WHENTHE OLD MEETS THEBOLD!
From holy sites to glitzy night life, Israel is full of contrasts
JERUSALEM, the holy site of three major religions, is the city where you pray. Tel Aviv, whose skyscrapers aspire to make it the New York of the Middle East, is the city where you play. Or so I was told, and it certainly made for a giddy trip to Israel.
One day we were at the Western Wall, watching people push prayers through the cracks of the remains of the temple destroyed by the Romans. There I was advised to wear a skirt below the knees and cardigan covering my shoulders, in deference to the most holy place on Earth for Jews.
The next day and less than an hour away, I was surrounded by girls in miniskirts as a ‘party expert’ showed us the best of Tel Aviv’s famous nightlife.
If Israel is somewhat schizophrenic in this way, it never loses your attention.
My holiday began at Luton Airport’s passport control, where I was questioned at length on my visit. It was unsurprising only two months after a deadly attack at an Israeli synagogue, but Israel did not feel like a country at war.
The glittering golden Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine within a stone’s throw of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Jesus’s tomb and the Western Wall. People of three faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – were flung together, mingling in the crowds.
My favourite visit was to a gallery of artist Ilana Goor. in Old Jaffa, the port related to the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale – or, as I learned, not necessarily a whale, but a big fish. She has built an entire building around her Gothic-style art, including a table l aid out l i ke the Last Supper where the remains of the meal are covered in insects.
Fans include Bill Clinton and Robert De Niro, yet the Israeli artist lives modestly in her gallery with her husband, dog and the artworks she has collected by artists including Henry Moore and Diego Giacometti. The sculp- ture garden offers a panoramic view of Tel Aviv, a dream city which sprang from the desert south of Old Jaffa in 1909.
Tel Aviv is Israel’s centre of finance, the arts and definitely the nightlife. A thoroughly modern city, it has been changing ever since the time in 1962 that the landmark Hebrew secondary school was demolished to make way for the first skyscraper.
One of the most recent new additions is Porter & Sons, a craft beer bar with 50 brews on tap. For foodies, there is the famous Uri Buri restaurant in the Unesco World Heritage Site of Acre, named after the founder Uri and his adopted surname, the Hebrew word ‘buri’ for the grey mullet fish. There I was served tantalising concoctions including dried watermelon stuffed with goat’s cheese and homemade rose ice cream.
Another sumptuous meal was served at The Brothers in Tel Aviv, where the tapas dishes of vegetables, coal-grilled meat, pitta bread and deli ci ous houmous kept on coming, were reasonably priced and delicious.
After that, where better than a trip to the Dead Sea to make you feel lighter than your extra holiday weight, buoyed by the salt in the water? The sensation was like nothing else, lying in the water in the middle of the desert, a world away from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Another highlight was Kibbutz Ein Gedi, a thoroughly modernday kibbutz with its own spa, which still follows the founding principles that all who live there contribute their skills to the community in return for their home.
It was hard to leave a such a place, close to the Dead Sea, one of nearly 300 across the country.
But Tel Aviv, a complete con- trast to the peace and quiet of the kibbutz, has the best nightlife of any city I have visited.
Its audacity in borrowing the title of ‘the city that never sleeps’ was justified by bars including Jimmy Who, with its warehouse feel and glitter balls, and Nanochka, where people go to eat early in the evening and end the night dancing on their tables.
It was yet another view of Israel, a place where I left feeling that I had been lucky enough to have many different holidays in just one place.