Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Over Pesach in Israel a number of museums are free including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. While the Museum is located about a ten minute walk away from me, I hadn't found the time to explore it until just this past week. The museum houses a plethora of works from many famous artists such as Picasso, Van Gogh, and Braque but also has some unique pieces that were some of my favorite to explore.

One of the artists, Vik Muniz, has made historically famous pieces of art his own through the use of mixed media. He takes Boticelli's Birth of Venus and recreates it with pieces of trash. He takes Che Guerva and recreates it with black beans. It's pretty fantastic as you can't tell what the collage is made of until you approach the painting up close. It invites the viewer to become involved in the art viewing it from many different perspectives.

Here are some collages of a Zebra and vase of flowers that I fell in love with. From far away it is a coherent picture but when you approach the piece of art you find a careful composition of magazine cut outs of body parts, heads, eyes, lips etc.

Another piece that you could find draped throughout the museum was done by a leading feminist artist from Portugal. As you walked throughout the museum you could discover more and more of her piece measuring the height of the 27 meter tall atrium with its various limbs spread through various floors of the museums. It is a sight that will truly amaze you and keep you looking to discover more.

There are several other art museums in Tel Aviv including the Nahum Gutman Museum and the Reuven Rubin Museum located in the center of Tel Aviv. While a friend of mine explored the Ilana Goor Museum, an art museum located in the old city of Jaffa. All are supposed to be wonderful and I'm excited to explore them in the next couple of weeks. 

Pesach to Mimounah

I had barely any time to even think about Pesach. I had been working the five days leading up to Pesach and the two days before that I went to a wine festival in Zichron Yaakov in the North. My poor secular boyfriend was left with the task of kashering our whole kitchen for the traditional week long fast from chametz (leavened bread and a plethora of other stuff just cuz the rabbis say so).

The Seder was spent at Dan's uncle's on a picturesque Moshav in the North completely in Hebrew with the exception of the notable songs in Aramaic and the added rendition of a Ladino "Echad Mi Yodea?" (Who knows one?). 

The next seven days of Pesach are mostly uneventful with the exception of eating fresh potato bread at all the kosher for Passover restaurants and spending Shabbat meals with a very talkative family friend, it was just like the states. The difference comes with the traditional celebrations at the end of Pesach. 

Mimounah is a Moroccan celebration where Moroccan families open their homes to guests at the conclusion of Pesach and make traditional leavened desserts such as mufletta a delicious bread served with butter and honey as well as sphinx a Moroccan style donut. While Dan and I wanted to go to his friends Mimounah it was too far without a car, we ordered Domino's pizza and thought that was the end until our friend invited us to his friend's Mimounah. 

Save the traditional garb it was pretty authentic, complete with Moroccan music, mufletta, sphinx, and plenty of alcohol and dancing. If that wasn't enough we went to a second Mimounah celebration the following night as Mimounah lasts a full 24 hours starting the night Pesach ends. My Pesach in Israel felt complete and I'm excited to celebrate next year in Jerusalem, hopefully to be joined my dearest family.

Pesach - otherwise known as Passover, seven days (eight in the diaspora) to celebrate the exodus from Egypt when Jews didn't have time to let their bread rise

Kashering- make clean from impurities (in this case chametz)

Seder- literally means order, the traditional meal on the first night of Pesach where the story of Exodus is retold

Moshav- an agricultural community similar to a Kibbutz in Israel

Ladino- mostly spoken by Sephardic Jews (of Spanish decent) and many Argentinian Jews, a mixture between Hebrew and Spanish

Shabbat- The Jewish Sabbath or day of rest

Every step counts

4/23/2014

While my intention was to write in this blog more frequently I guess life got in the way. I have been living in Israel for three months and two weeks. In that time I managed to move to Tel Aviv, start a job, quit a job and get an internship. Here's the story...

I was diligently looking for work in Israel while I was in the U.S. but I knew it was nearly impossible to get work when you are over a thousand miles away so I didn't have my hopes up. A friend connected me with someone who works at a security consulting company in Tel Aviv. It seemed perfect. The assignment they gave me took me nearly  nine hours to complete but every bit of it was interesting and a learning experience. I got off the plane and as soon as I got internet back at Dan's apartment in Jerusalem I saw an email from the company asking to call them ASAP. The next morning I called and they asked me to come in for an interview. Silly me thought I was going to be doing ulpan right now. They offered me the job, my first job offer! It was a dream come true. I move to Israel and get a job offer nearly the day I arrive.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the right fit for me. A combination of things led me to quit my job and reconnect with the contacts I had made 6 or so months ago when I was visiting Dan after my summer in Jordan. One of my contacts panned out and landed me an internship at an amazing nonprofit in Jerusalem called Search for Common Ground (SFCG). No it's not paid, but yes it could lead to a job and definitely great connections.

SFCG is an international nonprofit based in the US with offices in 34 countries. I'm pretty psyched. Hopefully it will be a fruitful experience, albeit the nearly 2 hour commute to their office might be a bit painful. Either way it will be a new adventure that hopefully I will blog about more diligently than my previous endeavors in Israel.

It's amazing how time passes differently while you are in school and while you are just living life...as may I dare say, an adult. In school you reach what seems huge accomplishments in very short periods of time, passing exams, finals, semesters and finally academic years. While I've done a lot of different things in the since I've graduated I cannot say I have advanced myself very far professionally. However, if there is one thing that I've learned from being in Israel it's that I'm young. I should take this time to explore and understand what I want to do in life, what I like to do and understand that it'll all come together eventually. It may take awhile but it will.

Now I'm going to focus on making friends, learning Hebrew, and doing my internship. One step at a time.