My tiny Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is tiny. Although the complexity of the streets and the dense congestion makes it seems bigger than it is, along with the heat. In the Tel Aviv heat, even the smallest of distances expands because every movement feels like it is happening in slow motion. Being a native New Yorker, I am used to walking but the brisk pace that came most naturally to me there is changing as if inadvertently seeking to accomodate my smaller new surroundings. These days, by New York standards, I am practically ambling. Instead of jaywalking I wait with the others at the crosswalks for the lights to change. In New York this passage of time - especially with no actual cars in sight - would feel like eternity. Here we are all just waiting for the lights to change. As notoriously impatient as Israelis are, nobody seems to really notice or mind.

It’s still less than a month since I arrived in Tel Aviv but I’m adjusting to my new home with surprising ease. It’s tininess had been one of my major “concerns” about moving here - along with the heat and poor customer service. What it feels like instead is incredibly accessible. My sister happens to live on one of the main avenues in Tel Aviv’s so called “Center” which helps. Seven minutes that way is the schoolroom where my two year old nephew goes to gan. Nine minutes in another is the Ministry of Absorption where I need to process my identification papers. The city’s biggest shopping mall, Dizengoff Center, is about ten minutes away. A whopping 25 minutes walk north is the Marina with its nice beaches and cafes. 

Here my expert ability to zigzag through crowded streets or leap up and down subway staircases is useless.

In the midst of this new Tel Aviv life I notice my New Yorker predilections and attachements fall away. I hated New York for most of the reasons I loved it: its perpetually pulsing vibrancy; its alternately glamorous and gritty backdrops; its self-congratulatory hyperacute ON-ness. New York is larger than life and in it I felt small. The plethora of listings and emails and whole magazines about shows and openings and parties somehow all canceled each other out so that in the end I did nothing or not enough - paralyzed by options. This also made me feel small. New York was a movie set but in it I was merely an extra in a movie that was being made about somebody else’s life (most likely a Woody Allen movie considering I lived on the Upper West Side right by Central Park). 

In Tel Aviv I walk down streets among strangers who feel like kindred spirits. I’m not in a Hollywood movie, I’m in an Off-Broadway play and there is an unpoken agreement between us about the script. My sense of connection feels less about Jewishness then togetherness or purposefulness. Here we all are despite the various historic, geopolitical or economic odds. Like pedestrians the world over we rarely make eye contact as we pass, we don’t know each other’s names and sometimes we have outbursts. But familiarity and comfort has replaced the discomfitting undercurrent of anonymity that came with being a mere extra in New York.

I’ve started making plans with greater meticulousness. Because the entertainment pickings are slimmer here making plans requires preparation. I collect the glossy event calendars at cafes and scan the colorful posters posted throughout the city about upcoming festivals with absorption. This “old school” mode of information delivery reminds me of college. Although lacking the vast abundance of options I’m used to, Tel Aviv is so far inspiring me to be carefully selective instead of randomly spontaneous with how I spend my time. I am rediscovering cultural tastes and interests that had somehow gotten lost in the international arts and entertainment ocean of New York. I find several things that I’d like to attend in the weeks and months ahead and note them.

Within tiny Tel Aviv I am finding an expanse that has nothing to do with space but parts of me that are opening up inside. It is like getting reaquainted with someone I used to know. Admittedly this might have less to do with Israel then with this process of creating something new, this rare opportunity to break the set pattern of an existing life in order to more closely examine who I am and what I want against a different backdrop.  A backdrop that, in this case, happens to be rich with quality family time, a heightened awareness of my surroundings, the gratification of conscientious choices and all the potential that comes with new discoveries.

I recently had coffee with an Israeli artist in his 60s who’s spent most of his life in New York. Like many Israelis I’ve spoken to he seemed baffled by my decision to forgo everything New York has to offer for... this. This land of highly charged politics where everything is a constant challenge if not struggle and many smart Israelis are only looking for ways to get out. He asked me pointedly, “Are you trying to reinvent yourself?”

Yes and no. I believe we are all works-in-progress, ever changing and ever evolving hopefully for the better and wiser. If we’re lucky. Right now I welcome the revelations being in Israel affords. The relative smallness of Tel Aviv appeals to me as does the proximity of my sister and baby nephew and also the sea. My Israeli artist friend reminisces about the crisp coolness of Fall in New York and I miss that too. It is almost Halloween and I am watching sunsets on the beach. But just the other day the muggy Tel Aviv heat finally gave way to a breeze that stirs the branches of the trees lining Sderot Chen, and I can even wear a light jacket in the evenings. It may not be Fall in New York but in the aftermath of all that heat, the Tel Aviv air feels just perfect on my skin.