Back to Tel Aviv - Bauhaus, Bialik and Blumenthal

There are many reasons to visit Tel-Aviv. One of the biggest attractions of the city, and the magnet that first drew me here, is its collection of Bauhaus buildings.  There are more Bauhaus/ Modernist buildings here than anywhere else in the world and it was this that secured Tel-Aviv UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2003.

Many of these wonderful buildings are now crumbling, but steps have been taken to preserve them with protected status preventing demolition and governing restoration. The reason for this embarrassment of architectural riches is that during the 1920's and 1930's, many central European Jewish architects came to Eretz Israel either through choice or as refugees, forced out of Germany, Austria and the former Czechoslovakia. Europe's loss was Israel's gain as these architects defined the way Tel-Aviv would look for decades, and indeed the way most of it looks today.

Bauhaus was a design school and philosophy founded in Germany in 1919 until it was forcibly closed in 1933, although it is known that some of the non-Jewish designers co-operated with the Nazi regime and worked throughout the war period. The school's main principle was the unification of arts and crafts in order to achieve "total" works of art. As well as producing interior design items, the Bauhaus style was extremely influential in the architectural world. Although the style developed over a number of years, its key components embraced functionalism and rationalism. Ornament was (generally) rejected but individual character was given to these, almost universally white buildings, by the addition of features including ribbon windows, thermometer windows, balconies, roof terraces and some internal flourishes on staircases or with lighting.

Some buildings feature beautiful curves, perhaps with no better example than the former Cinema Esther, now the Hotel Cinema (pictured below) on Dizengoff Kikar and its sister hotel the Center, directly opposite. Fully restored these buildings give a hint of the grandeur that was Tel Aviv in the 1930's. The architect for the Cinema was Yehuda Megidovich. Work began on the building in 1938 and was completed the following year. Mr. Megidovich was responsible for a number of outstanding buildings in Tel Aviv including the Great Synagogue on Allenby (see it here) and the smaller Moshav Zkenim Synagogue opposite (see it here).



The Cinema is the larger hotel and retains many original features including the dramatic main staircase, movie posters, old cameras and assorted cinema paraphernalia. I must confess a slight prejudice in favour of these hotels as I always stay at the Center when visiting the city. The staff in both hotels are excellent, the location is great and the recent refurbishment of the rooms at the Center is another reason to keep coming back.

Another favourite building of mine is the former home (pictured below) of the great Israeli photographer, Avraham Soskin at the Neve Tzedek end of Lilienblum Street. The house is easy to find and has a commemorative plaque to Soskin. Architect Ze'ev Rechter was responsible for the building which was constructed in 1933. The house includes classic Bauhaus features of asymmetry, roof terrace and a small balcony facing Lilienblum. It stands out as a real jewel on this once very elegant but now somewhat neglected street.



There are many other Bauhaus gems in this most vibrant of cities and its great to discover them by walking the streets. But, if you don't have much time in Tel-Aviv you may prefer to have a guided tour of the key Bauhaus sites. If so, you can do no better than to visit the wonderful Bauhaus Centre on Dizengoff. The centre is owned and run by Micha and Shlomit Gross, and offers tours lasting about 2 hours for a very reasonable 60 shekels. They are real experts in their field and can tell many interesting stories about the city too. If you are more independent you can pick up a self guided tour from the Centre, which is also a great place to see changing exhibitions, or to pick up books, postcards and souvenirs to take home. The current exhibition focuses on Brno in the Czech Republic, which is now on my long list of cities to visit. The Bauhaus Centre also inspired my visit to Eritrea back in 2010 (see here and here) after I saw their excellent exhibition on Asmara. There is also a branch of the Bauhaus Centre in Kikar Kedumin in Jaffa.

A good place to visit for more of the Bauhaus experience is Bialik Street. As well as having some lovingly restored Bauhaus buildings, it also houses a small Bauhaus Museum (pictured below) of interior design items. Exhibits include architectural drawings, Marcel Breuer chairs, Wagenfeld lamps and other Bauhaus classics. The museum is small, but entry is free and its definitely worth a visit. A catalogue is available, price 100 shekels.



Bialik Street has many other delights.  These include my favourite building in the city - Beit Bialik, the former home of Haim Nachman Bialik, generally acknowledged as Israel's national poet. The house was closed for several years for restoration but is now open for visitors. The exterior is in eclectic style rather than Bauhaus and has a distinctly levantine appearance.

The interior is truly stunning. On the ground floor, you can visit the reception room with its beautiful fireplace, deep blue walls and Ze'ev Raban designed ceramics, whilst the lobby is a dramatic deep red. The colours are based on images of the original decoration. The dining room is more subdued but includes some original furnishings. There are also a number of paintings on display from Bialik's collection. these include original works by Reuven Rubin (Hassid from 1933, Rabbi, 1925) and one by Mane-Katz (Jewish couple at a feast, 1928). There are also works by Hermann Struck, Yosef Budko and Pinchas Litvinovsky in various parts of the house. Bialik's study and library have also been restored and are open to visitors.

No photographs are allowed in the Bialik House, but you can buy some very good postcards with excellent images of the interior as well as one showing the original plans of the building. There is currently no English language publication about the house in the small shop and ticket office. This is a shame - a well illustrated guide book would certainly sell, but better still would be an English translation of the fantastic little book they sell about the history of Bialik Street. The pictures alone are very tempting!

There are two other museums on Bialik Street. - The Rubin Museum featuring highlights of the works of Reuven Rubin, a reconstruction of his studio, a short film and a number of interesting documents and artefacts. For me, Rubin's work epitomises the aspirations of the pioneers of the state - showing the beauty of the landscape as well as scenes from urban life. I can almost feel the heat of the hamsun and need to shield my eyes from the hot middle eastern sun when looking at his work. Like several of the early modern Israeli artists (Gutman, Janco, etc) he also acknowledged the Arab presence in his work viewing them in a slightly romantic way but clearly with hopes for an optimistic future. I have another Tel Aviv confession, and that is that Rubin is my favourite artist.  Two of his works hang in my lounge at home - poster format reproductions of course. As well as being a great artist, he was also Israel's first ambassador to Romania when independence was declared in 1948.

You can also find the Tel Aviv City Museum on Bialik Street. It is located in a renovated eclectic style building at the kikar end of the street, opposite the fountain in what was once the Tel Aviv City Hall. There are regular exhibitions of contemporary art - currently an exhibition of the work of Tel Aviv University fashion students. There is also a permanent display of photographs collected from city residents past and present, to mark the city's centenary year. The pictures are grouped into themes such as "the beach" "parks" "festivals" and give a fascinating glimpse of Tel Aviv in its glorious formative years. The museum also has the reconstructed office of the city's first mayor - Meir Dizengoff who was responsible for so much of the development and innovation of the early years.

As if this wasn't enough, just across from the City Museum you can find the Felicia Blumental Centre (pictured below). Established by the famous pianist of the same name. the centre offers several concerts each week, mainly classical but also including jazz, Ladino and other music forms. The Centre also regularly showcases young musical talent with youth performances. There is also a library and a small cafe here, but the cafe is only open for performances.



I went to a concert here some years ago to hear Ari Erev, a local jazz artist, playing a tribute to the deceased piano maestro Bill Evans. The concert was very good and I have since acquired Mr Erev's two CDs, but I also met an interesting character at the interval - an octogenarian named Yehuda. He asked me where I was from and commented that my accent was similar to that of Newcastle - its a little further south than that, but he was close. He told me that he had studied in England in the 1930's and then when war broke out had been unable to return to Eretz Israel, had spent several years living and working in Newcastle and asked me if they still use expressions like "hinnie" and "bonnie lad". I was able to reassure him that they do. Strangely, he also remembered that Newcastle folk are very sociable and some of them like a few drinks. He told me, still somewhat shocked all these years later, that often on the last bus home in the evenings "about one third of the people would be drunk". I was able to reassure him that this tradition has also been maintained although I wouldn't like to guess what the percentage is today. Small world.

Bialik Street also boasts a good cafe - Cafe Bialik at the Allenby end of the street. The interior is cosy and features Gaudi-esque mosaics and a good menu of light meals (Hebrew only last time I went but staff are happy to help). There are tables outside for those who prefer to drink in the fresh air.

Cafe Bialik also offers regular musical performances. One of the great things about Tel Aviv (and Israel) is that some of the smallest places can give you the biggest surprise. I went to Cafe Bialik a few years ago to hear a new young girl jazz singer to find she was the protege of Edna Goren. Not only that, but Ms Goren was present that evening, and not only that, but after ten minutes of resistance to the crowd's cheering, she took the floor herself (no stage here) and led a rendition of La Vie en Rose - a bit different to Yonatan Avishai's version (see here), but nonetheless excellent.

Ah yes, I love Tel Aviv.

Oh, and no news of Dudi...http://www.flickr.com/photos/yekkes/6949547772/in/set-72157627865097166

A postcard from Jerusalem

Street scene near Mahane Yehuda Shuk

Visiting Jerusalem at Pesach is both interesting and frustrating. It is interesting because there is a particular mood here with Pesach and Easter falling at the same time, and the city is even busier than usual. It is frustrating because it's hard to tell whether places will be open or closed. That's because there are a range of interpretations of the Pesach holidays across different businesses. As other seasoned visitors to Israel will know, the only way to avoid frustration is to go with the  flow, accept that you won't be able to get into some places and enjoy those that you can. And there will be plenty to see. Just walking the streets here is walking through history.

A note of caution. You won't read about major tourist sites in this post and you won't read about the political issues that plague the city, but you will read about some of my favourite places and a get a glimpse of the stories of some of the people who live and work in this wonderful city.

It is easy to eat well in Jerusalem and there are many excellent restaurants and cafes. I am a creature of habit and tend to stick to my tried and tested places, occasionally adding somewhere new to my list. These days I usually stay in the Harmony Hotel in Yoel Salomon street in the heart of downtown West Jerusalem. One of the attractions of this street is the wonderful cafe, Tmol Shilshom which is located up a flight of stairs in a courtyard and overlooks the busy Salomon Street below. Tmol Shilshom has an eclectic customer group, ranging from young Orthodox Jews out on dates, to tourists, writers and people who live or work in this part of the city.

The food at Tmol Shilshom is excellent. It works as both a cafe and a restaurant with hearty soups (I HAVE to have the sweet potato soup every time I visit Jerusalem), great pasta, salads, damn good cheese cake and other desserts. Tmol Shilshom is also a bookshop with the book shelves spread around the walls of the cafe, offering mainly second hand books in Hebrew and a smattering of European languages. There are regular literary events here, with book launches and poetry readings (usually but not always in Hebrew) as well as occasional musical evenings.

The cafe is named after the novel by Shmuel Yosef Agnon and roughly translated means "those were the days". Israel's literati have appeared here including Amos Oz, David Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua and the sadly departed and much missed Batya Gur. It's open from 9am until 1am, is kosher (closed on Shabbat) and has al fresco eating and drinking above the courtyard.

Another favourite is Barood, a Sephardi restaurant located in the narrow Jerusalem Passage that joins busy Jaffa Street to the bar-studded Rivlin Street. Barood is a bit of a Jerusalem institution. The restaurant revolves around the owner, Daniella, who appears most evenings and sits at the bar talking to customers old and new. Barood is popular for a number of reasons. The food is good - I like the roasted egg plant in yogurt and also the fried halloumi (feeling hungry just writing about it actually) as well as the fabulous cinnamon ice cream with espresso poured over it. Core blimey. There are regular live music performances at Barood, ranging from Greek traditional music, to Ladino songs, chansons, jazz and just about everything else.

The decor is idiosyncratic to say the least. The walls are adorned with vintage posters, photographs of old Jerusalem, foreign currency, mottoes, aged advertisements, a fascinating collection of cork screws(!) and many other interesting items. But the star of the show is Daniella herself. She once told me that during the first intifada many of her friends left Jerusalem for Tel Aviv because of the daily suicide bombings. Despite losing a very dear and close relative herself in an attack, she persevered and continued to open her restaurant day after day, often with no customers. Her family have been in Jerusalem for eight generations and she wasn't going to be forced out. Perseverance worked and the customers eventually came back. Barood is a bit special - and its open on Shabbat too (not kosher).

As well as eating in Jerusalem, I like to shop. Jerusalem is a bit of a shoppers paradise for me with some great places to rummage through books old and new, a really good music shop and a shuk well worth visiting just to look around even if you don't need to buy anything. I have written about Trionfo before here, but its worth another mention. Father and son Abraham and Gali run this business together having purchased the shop from an Italian book seller some years ago.

The shop is a treasure trove of antiquarian books, old posters, documents from the Mandate period (and even earlier), "objets" and various other paraphernalia. More recently, Gali has begun selling second hand vinyl records - attracting an additional, younger audience to the shop. Abraham and Gali will track books down for customers if they don't have them and I have them to thank for my small (but beautiful) collections of Raban's and Lilien's works. I always manage to find something to buy and never fail to be surprised or delighted by something in the shop. Trionfo is at 9 Dorot Rishonim Street off the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall.

Ben Yehuda is a pedestrianised street with a tragic history including major bombing incidents in 1948, throughout the 1970's and into the current century. Nevertheless, its extremely busy and for me, offers much better opportunities for people watching rather than shopping. As well as Jerusalemites and tourists promenading, it attracts some of the more colourful characters in the city. Last night I saw a group of young Hassidim singing and dancing at almost midnight - I saw the same group here much earlier in the afternoon and if anything they were more energetic earlier on. I suppose this is Jerusalem's version of the Hare Krishna street experience in London.

Ben Yehuda also attracts many street musicians, some of whom are excellent and may well have played in orchestras at some point. Many Russian immigrants who were professional musicians in the old Soviet Union have been unable to find similar work in Israel. At the other end of the scale, just around the corner where Jaffa Street meets Kikar Zion, you can here the worst "singer" in Jerusalem if not in all Israel. I use the term "singer" loosely. He turns up almost every day, armed with a microphone through which he mumbles strange noises in a sort of "sub-crooner" style. I suspect he thinks he is a successor to Sinatra, but the only likeness I can imagine is that he sounds like Sinatra sounds now. If you know what I mean. Still, he seems to get money - perhaps for the humour of it?

Around the corner from Ben Yehuda in Ze'ev Raban Street, is another little gem, the Eighth Note music shop. Located in a side street basement, this is a treasure trove of music and movies. I love the freshness of Israeli jazz and the Eighth Note has a great collection. Even better, you can listen to the music before you decide to buy. The staff are excellent, very helpful and extremely knowledgeable - it's great to find a shop staffed mainly by young people who are so enthusiastic about what they are doing. They are also great sales people and I never leave empty handed. This time I also found a DVD that I intend to watch as soon as I get home - My Sweet Canary - the story of Greek rebetika singer Rosa Eskenazi. Obscure maybe, but I almost passed out with excitement when I saw it! You can here her perform here.

Above - detail of panel in Ze'ev Raban designed original doors of the Bezalel school of arts and crafts

Some readers will know I am a big fan of the Israeli artist Ze'ev Raban. I couldn't miss an opportunity to have another look at some of his designs whilst I am here and paid a visit to the West Jerusalem YMCA where he was responsible for some of the interior designs and some of the external ornament. The building, which opened in 1933, is a real cracker. The architect was Arthur Louis Harmon who also designed New York's Empire State Building. It references middle eastern architectural tradition as well as featuring arts and crafts and art nouveau relishes. The lobby and restaurant are Bezalel/ Raban designed masterpieces with fantastic blue arched lobby ceilings and an Ottoman style heater in the dining room. There are 12 cypress trees in the grounds, referencing the 12 tribes of Israel and 40 pillars in the courtyard to remember the 40 years the Jews spent wandering in the desert.

Above, bar in the YMCA with Bezalel designed features

The building is a symbol for co-existence in the city as set out in the legend on the external staircase by which the building is entered "Here is a place whose atmosphere is peace, where political and religious jealousies can be forgotten and international unity can be fostered and developed". We still have a long way to go with that, but this exquisite building facing the King David Hotel is a real landmark in the city. It also has a very elegant patio cafe complete with fountain where you can sample ok food or just relax with a drink.

Still on the theme of Raban, the little streets around the original Bezalel building, close to Schatz Street and leading up to Bezalel Street itself have come alive since my last visit with extra good quality cafes and daytime craft stalls. There are also some interesting independent stores here, including the Book Gallery on Schatz Street which has a sizeable basement that can't be seen from the street. Another place to browse. There are amusing signs in English and Hebrew asking customers to replace books EXACTLY where they took them from. Some hope.

Above  - tempting baker's stall in Mahane Yehuda

No visit to Jerusalem is complete for me without a visit to the Mahane Yehuda shuk. If you want to see real Jerusalem go here. The covered shuk and the surrounding streets are packed on week days with Jerusalemites of all descriptions buying, selling, searching, talking, arguing, shouting, laughing, drinking coffee, sampling food from the myriad stalls or just wandering and browsing. All Jerusalem life is here - Sephardi stall holders, young Ethiopian workers and shoppers, Orthodox men and women doing the family shopping, tourists taking pictures and the odd schnorrer trying to persuade the gullible to part with hard earned shekels.

I love the smell and the colours of the spice mountains, the calling of the stall holders trying to tempt shoppers away from their competitors, the irresistible aroma of coffee and the halva stall to which my shoes are magnetised. I love watching Orthodox Jews shopping beside scantily dressed Israelis who wouldn't look out of place on a Tel Aviv beach with neither batting an eye lid. And most of all I love the idea that this most authentic of Israeli experiences continues to attract thousands of customers five and a half days each week in order to feed Jerusalem and to keep bread on the stall holder's table too - aside from Pesach that is.

A day in Akko

Akko (or Acre as its sometimes called), is a small city just 30 minutes train ride away from Haifa. I made my second visit there yesterday after a gap of about five years. The city is little different to the way it was then, but I discovered some places I'd missed before and revisited some favourites.

There are two Akko's - the old city and the "new" city. The old city is where everyone makes for and this is because of its well deserved UNESCO World Heritage Site status. The city boats a number of small but bustling khans where you can buy just about any food stuffs, but especially herbs and spices, fruit, fish, meat and brightly coloured sweets. 

There are also many excellent and cheap cafes tucked away in the khans selling probably the best hummus in northern Israel. Humous Said is the one to go for - I confess I went to a more touristy cafe - Abu George, as there was a big queue at Said's and I was too hungry to wait. However, Abu George was also very good - the foul (a type of bean, pronounced "full" so skip the jokes) topped hummus with a couple of warm pitas hit the spot and as many of the Akko cafe owners do, George throws in a free Arabic (or Turkish if you prefer) coffee if you buy a meal here. Abu George is one of the many small restaurants adjacent to the Al-Jazzar mosque. It is interesting to watch how one restaurant fills up while the others are empty or sparsely occupied and then a different one fills up whilst the busy one empties out - for no obvious reason!

The Jezzar Pasha mosque is one of the jewels in Akko's crown. Ahmed al Jezzar Pasha was the Ottoman governor of Akko in the late 18th century. He was a bit of a card, routinely mutilating his subjects and his retinue, apparently to test their loyalty, even going so far as to have them kill members of their family to prove their devotion to him. History remembers him for preventing Napoleon from taking the city in 1799, holding out against the combined forces of the French and the English. He died in 1804 and one can assume there were some fairly relieved mourners at his funeral.

Construction of the mosque began in 1781and it is still in use for prayers. Anyone can visit for a small charge (10 shekels yesterday - about two pounds). If you arrive during prayers you will have to wait for them to finish before you can enter, but this normally only  takes about 20 minutes, so not too long. The mosque is entered by a stone staircase which gives onto an open courtyard with a small fountain, decorative gardens and an arcaded area which can be used for prayers during hot weather. The building is extremely striking with its green domes which dominate the old city, its many coloured ceramic facade and its cool, light interior. Visitors can go into the first part of the prayer hall, see in and take pictures, but you must remove your shoes before entering, dress modestly and in the case of women, cover your head.

Interior, Ahmed al Jezzar Pasha mosque

Just around the corner from the mosque is another link with Al Jezzar - the Turkish bath or hamam, which forms part of the Municipal Museum. The hamam was built as part of the mosque complex in the 1780's and is no longer used for its original purpose. Visitors can see the three rooms built on the Roman model of the dressing room which served a social function and where tea and food could be taken, leading to the tepidarium with warm steam and finally the caldarium with hot steam.

Visitors are treated (or subjected depending on your taste) to an audio-visual presentation with a re-enactment of the days of "the last attendant". Very kitsch but perhaps a good way of introducing visitors to the social aspects of the hamam as well as the more technical side of things. The hamam has been lovingly restored with highlights being the skylights in the dome of the first two rooms which let in rays of light from outside, and the wonderful ceramic tiles that cover parts of the walls throughout the museum. You can buy a combination ticket for the hamam and several of the other sites in the city, but entrance to most places is very cheap.

There has been a Jewish presence in Akko for a very long time - the city is mentioned as part of King David's realm and was given to Hiram, King of Tyre, by King Solomon as a gift for his help in building the Temple. Crusaders took and held the city in 1104, renaming it Saint Jean d'Acre, until it fell to the Mamluks in the 13th century. There are still echoes of this period with St. John's Church serving the local Arab Christian community and it is possible to visit the Crusader tunnel linking the port with the Citadel.

Then followed a period of decline until 1749 when Bedouin Sheik Daher el-Omar took the city and commenced a period of redevelopment that reached its zenith under our old friend Al-Jezzar. The city thrived as an important port until the advent of the steamship and more modern naval technology which necessitated moving most of its business to the larger port at nearby Haifa.

There are two very different synagogues in the city - both well worth a visit. The Ramchal synagogue can be found at the end of a very narrow alley in the old city. It is named for Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, a rabbi and kabbalist who came to Akko with his family in 1743. This Italian rabbi also authored the "Messilat Yesharim", or Path of the Just. The then Jewish community lost its synagogue to Dahar el-Omar who converted it to a mosque, giving the small, plain building that is now the Ramchal as compensation. Luzzatto turned it into a synagogue and services continue today. It is a tiny building but with a very warm and welcoming atmosphere. The shammes (a bit more than a caretaker), Eliyahu is very friendly and welcomes visitors but doesn't speak English so brush up on your Hebrew if you want to ask questions.

Entrance, the Ramchal synagogue

The second synagogue couldn't be more different. Built only in 1965, the Tunisian  synagogue is located in the new city and occupies four floors of a stunning building. All four stories are decorated internally and externally with colourful mosaics from Kibbutz Eilon. The mosaics together with the stained glass windows show scenes from Jewish history, ranging from Biblical times to today, as well as flora and fauna of Eretz Israel. There are some oddities too - the leaning tower of Pisa is depicted on one of the staircases!

It wasn't so easy to visit the Tunisian synagogue. The tourist information staff in the old city provided me with the contact number of a woman called Yafah (meaning beautiful). She helpfully told me I could visit at 5pm. By 5.30 no one had arrived and the gate was locked. I called her again and a very flustered Yafah said she would come herself, immediately.

Sadly, I never did get to see Yafah, but at 5.45 an elderly man turned up with a key and let me in. Although he didn't say, I am fairly certain he was the shammes. Like Eliyahu he was very friendly and gave me the run of the synagogue and told me to take as many photographs as I wanted. We spoke Hebrew with each other and I also found myself speaking in French when Henri, a Parisian whose daughter lives in Akko arrived to visit. Henri was extremely friendly and gave me a lift to the station after my visit so that I could catch my train back to Haifa.

My experience in visiting the Tunisian synagogue reminded me of everything I love about travel - the sense of achievement in finally getting into a building you really want to see (sometimes against the odds!), working with whatever words in whatever languages you have to make yourself understood and also those chance meetings with people from sometimes very different backgrounds and their unsolicited acts of kindness.

Detail, Tunisian synagogue

Perhaps the most important Jewish site in Akko is a building that is not "Jewish" at all. It is the Akko fortress which during the British Mandate period served as the largest prison in northern Israel. It was here  that many members of the various underground movements - the Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi were held. It was from here that one of the most episodes of the Mandate period took place in May 1947 when 251 prisoners managed to escape with the help of the Irgun. The escape is featured in the film Exodus.

However, not all prisoners were so lucky and eight Irgun men were hung here by the British in the last ten years of the Mandate. Most of them were in their early 20's. It is possible to visit the hanging room. I could not bring myself to visit on this occasion having been before.

Finally, no visit to Akko is complete without walking along the seaside promenade which includes the remaining ramparts that made the city difficult to attack in days gone by. The breeze and the smell of the sea are great for cooling down after having strolled in Akko's hot narrow streets. Also great for cooling down is Endomela, a new home made ice cream shop, linked to the well know restaurant, Uri Buri. The ice cream comes in many tempting flavours...and the coffee is good too! 

For more information on places to visit in Akko go to http://www.akko.org.il/english/main/default.asp

For more pictures of Akko, view my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/yekkes/

A postcard from Haifa

Haifa is really three cities - the Carmel with its modern housing, shopping centres and the world famous University; the Hadar - still a very busy shopping area despite its long period of decline and then Downtown the old Ottoman part of the city which also includes Wadi Nisnas and the German Colony.

Haifa is a faded beauty. There are many once magnificent buildings here but too many have fallen into disrepair. The once vibrant Hadar area is a shadow of what it was in accounts from the 1960's and earlier and the Downtown area is crumbling. But despite all this, Haifa is still a great city to visit and to spend time in. I have a soft spot for Haifa. It feels more homely than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. And like Tel Aviv, Haifa is full of stories and memories.

I like visiting parts of the city I am not familiar with and yesterday, for the first time, I walked the full length of the "Nordau pedestrian mall". This is not an American style indoor mall, but a long pedestrianised shopping street full of some of what were once (and could be again), some of Haifa's finest modernist or Bauhaus buildings. It was late afternoon when I took my walk and most of the shops were closed, but honestly speaking, its hard to see how many of them make a living. The street has a number of hairdressers, travel agencies, jewellers, a few cafes, a few old style tailoring shops, some very old fashioned ladies outfitters and a number of businesses of no obvious function from the outside.

The street is planted with trees along each side and I am told the city fathers wanted to replicate the success of Ben Yehuda in Jerusalem, another pedestrianised city centre street. I have to say I am not a big fan Ben Yehuda. It lacks character and is full of low quality tourist stores, so I am not sure why Haifa would wish to emulate that.

Nordau does have a few delights tough. There are some wonderful shops fronts dating from the 1950's and earlier. I especially like Buchsbaum ladies outfitters at number 7, Rosenblatt jewellers and Gloria, another ladies outfitters with somewhat risqué underwear in the window at number 3. These and a few other shops have retained the original fascias and the elegance, even if dated,  that the rest of street must once have had.

It is difficult to see some of the more interesting buildings clearly from the street, as many of the trees have overgrown, blocking views of the upper levels. However, there are several Bauhaus buildings and many retain their original balconies and rounded features that I find so attractive. It is not difficult to imagine that this street must have once been full of shoppers looking at and buying high quality goods, ordering new clothes from tailors, selecting jewellery for special occasions and enjoying coffee and cake in a stylish cafe. Its not too late...many of these buildings could still be saved but someone needs to act soon if this important part of the city's built heritage is not to be lost forever.

At the Binyamin Gardens end of Nordau there is a public square with a cement "amphitheatre" and a small park full of children playing and of old people sitting and chatting. Yesterday there was a group of older Russian speaking men playing dominoes at great speed, with great excitement and at great volume.

Rina Frank's book, "Every house needs a balcony", a fictionalised account of her upbringing as the child of Romanian immigrants during the 1960's gives some idea of what the city was like then. It might also explain why I have so many photographs of buildings with balconies! If you look for it on Amazon, ignore the couple of spiteful reviews it received. It's definitely worth a read. My advice.

Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that I have some favourite cafes in Haifa. My very favourite is an old fashioned bakery that doubles as a cafe - Spiro in Jaffa Street. They make their patisserie on the premises and I especially like their individual cherry pies and their version of baklava. The coffee is nice and strong and its easy to find a seat, relax, read and take a few quiet moments. Spiro has very helpful and friendly staff including Shoshi who went beyond the call of duty to help me with my Hebrew studies, corrected my grammar and told me some interesting stories about Haifa. She also allowed me to sample one of the flour-less biscuits being prepared for Pesach. Thanks Shoshi!

I also like a small cafe called "Goodies" on Hanassi Boulevard on the Carmel. It is located in one half of a very well preserved Bauhaus building and offers a great range of cakes and pastries with coffee just the way I like it - nice and strong. The cafe has recently been taken over by Ronen, who is also very friendly and told me how difficult it is in Haifa these days to make money from a small business. Like Dudi in my post card from Tel Aviv, Ronen also had a successful business until the first intifada in 2000. From that time he explained that business is very tough and that many Israelis think of leaving the country at least for a few years to be able to make some good money and to re-establish themselves.

Whilst on the subject of food, no visit to Haifa is ever complete for me without at least one meal at Fattoush. Located in an old Templar building on Ben-Gurion Boulevard in the German Colony, Fattoush has excellent humous, great salads (big and tasty - my favourite is the halloumi) and a good choice of other dishes. I like to sit outside in the evening and if you sit by the garden wall facing Mount Carmel you can see the Baha'i Shrine in all its evening splendour, lit up against the night sky. Incidentally, whoever chooses the music has great taste - they normally play a selection of lounge type jazz, some chansons and a range of traditional and more modern Arabic music. Keep up the good work.

But Haifa isn't just historical buildings and restaurants. The city has a number of good museums. I especially like the City of Haifa Museum on Ben-Gurion Boulevard, (you could combine a visit with lunch at Fattouche!) located in another refurbished Templar building. The current exhibition is called "Magical Theatres" and it looks at the history of cinema in Haifa. Cinema became extremely popular in Haifa and in Israel generally during the 1930's, when some stunning cinemas were built, many in modernist or art deco style.

Many of these cinemas have now gone - victims of falling attendances and of eventual demolition. Most Haifa cinemas are now in out of town shopping malls. Of course, its great to have the choice of seeing several different films in one cinema, but I can't help but think I'd much rather see a movie at the now gone Armon Theatre, designed by architect Shmuel Rozov and opened in 1935 seating 1,800 people.  The Armon had a sliding roof that would be opened on warm summer evenings allowing the audience to watch the movie under the stars. It also boasted silver coloured walls and windows that the ushers would close with a long stick before the beginning of each show, apparently provoking cheers of excitement among the children in the audience.

Sadly, the Armon is now gone, but this excellent exhibition allows the chance of a glimpse into that wonderful world through photographs, movie posters, architects drawings, cinema tickets and a re-created cinema showing newsreel, old trailers, adverts for local shops and film clips.

The exhibition also includes detailed reference to the Ovitz family from Romania, small people who survived Mengele and Auschwitz. Before the second world war they had achieved fame in Romania as accomplished musicians. Coming to Eretz Israel after the war, they ran two cinemas and a cafe. They were immortalised in the recent Iraeli film "Pa'am Hayiti" (shown as "The Matchmaker" in the UK)

The catalogue is excellent and includes a reasonable amount of text in English if you don't read Hebrew, but its worth it for the pictures alone.

The Mane-Katz Museum on the Carmel is another favourite. The current exhibition "Sanctity - art - aesthetics" traces the attempts of early modern Jewish artists to use folk motifs from their original context as religious elements, integrating them into secular items. As well as being a great artist, Mane-Katz also collected Judaica and the exhibition includes many items from his collection.

I found the room featuring books and prints particularly interesting. It features examples of the works of Ryback, Altman, Chagall, El Lissitsky and others, including examples of short lived art magazines from the 1920's and 1930's. A couple of items by Nathan Altman and Joseph Tchaikov also show how Jewish artists contributed to the creative explosion that accompanied the early years of the Soviet Union, before the great purges and suppression that was to follow, resulting in many of them going into exile or worse.

 The exhibition features a number of quotes to illustrate the different issues it covers. The Yerachmiel Radison quote from 1920 still rings true and not just for Jews but for all people "It is important to collect beautiful and useful art for the Jewish masses, for the new Jewish folk-culture". Art for the masses, now there's a thing.

Postcard from Tel Aviv

I need to start with a confession. I absolutely LOVE Tel Aviv. I LOVE it. I love almost everything about it. I love the crowds, I love the noise, I love the cafes, I love the architecture, I love the history, I love the modernity and most of all, I love the people.

Israelis are great story tellers and I like stories. People here tell you things you would never get told in London. For example, my taxi driver on the way from Ben Gurion airport to my hotel. Let's call him Dudi  in case anyone he knows is reading. 

He wasn't always a taxi driver. He once owned a successful cafe in the the Dizengoff Centre in Tel Aviv. It was very successful until the worst days of the first intifada when the customers stopped coming, somewhat reasonably as shopping centres were prime targets for suicide bombings day after day. Dudi is entrepreneurial. Before the cafe he had a bar in Netanya for five years. He told me he spent most of that time drunk or in a smoke induced haze. He still likes to drink a little and smoke a little, and overdid it a friend's party at Purim. This was some party since a famous film and TV actress turned up with a surprise present for his friend - a massive reefer - do people still use that word? I couldn't possibly name her but she's a bit of a favourite of mine.

Now you might think Dudi is a bit of a waster, but actually he's not. He told me he is searching for something, that he knows something is missing. He is looking for whatever this thing is through study of Kabbalah. He studies as part of a group and says he feels calmer since he joined. Unfortunately at the Purim party Dudi got too friendly with a lady from his group and now worries he is the subject of gossip amongst his fellow students. It is, he says, "a balagan". Balagan is not a Hebrew word, its probably Arabic and it means a big mess. I like this word. It sounds like what it means. Poor Dudi. Another group perhaps? (Update - balagan is a Russian word, meaning "brothel" - thanks Osnat - no news of Dudi though!)

My hotel is the fabulous Center Hotel on Zamenhof. I have been staying here for several years. I love it. Its a great central location, the staff are very friendly and its been renovated since I was last here. Its in a great Bauhaus building on Kikar Dizengoff (Dizengoff Circus to you). Meir Dizengoff was the first Mayor of Tel Aviv and had a major role in developing the city. Zamenhof invented Esperanto. 

I said I love the cafes and I do. My favourite has always been the Dizengoff branch of Cafe Idelson. Nice, light and modern on the ground floor of a two story building on Dizengoff, it has the best cakes in Tel Aviv - in my expert opinion. I nearly always have the pistachio mousse with black cherries together with a very strong coffee. Alternatively, I have been known to be tempted by the passion fruit cheesecake. Staff are friendly and helpful and are usually able to spot people like me who would take the rest of their lives to manage the Hebrew version of the menu.

Another little gem is Cafe Mersand on the junction of Frishman and Ben Yehuda streets. You can almost smell the sea from the pavement tables - its a three minute walk away. Cafe Mersand is a little run down and attracts a young(ish) Bohemian Tel Aviv crowd, but it also has an interesting story attached to it. For many years, a group of Yekkes ladies (that's middle class German speaking Jews who mostly came here in the 1920's and 1930's, in case you don't know) have gathered here on Friday mornings to drink coffee, eat strudel and talk about their children, their grand children and perhaps also about darker times in the past. 

They are very neat ladies, with proper attire, jackets (yekkes!), careful hair and make-up and with the type of manners that you don't see anywhere else these days. They speak German with each other. It is not unusual to hear German spoken here, but mainly by tourists. For some reason Germans like to come here, perhaps they have heard about the ladies. But a few years ago I noticed that when German tourists came to the Mersand on the Friday morning and looked in the direction of the ladies, they switched to Hebrew. There are fewer ladies each year, and as they leave us a little piece of Tel Aviv leaves with them.

The Yekkes helped create a vibrant cafe society in Tel Aviv (and elsewhere in Israel) and it would not have been unusual to find the likes of actress Hanna Rovina, poets Shlonsky and Bialik, artists Rubin and Gutman drinking, debating, planning new projects and dreaming together in the years before the second world war. It occurred to me on this visit that cafes are again becoming creative places, but in a different way. Many Tel Aviv cafes offer free wi-fi and you can see Tel Avivian coffee drinkers bashing away on their laptops just about everywhere. Doubtless some of this is "business" but I am sure there are also poets, novelists and playwrights amongst them...

I like to find new cafes to visit and followed a friend's recommendation to try Cafe Gidi also on Frishman. Its a small cafe with a tiny front terrace facing onto the main road but also with a little patio garden at the back with several tables, a number of interesting lamps, shady trees, a pond and some garden gnomes. Not surprisingly, Cafe Gidi also has a story. Gidi is the son of one Aba Dill, an Afghan Jew who came to Eretz Israel in 1935 aged 16. Aba learned how to make lampshades and soon established a workshop in the Florentin district of the city. Son Gidi joined him and eventually took over the business, opening "The House of Lamps" store in Ramat Gan in 1976. After many years, and struggling to compete with mass produced imports, Gidi closed the business and reinvested instead in a "house of coffee". The lampshades you can see here are from the old days.

Something else I love about Tel Aviv is the easy access to really high quality live music. In just a few days here I have been spoiled for choice. On Wednesday night I enjoyed an Ethiopian influenced jazz concert at the Hasimta Theatre in Jaffa. The theatre is primarily a venue for drama but has a weekly jazz night. It is an atmospheric space with the audience seated at little tables in a dark, cave-like room built deep into the walls of old Jaffa. The quintet - Shabate - demonstrate the diversity of Israeli society, the sax playing vocalist is Ethiopian, at least two of the group are Mizrachi and three are "religious". Their set was interesting. They began with a very cool, almost Brazilian sounding jazz number before delving into more African sounds and even a jazz version of a traditional Pesach song, all with sudden changes in rhythm and direction.

Last night I went to Levontin 7, another small venue, this time in a basement in the Florentin district of the city. I have been here before - I was lucky enough to see Maurice el Medioni and Omri Mor perform "Oriental" piano three years ago, and still get goose pimples thinking about it. This time it was another pianist - Yonatan Avichai. Yonatan has played with most of the top Israeli jazz groups, but this was a solo performance. He played continuously for over an hour, mixing free form jazz, with modern classical music and managing to knit in some jazz standards including "I've got it bad and that ain't good" and a pretty wild version of "Alexander's ragtime band".  Levontin 7 is a very intimate venue and the audience is very close to the artist. I could hear Yonatan making those strange grunting noises pianists often make and see very clearly his changing facial expressions. Playing a musical instrument is an intensely physical exercise for some musicians. It was a great performance and a somewhat emotional and very tired looking Yonatan treated us to a borderline camp version of "La vie en rose" as an encore. And of course, we loved it!

More to come...

Two nights at the theatre - The Master and Margarita at the Barbican and Purge at the Arcola

Is it just me or is there some extra special drama on the London stage at the moment? Having recently seen "Collaborators" at the National, I have developed a bit of a Soviet theme, seeing Theatre de Complicite's stunning dramatisation of Bulgakov's novel, "The Master and Margarita"at the Barbican, and the deeply disturbing "Purge" by Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen at the new Arcola in Dalston.

The plays are set in different times - "The Master" in Moscow in 1938 at the height of the Soviet period and works through themes of good and evil, truth and lies. Bulgakov particularly attacks the "middle class" of the Soviet empire in the form of the literary club "MASSOLIT" whose members routinely accommodated the excesses of the regime to make sure their own substandard work was published, more interesting work suppressed and that they held on to the material luxuries forbidden to most of their countrymen.

"Purge" is somewhat different. Set in post Soviet Estonia, it examines the impact of decades of violence and oppression, the appalling choices faced by ordinary people and the terrible compromises some made with the regime in order to survive. This reaches its zenith in the description of main character Aliide's enforced participation in the torture of her 10 year old niece in 1947 and her subsequent denouncement of her own sister because she could no longer face her. Aliide's speech about making compromises with the regime in order to survive, whatever that regime might be, sums up the choices faced by many people under totalitarian regimes of all hues.

The physical staging of the two productions could not be less alike. "The Master" is played at the Barbican. Full use is made of the large stage with stunning backdrops, technology and music. "Purge" can be seen in the very small studio at the Arcola, the actors very close to the audience and with minimal staging  - all of the action taking place with a single backdrop apart from a short use of video at the beginning of the play.

Both plays are dark but have have moments of comedy. In "The Master" Woland, and his entourage engage directly with the audience, Koroviev even leaving the stage to examine the attire of women in the front row, suggesting they are wearing expensive designer clothes until he stops in front of one women to say "oh yes, Primark". In "Purge" Allida, - is asked by her unexpected visitor, Zara, why there is excrement on her windows. Aliide replies "Well that's what happens in the country". We later find out its been thrown there by neighbours who know that Aliide's late husband was an informer for the Soviet regime and her words take on a darker meaning.

Both plays consider redemption. In "The Master and Margarita", Margarita and her lover are reunited after his death and her pact with Woland, who may or may not be the devil, although they are not allowed full daylight, they are granted peace. Aliide's redemption or purging, is one of flames - she douses herself and her home in paraffin and strikes a match, but only once she has made sure her niece's daughter is safe and has a new future.

There are also flames in "The Master" when the banned novelist Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny, Margarita's lover, burns his own work - the manuscript of the novel within the novel, (or in this case the play within the play) about Pilate and Yeshua, set in Jerusalem and used to illustrate ideas of censorship and power throughout history. Woland restores his work to him saying "Manuscripts don't burn". This is perhaps the best known phrase from Bulgakov's novel and affirms the ability of art to outlast political regimes. This is somewhat ironic given that the book remained unpublished throughout his life. He died in 1940, aged just 48with no indication that the book would ever see the light of day. It remained at least partly suppressed in the Soviet Union until 1973.

I loved the new Arcola. Its in a section of the old paint factory in what is becoming a very "happening" part of Dalston, adjacent to a bohemian cafe/ bar and just across the road from Dalston's trendy new library. The theatre has retained several of the features of the building including the fantastic kiosk that is used as the ticket office, whilst the tiny cafe is furnished with great old, somewhat "distressed" tables, chairs and lamps. Good coffee too.

The Arcola has another interesting play coming, called " A Warsaw Melody" playing for one month from the end of March. Written by Leonid Zorin in 1967, it is a romance between a Russian man and a Polish woman during Stalin's reign. The theme continues...

Cairo - looking for a lost city

I have written here and here about my visit to Eritrea in 2010 At the time, the quickest way to get to Eritrea was to fly with Egyptian Airlines via Cairo. I decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss and spent a few days in Cairo on the way home.

Yes, I visited the pyramids, the Egyptian Museum, the Citadel, mosques and other "normal" tourist attractions, but I went to Cairo to search for a different part of this enormous city's history. I had read several books about Cairo in the first half of the 20th century when it was an extremely cosmopolitan city, peopled by Greeks, Italians, Armenians and Jews as well as Arabs and a whole range of other peoples. This was the city of Naguib Mahfouz, the city with a thriving cafe society, with exquisite art deco and art nouveau buildings, and the city of great musicians and singers such as Layla Murad, Oum Kalthoum and Abdel Wahab.

As I expected, much of this Cairo had long since disappeared. The population is much less diverse due to many "foreigners" being driven out during the 1950's and 60's and a growing intolerance of minority groups. The grand buildings from this period are for the most part neglected and the cafes were a shadow of the delights described in the novels of Mahfouz. But despite this, there were glimpses of times gone by and now more than ever, I am glad that I took what might have been the last opportunity for some time, to enjoy them.

One of my lasting memories of the city will be the deafening noise and the incredible mass of people who flood the city streets from early in the morning until very late at night. It was not unusual to see families with small children promenading along the main shopping streets of Cairo as late as midnight and beyond. The streets in the downtown area where I stayed were full of shops selling clothes, fabrics, food, shoes, books, electronic equipment, assorted junk and just about anything you might ever want or need. As well as the shops, there were hundreds of street traders setting up stall on the kerb side again selling all manner of things, including impromptu book stalls with huge collections of books and magazines in Arabic, CDs, DVDs, watches and a variety of gadgets.

So, what did I find in my search for an earlier time? Well I found my hotel to begin with. The Talisman Hotel de Charme, which sits on the upper floors of a belle époque building at 39 Sharia Halat Tarb. Wonderfully decorated in North African style, it was friendly, had a great little library and computer lounge, offered advice on how best to reach different places and which taxis to use or avoid, was spotlessly clean and best of all, was managed (owned?) by a fearsome French speaking woman of a certain age, dressed in black sheath dresses, hair in a chignon and eyebrows plucked within a quarter of an inch of their lives.

Each morning at breakfast there was a sweet smile and "Bonjour" from madame, but the darker side was also visible. The breakfast room staff were young, uniformed Egyptian men. If she thought they were talking to each other too much or was displeased with the positioning of a single item on the tables, one of the thin eyebrows would arch and a particular look would be given to the nearest employee, who knowing she meant business would instantly correct the fault. They really don't make them like that anymore. Sadly.

The hotel was accessed either by a lung squeezing walk up a very impressive staircase with art nouveau metalwork or in a fantastic lift with the old style metal draw-across gate. The lift carried an interesting notice. "Dear guests, please note, the hotel does not employee a lift attendant. Anyone claiming to be the attendant is not the attendant and should not be given money". Very entrepreneurial. I like it.

The downtown area was the focus of my evening explorations and of the third day I spent in Cairo. For the first two days I took a driver and a guide to help me navigate the city, to get as quickly as possible from one place to another in order to maximise the time and to help me survive the robust harassment at the major tourist sites. It felt like a good plan, but I hadn't bargained for being harassed by the guide who also snook in a few visits to see "a demonstration" of carpet making, papyrus manufacturing and a range of other attempts at getting me to part with my hard earned money for stuff I didn't want. He eventually got the message when I told him I didn't want to see demonstrations of anything and if I wanted to buy any presents, it wouldn't be at any of these places. Best to be clear I always find.

But back to the down town exploration. I had read a lot about this area. Once heavily populated by Europeans, it is still home to some very fine, albeit neglected buildings. Their names evoke days long gone by, for example the former Cicurel and Ades department stores on 26th July Street and Sharia Emad El-din respectively. The Ades building  (pictured below) is particularly striking with its stylish corner tower and art deco features. Both were formerly owned by Jewish families, originating from Izmir (Cicurel family) and Aleppo (Ades family). Both were confiscated by the Egyptian government following the 1957 Suez crisis.

Former Ades department store

The Trieste Building in Sharia Qasr el-Nil is an art nouveau influenced building designed by Antonio Lasciac, for the Assicurazioni Generali Trieste insurance company. Lasciac is a wonderful example of the former cosmopolitan nature of this city, an Italian-Egyptian architect, born in Trieste, he was responsible for several buildings in Cairo and this one has been described as being neo-Islamic in style. There are beautiful ceramic tiles on the front of the building bearing its name.

Not too far away, you can find the Yacoubian Building at 34 Talaat Harb, next door to the art deco Miami Theatre. It was built by Armenian businessman Hagop Yacoubian in 1934. The building, whose inhabitants were the subject of Alaa Al-Aswany's book of the same name, was once the home to wealthy business owners, foreigners and government ministers. This all changed with the 1952 revolution that deposed King Farouk and eventually put Gamal Abdel Nasser into power. Many of the former residents fled (or had to flee) the country and the building became home to military officers and their families. The rooftop spaces which feature significantly in the book were initially intended as storage areas but over several years have developed into living places - in effect, a roof top shanty town. The excellent  book is a microcosm of Egyptian society, tackling subjects as diverse as Islamic fundamentalism, corruption and homosexuality, illustrating the hopes and fears of the building's residents. The 2006 award winning film of the book, directed by Marawan Hamed is also well worth a viewing.

Nobel Prize winning author, Naguib Mahfouz, one of my all time favourite writers explores these themes across his many books. His most famous work - the Cairo trilogy (Sugar Street, Palace of Desire and Palace Walk) follows the changing fortunes of the Al Jawad family from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1950's. The trilogy begins with the unquestioned authority of the patriarch Ahmad, the stirrings of rebellion amongst his sons as the Egyptians protest against British influence, the development of new and warring political groupings and pressure for social change. As the story develops we see Ahmed's power wane, his wife's authority increase and his sons take differing routes including taking on some of their apparently pious father's penchants for drinking, visiting prostitutes and indulging in a range of vices. Mahfouz' descriptions of the descent into old age and infirmity is extremely touching as Ahmad comes to realise that his power has gone.

Like many of his books, the Cairo Trilogy shows the less pretty side of Cairene life, but perhaps his most notorious work was Midaq Alley, named after and based on the inhabitants of, a back street in the city. The list of characters includes an hashish selling cafe owner who has a predilection for young men, a self-proclaimed dentist who sells false teeth sourced from dead bodies, a matchmaker, a baker who beats her husband with her slippers, a politician, a pimp and a beautiful young woman dreaming of a better life. Its a great story, sad and funny, and a good introduction to the type of characters Mahfouz draws so well.

Mahfouz was an habitué of many of Cairo's cafes. Coffee was introduced to Egypt from Yemen in the middle ages and has been popular ever since. There are literally hundreds of "ahwas" in Cairo - holes in the wall coffee houses where men sit and talk, drink, and play board games. Some ahwas are a little more sophisticated and Mahfouz' favourite was Al-Fishawis in Khan el-Khalili (pictured below). Al-Fishawis has high ceilings, tall mirrors, battered old furniture, a little corner dedicated to the writer and his friends and still serves a great cup of Arabic coffee with a small plate of baklava and other sweets. I spent a short time there and was happy to note that amongst the tourists, there were still many Cairenes (men and women). I was fascinated by a woman in a bright purple outfit with richly hennaed hair peeping from under her hijab.

El-Fishawy cafe

The European communities left their mark on cafe society in Cairo, with the formerly Swiss owned Groppi's at Midaan Talat Harb once being the preferred cafe of the middle classes, popular with Jews and Armenians in particular. In her beautifully written book, "The Man in the white sharkskin suit", Egyptian born Lucette Lagnado writes about being taken there by her father as one of the most enduring memories of her childhood.

The book is an excellent record of a society that is no more - that of Egyptian Jewry, at its peak consisting of up to 80,000 people, now numbering less than 100 having been driven out in the 1950's and 1960's due to increasingly virulent and often violent anti-semitism, economic discrimination and wholesale confiscation of assets. As in many Arab countries, as Jews left they were forbidden to take items of value and many were robbed by customs officers and police as they boarded ships or planes. Readers wanting to know more about this period and the fate of other Jewish communities in Arab countries should visit the excellent website Point of no return.

Today's Groppi's (pictured below) is disappointing. The exterior of the cafe is as striking as in any photograph of earlier times with the beautiful, brightly coloured mosaic walls looking out over the Midaan, but the interior has been hacked to pieces with the most appalling bad taste plastic furnishings in the inner room and horror upon horrors, a massive TV screen. Lagnado's father would not have approved. And sadly the patisserie is nothing special either.

Groppi's cafe

If Groppi's was disappointing, I was grateful to my guide for showing me a cafe that was an absolute delight. The El Shems cafe (pictured below) near Midan Orabi in the passage by 4 Sharia Tawfiqa is beyond kitsch, with every patch of wall decorated with brightly coloured images of dancers, animals and scenes from ancient Egypt, whilst the customers enjoy coffee, mint tea, sweets and the obligatory water pipe or sheesha. I even ventured back to this cafe on my own in the evening to drink coffee and read my book, as well as to observe the backgammon games and the comings and goings of the customers. Another treat is the Oum Kalthoum cafe on Sharia Al-Azbakiyah - a total tribute to the great vocalist, bedecked with her pictures and playing a non-stop soundtrack of her thousands of recordings. Good coffee too.

El Shems cafe

Regular readers will know that as well as my special interest in coffee and cakes, I have a bit of a thing for book shops. Cairo did not disappoint and I found two particularly good shops - Lehnert and Landrock, founded by the German photographers of the same name. The main branch is in Sharia Sherif, still in Downtown and as well as books they sell great postcards and prints of old photos (including some of their own), maps of Cairo and Egypt and guide books in a range of languages. I was tempted to part with a tidy sum for a number of postcards from the 1950's, including some stamped with "United Arab Republic" - the name of the short lived union between Egypt and Syria (1958-61). There is another branch near the Sphinx. Also excellent, and with great staff was Shorouk at Midaan Talat Harb which has a good collection of Egyptian fiction translated into English. They are open until 11pm every day.

I managed to visit two synagogues whilst in Cairo. The Ben Ezra synagogue in the Coptic Cairo compound is easy to visit. The site of the famous Cairo Genizah, the synagogue dates from the 12th century, was restored in the 1980's and acts as a museum now, serving no religious function. The building was busy with tourists - although photography is strictly forbidden - and was in excellent condition but has a terrible sadness about it in that the community that built it, used it and had centuries of continuous history is long gone. This sadness is similar to that of many synagogues in central and eastern Europe that are also without communities following the Holocaust. Fortunately this was not enacted on the Jews of Egypt but they too suffered appalling anti-semitism that eventually forced them out of the country.

Shar Hashamaim synagogue, Adley Street

I also visited the stunningly beautiful Shar Hashamaim synagogue on Adley Street. This was somewhat more difficult to visit. The building had been the object of an attempted terrorist attack a few months before my visit and had a heavy armed  police and military presence, with strict questioning on the purpose of my visit and lengthy examination of my passport before I was admitted. The interior is beautifully preserved with many art deco style features (although it dates from an earlier period - 1905). A woman was on duty inside the synagogue to explain in very limited English the different features of the building. She was wearing a cross around her neck. She allowed me to take pictures but told me to be quick, to take only a few and to not tell anyone I had done so. Photographs are strictly forbidden, including of the exterior which is a terrible shame as this is one of the most interesting buildings in the Downtown area, featuring palm tree symbols and Cecil B. de Mille style architecture. Services are very occasionally held here but rarely with a minyan and most of the congregants tend to be foreign visitors or embassy staff.

For those interested in knowing more about the history of Egyptian Jewry, Andre Aciman's book "Out of Egypt" is an excellent account of their twentieth century experience, whilst the flickr group Les Juifs d'Egypte is a wonderful photographic record of the community.

So, did I find what I was looking for? Was it worth the stopover on my way back from Eritrea? Definitely yes. The city still offers a glimpse into the Cairo I imagined, with the Yacoubian and Trieste buildings enduring, the Ades store closed but still a magnificent site, the sadness and the beauty of the empty synagogue on Adley Street, the delights of Al-Fishawis, the continuing interest in literature with book shops full of browsers and book stalls in the street managing to make a living and my little find - the El Shems cafe. Will I go back? There are still things I would like to see again, to understand better, and things I missed in the short time I was there. Time will tell.

Collaborators at the National Theatre "It's man versus monster Mikhail..."

John Hodge's new play "Collaborators" is currently running in the Cottesloe at London's National Theatre. It is very difficult to get a ticket but I finally managed it earlier this week and am very glad that I persevered.

The play shows the once officially "banned" writer Mikhail Bulgakov struggle with a request that he write a play about Stalin's younger days to mark the dictator's 60th birthday. Bulgakov, played by Alex Jennings, is plagued by nightmares about being chased by Stalin - demonstrated in an extremely funny and almost slapstick opening where the dream is played out, and expects a knock at the door in the middle of the night as did many writers and artists during this time. When the knock eventually comes and the NKVD (secret police) agent arrives, it is to inform him he will be writing the play for Stalin's birthday rather than to incarcerate him in Lubyanka.

We see Bulgakov's initial resistance to the task, refusing to co-operate with a regime he opposes. Early scenes show him as a principled liberal, devastated by the banning of his play "Moliere" which shows the great French writer dying as a result of "the King's displeasure" - a clear reference to state censorship and persecution of those who oppose the regime. And it is his desire to see his works produced that eventually proves his undoing. Offered the opportunity to be "unbanned" in return for writing a tributary play to the young Stalin, he agrees to co-operate, but finds that he can't write anything. Stalin offers him a compromise, that he himself will write the play in Bulgakov's name if Bulgakov agrees to deal with Stalin's "paperwork" and sign "JS" against instructions against the Five Year Plan and production of steel, coal and other goods.

As the play develops, we see Bulgakov showered with luxuries unavailable to the vast majority of Soviet citizens - real coffee, good food, his dress improves and he suddenly has access to good health care in contrast to the early scenes where he is told he will die from his condition, that there is no cure and that he will die soon.

Bulgakov is drawn in, co-operates, finds it amusing at first but when things eventually turn nasty, with the round-up of former Soviet heroes such as Kamenev and Bukharin, he starts to worry. Interestingly, Stalin refers to Kamenev as "Rozenfeld" during their discussions - the second time in a week that I have come across this particular case of Soviet anti-semitism (see here). He thinks he can prevent the descending reign of terror by suggesting "further enquiries" rather than allowing trials to go ahead but to his horror this leads to mass arrests, deportations and worse - including the disappearance of his erstwhile liberal and petty bourgeois lodgers.

Bulgakov's former admirers slip away as they hear him parroting the phrases of the NKVD and of Stalin, explaining away the early excesses referred to in the play in return for having his own works performed. Bulgakov's co-operation and developing closeness with Stalin replays the Faustian story of making a pact with the devil, and like Faust it ends badly, with Bulgakov realising his errors too late and then dying anyway due to the illness referred to at the beginning of the play.

Simon Russell Beale excelled in the role of Stalin, combining understated humour with an almost unspoken menace that turns to physical violence at the end of the evening. Early on, he plays the character as a simple, Georgian, still making references to his religious training, speaking romantically of his early days as an agitator in the Caucasus, but slowly revealing his true character and his evil genius. The arch manipulator, he flatters Bulgakov "I am your number one fan", playing on the writer's vanity and eventually flooring him physically but more devastatingly with the speech "Killing my enemies is easy. The challenge is to change the way they think, to control their minds. And I think I controlled yours pretty well. In years to come, I'll be able to say: Bulgakov? Yeah we even trained him. He gave up. He saw the light. We broke him, we can break anybody. It's man versus monster Mikhail. And the monster always wins..."

Mark Addy in the role of Vladimir, the NKVD man was also magnificent. Bullying and cajoling, getting the job done, demonstrating alternately his worldliness and his insecurity and inferiority complex in relation to the intellectuals, he came over for me, strangely, as perhaps the most human character in the play. Strange because he was clearly brutal, ambitious and greedy but human in that his buying into the regime was more honest than that of Bulgakov. The lesser educated man thoroughly understood the rules and consequences of Soviet life and how to play them much better than the famous writer.

In real life, Bulgakov did write a play about Stalin and had a difficult and volatile relationship with the Soviet regime. Graduating as a doctor in Kiev in 1916, he quickly gave up medicine to concentrate on writing, but many of his works were banned with some not being published until decades after his death. By 1930, he had become so frustrated that he took the daring step of writing to Stalin asking to be allowed to emigrate. Stalin telephoned him personally and offered to arrange a job for him at the Moscow Arts Theatre instead. He worked theatre with theatrical giant Stanislavsky, with whom he also had a volatile relationship, produced several plays and his acknowledged masterpiece, the novel "The Master and Margarita". This did not make its first appearance until 1966 due to the persistence of his widow, Elena, although even then only parts of it were published, eventually surfacing in a complete version in 1973.

He contracted a fatal illness in 1939 and died in 1940.

I have to confess to only having read one Bulgakov novel - "Black Snow", and that quite recently. Despite being a bit of a Russophile, at least culturally, I have mixed feelings about Russian novels. Apart from the fact that many are scattered with casual (or not so casual) anti-semitism, lots of them are, well..long. I have reached the age where an 800 pager can seem very daunting. I still have lots of books I want to read. Time is precious.

Black Snow isn't terribly long, but it is interesting. It is a thinly disguised attack on Stanislavsky and some of the other leading lights of the Moscow Art Theatre where Bulgakov worked during the 1930's. The book begins with an attempt at suicide and ends with the revelation that the narrator is already dead having made a further, successful attempt at ending it all.

This relatively short and often amusing novel, which is unfinished, was written at the very end of his life in the late 1930's, just 20 years or so after the establishment of the Soviet Union and in much the same way as "Collaborators" does, it shows that despite the alleged worker's paradise there was still a very clear class structure in Russian society, based on patronage and co-operating with the regime.

"Collaborators" is set to transfer to the larger Olivier Theatre at the National on April 30th and several performances are already sold out.

See also Building the revolution