Postcard from ... Tel Aviv
This postcard is from the city that never sleeps - New York, you ask? No - Tel Aviv! I came here for a month and never left.
Politics, terrorism and ethnic strife – probably the three concepts Israel conjures up to the uninitiated. True, these may exist to a certain extent, just as they do in most corners of the globe, but there is way more than these to living and working in Tel Aviv, the city I fell in love with the day I arrived just under 10 months ago. My colleagues are not all Hassidic Jews and I don’t board public transport in fear of my life, nor do I ride to work on a camel. No, Tel Aviv is a far cry from the place you might have imagined. It’s an eclectic, vibrant, diverse Mediterranean city with effervescent 24/7 life coursing through its veins – let me share it with you.
Initially, I came for a month, seconded from a London law firm. But seduced by the June sunshine and the exciting work, I simply could not refuse an almost-immediate opportunity to work as in-house counsel at William Hill Online.
Tel Aviv is where our marketing and advertising ops are based. As the only element of our legal team out here, I work alongside my Tel Aviv colleagues advising on a range of issues. At the office, I’m surrounded by a plethora of nationalities reflecting the truly cosmopolitan fabric of Tel Aviv, the country’s business and pleasure hub. Work culture takes on a different meaning to anything I’ve ever known, with loud excited voices and a familial atmosphere pervading the office. Festivals and birthdays are celebrated in true style, our recent ‘Purim’ fancy dress party being a testament to this if there ever was one.
Every day, as I walk the 40 minutes from my beachfront apartment to my spectacular office on the 32nd floor of the Azrieli Towers - the skyscrapers that have come to symbolise the city on every postcard and tourist brochure - I bask in the sun and take in the smell of bakeries and shwarma, watching Israelis young and old bustle about on their mopeds and pushbikes or clambering onto Sherut taxis, the communal yellow minibuses, a halfway alternative to buses and taxis. Café culture is big over here and the coffee shops overflow with people easing into their day. While that day may be long - the average Tel Avivian works at least a 45-hour week Sunday to Thursday - TLV residents are party people and they know that when the working day ends, a whole new fun day lies ahead.
Thanks to the warm and sunny year-round climate, the place is energetic and home to conspicuous health-freaks. The city’s beaches are awash with toned, olive-skinned joggers, Matkot (bat and ball) players, cyclists, gym-goers (public open-air gyms are aplenty) and dancers salsa-ing away beneath the towering rows of hotels. When not exercising on Tel Aviv’s beaches, you’ll find people doing Nike sponsored night runs in the city’s gorgeous Park Hayarkon, racing up skyscrapers (guilty! Peer pressure encouraged me to race up 1,144 steps with my colleagues to reach a music and drinks filled helipad with stunning panoramic views of the town), doing triathlons in Eilat down south or swimming across the Kineret lake up north. The bug just hits you and the atmosphere is indescribable.
Weekends begin on a Thursday night with the street parties, restaurants and nightclubs filled throughout the night. The nightlife is unsurpassed and personal safety is a worry left behind in my London past.
People tend to stick to what they know best and my favourite food places include the mouthwatering Onami Japanese restaurant at Harbaa Street, Bugsy, the trendy young music bistro in downtown Florentin, and Shtupak, a locals’ fish and seafood place on Ben Yehuda.
Despite the things I miss back in London, namely my friends, my family, salt and vinegar crisps and Cadbury’s cream eggs, I would not swap Tel Aviv for anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, as with all societies and locations, not all the clouds are lined with sliver but one thing’s for sure as I hope you’ll have gleaned from my postcard, the pros far outweigh any cons! This is THE place to be!
Natalie Seeff is legal counsel at William Hill online in Tel Aviv.
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Readers' comments (41)
Beat Down Palestinian | 14-Apr-2010 10:23 am
You must be kidding me. Please get us a postcard from Gaza or at least Ramallah. Real estate confiscation and ethnic cleansing law is very popular these days in Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine. No more Palestinians left in Tel Aviv so all of the lawyers had to move their practices east.
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Judeh Khamis Bahnan | 14-Apr-2010 1:17 pm
It is with great sadness and dismay that I read this piece. For transparency's sake, I must state that I am a Palestinian. However, this fact neither impacted my feelings whilst reading the article nor my response to it. Laymen and religious zealots may overlook the law, but we as lawyers are obliged not to. For all of its public relations campaigns, Israel cannot wash away the fact that she is in violation of International Law (most notably the pre-emptory norms of self-determination and the acquisition of territory by force), International Humanitarian Law, the laws of war and armed conflict, not to mention is in breach of countless UN resolutions (Security Council and otherwise). Israel seeks to somehow have us overlook these realities and focus rather on the temperate climates that allow one to enjoy their skinny lattes in Tel Aviv's many cafes or the availability of certain chocolates. Heaven forbid we mention that one and a half million Palestinians are slowly being starved in Israel's embargo and complete sealing off of Gaza. Do not waste your concern on them, for Ms. Seef cannot find "salt and vinegar crisps and Cadbury’s cream eggs." Israel should not be allowed to stand with impunity above the law, most definitely not by those of us charged professionally with upholding it. Justice is the essential ingredient to any real peace.
Noticeably absent from Ms. Seef's writings are the Palestinians. Not unlike Israel's premeditated and calculated ethnic cleansing of historical Palestine, as has now been so clearly embodied in the "IDF's" latest military order, Ms. Seef's depiction of Tel Aviv is completely void of anything Palestinian, or Arab for that matter. Somehow the piece states that it should be acceptable to me and everyone else that she is entitled to go there, work, enjoy the nightlife which is "unsurpassed," all while the Palestinians are being driven out from the residual slivers of their land, and barring very limited exceptions, completely denied from entry to Tel Aviv itself. If that is the case, and I as a Palestinian must (for now) settle only for a postcard from Tel Aviv...I cannot accept that this is the one I get.
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RM | 14-Apr-2010 3:22 pm
Funny, isn't it, that as soon as Israel is mentioned, the holier-than-thou brigade come out to play.
Why should it be unacceptable to decree (in public, at least) that you are enjoying yourself, living in a country as an expat, without expressing disgust at the regime (which, unlike many other cities to which lawyers get sent, is actually a democracy).
No doubt those who have felt the need to comment on life in Tel Aviv, will be just as eager to criticise postcards from Dubai, where you can wind up in prison for kissing someone on the cheek in public, postcards from Singapore whose capital and corporal punishment systems are a real delight or postcards from Beijing where you can't find out what's going on in the world because of government censorship.
I choose not to live in any of these places because I don't approve, but that doesn't mean to say that I can't fathom someone else living there could actually be enjoying herself.
Give Natalie a break- the article is called "Postcard from Tel Aviv" not "thesis on the rights and wrongs of a state that most readers know pretty little about".
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Anonymous | 14-Apr-2010 4:18 pm
to Aaron I-M
"To the other anonymous person on 12 April bringing up Israels war in Gaza, think of how many people were murdered by the British/US/other European armies in aid of oil in the middle east before you even be so critical of another countries policies."
I was under the impression that 2 wrongs don't make a right ... thanks for clearing it up for me though
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JS | 14-Apr-2010 7:54 pm
Very well said RM.
This article is meant to be a snapshot of what life is like in Israel. Despite what any of the commentors would have us believe, life in Israel (and incidentally, Gaza/ the West Bank) is NOT all about the conflict. There is internal strife, internal joy, mundane activity and a full range of goings-on.
For those who seem so keen to claim that Tel Aviv is a symbol of the dispossessed (and it is TA that the article is about, not Israel as a whole), you should go back to your history books. TA was established on barren land NOT taken from anyone else.
Thanks Natalie for sharing your interesting and alluring perspective.
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Anonymous | 14-Apr-2010 7:58 pm
For me Israel is as despicable as Iran so I look forward to a postcard fromTehran.
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Anonymous | 15-Apr-2010 6:12 am
Was this article ever expected to not attract the Israel/Palestine debate? Bizarre editorial selection for a lawyer's forum.
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Jess | 15-Apr-2010 10:57 am
To Judeh Khamis Bahnan , the Palestinian. You have done well for yourself working as a practicing Lawyer having risen out of the 'refugee camps'. Did you study in Israel? where Arab men and women study freely and study whatever they want, go to Haifa in Israel, prime example.
Perhaps you can write us all a postcard from Saudi on your next secondment and watch - wait for it - NO ONE will get on the band wagon of slating its human right records or horrendous discrimination record.
PS. Dont kiss any women in Dubai though, you'll go to jail if you're not married to them.
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Richard Binstock | 15-Apr-2010 12:42 pm
I happen to know the author, Ms Seeff, personally and I find it laughable that her ethics or articulation on politics be questioned. The opening comment by Judeh Khamis Bahnan is completely misplaced in what is a light-hearted section of this website- ie. to see what our fellow lawyers are up to around the world. If Bahnan still needs more convincing on this point, then the reference to cream eggs and salt and vinegar crisps, that she herself has cited, really should have set the tone, even for her, not angered her about the plight of the Palestinians. Does she really think thelawyer.com briefed Ms Seef with "we would like an elaborate insight into the currentl political situation of the Palestinians and their living situations". I do not.
Would you get all offended at a travel article in the back of a magasine with a similar tone? If you want to try to show off and/or present yourself as academic and politically-savvy then go to another blog where maybe someone might care!
Here, we are interested in the interesting journeys of our colleagues around the world- not in treading on egg-shells to not offend you!
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L Meister | 15-Apr-2010 3:45 pm
Despite all the self-righteous and hypocritical comments from most of the critics of this article (who are so brave to identify themselves), I found it to be lighthearted and well meaning. Not everything written about israel (the only democracy in the Middle East) is hateful. It may come as a shock to such biased detractors, but Israel does offer vibrant and electrifying cosmoplitan centres (such as Tel-Aviv) which not only Israeli Jews can enjoy but also Israeli Arabs (who make up a fifth of its polutation and have equal rights and liberties).
We could go into a whole debate about the rights and wrongs of the Middle East (at the end of which an objective observer would come to the view that the Palestinains' predicament is as much their doing as anyone's else - if not more) but that would defeat the purpose of this column. If the persons who expend so much negative energy and hate (as some have done on this postcard) would channel and focus that energy into positive acts of reconciliation, what a better - and more lighthearted - world we would have.
Thanks Natalie for the light humour and colourful description of what I agree is a great place to visit.
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