Dede strolls through the dynamic urban environment, complementing it with creations that focus on the absurdity of the urban existence. Dede’s creations aim to promote reexamination of personal and societal conventions. His art revolves around issues of identity, belonging, loneliness, alienation, and the consequent desire to escape reality, either physically or spiritually.
Dede’s art presents the viewer with a dilemma and/or its solution in an ironic and complex way. His public creations present citizens with art that is devoid of the mediation and meddling of galleries or curators.
Influences on Dede’s art include the environment, architecture, art, rhythm, sound, politics, and passersby. It is dependent on impulsiveness, fate and mood. It is spontaneous and entails unrelated ideas that enmesh to form new content.

The thought, idea and message always arise before the production of the piece, and dictate the chosen medium. The urban landscape is part of the creation process as is the final chosen location. As such, the urban environment serves as Dede’s home and is used as a backdrop as well as an integral part of his art.

.
(Linking also to Camera Critters.)