HBT Tour Day 1 in Ha-Eretz!

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Tel Aviv 2018, the “White City”, a bustling, intense, work-hard, play-hard, modern city with high-minded parents. A liberal haven (in an increasingly politically and socially conservative Israel) A rash but stimulating environment for artists and entrepreneurs (but perhaps with diminishing opportunities and challenges for young Israelis?). Just what the Founders intended when establishing the first Jewish city in 1909?

The stage was set for this pondering by our visit to the Trumpeldor Cemetery (where many of Israel’s political and cultural leaders are buried) and to the Beit Hair museum, where on one floor the office of Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv, is preserved, and on another floor, a massive, reverberating stretch of loud extravagant graffiti art by Portuguese street artists is displayed in an exhibit that focuses on urban art.

Our afternoon was spent absorbing the chaos and fun of the Carmel shuk and nahalit Binh Amin art market —- we are well stocked with new jewelry and dried fruits and nuts!

We welcomed shabbat with the reform congregation of Kehilat Halev. The Rabbi and community members shared with us the challenges of developing nOn-Orthodox egalitarian congregations in Israel that is dominated politically and socially by male orthodox rabbinate.