Angels Unaware
“Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” Song of Songs 2:12
The boundary lines have fallen in very pleasant places. Really, it’s the ultimate urban oasis full of fluttering sparrows and darting swallows between distant oaks. Resident tycoons occupy swathes of this prized real estate. Between the many mansions flow bougainvillea festooned rose and vine laneways, riots of colour and love amidst herbage and verdure. Acacia and camphire and poinciana and weeping fig trees camouflage gaily painted architecture. “Pink and saffron mallows, and the yellow and white daisies, and the violet and snow of the drooping cyclamen, and the gold of the genista” visualises Henry Van Dyke in Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land (1908). Colette captures horticultural wonder in Chéri, (1920), “Walking along in the shade of the acacia trees, between trellised roses and huge clumps of rhododendrons in full blaze.” And again in Gigi (1944): “Such a beautiful garden … such a beautiful garden.” She romanticises in The Cat (1944), “Above the withered stump draped with climbing plants, a flight of bees over the ivy flowers gave out a solemn cymbal note, the idenitical note of so many summers.” In Save Me the Waltz (1932), Zelda Fitzgerald’s protagonist Alabama cries, “I love little trees, arborvitae and juniper.”
Neve Tzedek was established in 1887, predating the official founding of Tel Aviv by over two decades. “Tz is pronounced as one letter sounding a bit like an ‘S’,” clarifies our driver Yaron Reuveny. “Neve Tzedek is beside the famous Carmel Market which is really trendy with fast food bars. It’s really good to hang out there in the evenings. There’s a good vibe!” Neve Tzedek was the first Jewish quarter to be built outside Jaffa. Fragrant with the perfumed aroma of myrrh and aloes and cassia, coloured by the turquoise of jacaranda and tamarisk and wisteria, Neve Tzedek is for the rich and fabulous and their feline friends (coffee loving techno music mad Israelis set the world record for cats-to-humans ratio). This enclave simply oozes unforced charm: streets named desire. Marco Koskas’ character Juliette in Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv (2020) immediately adopts a cat called Jean-Pierre upon settling in Tel Aviv. Henri Cole opines in Orphic Paris (2016), “Cats are cats, briefly put, and their world is the world of cats through and through.” Truman Capote (1948) noticed in Other Voices, Other Rooms that they have “tawny astonished eyes”. No doubt Gertrude Stein would add, “Cats are cats are cats.” Quite so. Cats: the exquisite link in the Great Chain of Being. Colette’s The Cat once more, “The zone of shadow … the zone of shadow.”
“‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” Zechariah 3:10
(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).
