<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Closing time at Kassit: To love Tel Aviv and fear for&nbsp;it]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p class="byline"><abbr class="published" title="Friday, January 21st, 2011, 8:08 am">Friday, January 21 2011<span class="author vcard">|<a class="url fn n" title="Yuval Ben-Ami" href="http://972mag.com/author/yuvalb/">Yuval Ben-Ami</a></span></abbr></p>
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<div id="attachment_9133" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width:600px;"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-9133" src="https://i1.wp.com/972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Closing-time-at-Cafe-Kasit-By-Yael-Rozen.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="403" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Closing time at cafe Kassit, with Marcel the waiter. (Photo: Yael Rozen, 1974)</p>
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<p>A friend asked me to help him sort his books. He’s not a young chap  anymore, and has accumulated quite a number of books over his 80 years.  Many of them were simply piled on the floor of his study, others were  decked in on the shelves in multiple rows, the front ones obstructing  access to the ones behind since the early 1960s.</p>
<p>This friend is no boring chap. I’m honored to have been of help to  Yoram Kaniuk, my favorite Hebrew author and a man who’s lived several  lives in one. While going through his books we found an edition of Chaim  Nachman Bialik’s complete works, signed by the national poet himself.  Bialik was Kaniuk’s godfather and held him on his knees during his brit  (circumcision ceremony) in 1930. We also found books with dedications by  Dahn Ben-Amotz, the king of Tel Aviv’s bohemia in the 1960s, and of  other  legends. Kaniuk has been in the very core of several arts scene  in this city, and not in it alone.</p>
<p>I received a few gifts for my efforts. Most were books, of course,  the highlight being a vintage three volume edition of Droyanov’s Jewish  humor compilation. Finally, following three days of work and a zillion  particles of dust, we were done with the thousands of books and began  putting other objects away. In a cardboard box were some twenty pipes.  Kaniuk asked me to toss about half of them. With his permission, I  pocketed three.</p>
<p>۞</p>
<p>Having learned how to pack a pipe from several lovely YouTube clips, I  took the handsomest to town last night. The evening began with the  opening of The Atlas Marker, an exhibition of Shachar Sarig’s paintings  and a launch of his book of the same name.</p>
<p>The gallery shone like a lonesome galaxy in a quiet south Tel Aviv  street. It had a stone-paved back yard, perfect for the pipe, where  people were drinking wine produced by Sarig’s family and speaking of art  and of life. Among them were poets such as Rony Someck and Hagit  Grossman; and artists, like Elad Rosen and Moshe Gerson, who doubles as a  spoken-word prodigy. There were also people whose art is more difficult  to pin down, such as veteran historian Shlomo Shva, who is responsible  for a knock-out compilation of early Hebrew journalism, perhaps the most  eye-opening book of our history, and one of the funniest too.</p>
<p>I planned this post as a love letter to these people, my city’s  community of arts and letters, but inevitably it will also be a letter  of concern. We are living in uncertain times, in which liberals are  labeled unpatriotic traitors. Despite Tel Aviv’s famed “bubble” quality,  several of those present in the yard are actual activists (such as Mati  Shemeolof, coordinator of the Culture Guerilla organization), and  almost all hold “unpopular” opinions. This is not a community at the  height of its power.</p>
<p>But my worry for cultural Tel Aviv has less to do with the political  than with the monetary. With public support for the arts near to zero  and with the book trade mechanisms depriving authors of even a meager  income, this is a threatened little society. I can’t think of anything  more worthwhile that was created by Israeli culture than its cultural  legacy. The Hebrew language, modernized and virtually resurrected only a  century ago, produced diamond after diamond.</p>
<p>But it’s not only the art itself that I worry for. It’s also the pipe  and the stone-paved yard. The life of this city as Kaniuk knew it: its  long nights, the quarrels and loves of its poets and artists, first at  the legendary Cafe Kassit on Dizzengof St. then at other winebars and  cafes (most recently, at the Little Prince, which just closed). Tel Aviv  is happening, it’s both gritty and stylish, its lust for life is  insane. All of this is precious.</p>
<p>۞</p>
<p>Why worry when the scene is still bustline, when artists brave the  financial setbacks and the energy of the city is high? Perhaps I’m just a  pessimistic hill dweller. We’ve already lost one city you see.  Jerusalem still boasts several great art and cinema schools, so there’s  young creative blood there, but these kids are prone to head for the  coastal plane as soon as they graduate. Most of their professors are Tel  Aviv natives, as are, for example, nearly all actors at the Khan,  Jerusalem’s only repertory theater.</p>
<p>This didn’t use to be the case. The stone paved yard at the gallery  made me think of the lush patio at the Ein Karem music center. The  remnants of Jerusalem’s arts community, gray-bearded painters wearing  berets and aging hippy ladies in long braids, gather there on Saturdays  for chamber music concerts. The last time I smelled pipe smoke before  lighting my own must have been there, and it was faint, too faint.</p>
<p>The ultra-Orthodox are most often blamed for scaring Jerusalem’s  liberal crowd away, but of course the fault is all ours. My parents left  when I was a child. As a teenager I toyed with the idea of returning  there, then dropped it. Jerusalem’s old arts scene, which featured such  greats as poet Yehuda Amichai, is not likely to regain its vigor. It is a  lost civilization.</p>
<p>And what will be of Tel Aviv? The brain-drain from the young arts  community is serious, and the powers that be do nothing to stop it. Why  would they? The fewer young liberal leftists around, the better for  them. Berlin is where everyone is heading, though New York and London  are also seen as attractive. Our musicians are already there, our  artists and photographers follow bit by bit. Actors and writers have  more of a problem, being confined by language, but we too dream of  foreign climes. Yours truly makes sure to get some practice by blogging  in English.</p>
<p>When we do pack up and go, all of this will be history. The line that  began with Bialik, still alive in Kaniuk’s study, will be disconnected.  The treasures on those shelves will have measly value, if any value at  all. Who will care for Dahn Ben-Amotz’s groundbreaking erotic novels?  They are not necessarily enormous literature, just a hint that something  intense happened here, once, something that we, like beginner  pipe-smokers, did our best to keep alight.</p>
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<p><a href="http://972mag.com/closing-time-at-kassit-to-love-tel-aviv-and-fear-for-it/">Closing time at Kassit: To love Tel Aviv and fear for it</a>.</p>
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