Shalom

It's Sunday, 5th August, 9.45 pm local time in Tel Aviv. The intense light of the day has given way to the unremitting night. This is a live streaming blog. I'm on the roof of a nine-storey apartment block looking out to the west/West across the city skyline with its array of skyscraper-high, brightly-coloured neon and towered slabs of  domestic lights piled one upon the other. The incessant drone of traffic is occasionally sliced by the blare of car horns or the wail of a siren. Tonight, the air temperature is a comfortable t-shirt warm and continuously  refreshed by a fair and welcome breeze.

The sudden thrum and whup-whup-whup of a helicopter reminds me that there's a demo taking place in downtown Tel Aviv this evening; a protest against Israel's new austerity measures. I was going to go but fatigue following an afternoon at the beach with Oren and Ella, coupled with inertia, got the better of me.

This has been one helluva holiday to date - and we are only a few days into it. We've had some mini-adventures; such as that at Ben Gurion International Airport when we finally emerged, wearily, with our reclaimed baggage into the glazed and marbled arrivals hall to discover that, although we had fulfilled our part of the bargain in getting to this point - there was no-one there to meet us.

Admittedly it was 1.30 a.m. and we were an hour late but it took a tentative phone call to remedy the situation. We left the sanctuary of the air-conditioned building to enter the open oven-door heat of the night when Claire and Amichai had been dragged mortified and half awake in turn, from their beds.

This mishap aside (Claire and myself are still in a struggle to seize the moral low ground of denial) we have been made so welcome by this outpost of family. And this is a sizeable outpost. Yael has allowed us the exclusive use of her 'penthouse flat'. Anat, the youngest at 21 years, first encountered in her  brown Israeli Defence Force uniform, is solicitous of our every need. No'omi with her 18 month old baby, Ephrat, has given us a glimpse of life within the community. It was Amichai, he of interrupted sleep and Claire's husband, who first issued the invite to visit Israel. He has two brothers, Shaul and Nadav. It is only the latter we are yet to meet. Their parents, Effi (Efraim) and Rachel are well versed in the fusion and frisson of  the nuclear family.

Two days have passed - yesterday we went by train to Akko (Acre) and were made more aware of the multi-layered heritage of the old, largely Arab, city and thereby, the wider Israel.

Today we have been to Yad Vashem or Holocaust Memorial Museum. The location, on one of the hills above Jerusalem, is stunning as is the architecture of these very modern buildings. I loved the attention to detail; the use of trees and shrubs to enhance the open spaces.

That which is inside is shocking and at times, with its multi-media displays, quite overpowering  - and ultimately, very moving. Here was a time when life, Jewish life, was cheap but as the text made clear every individual was far from anonymous; each was a world unto him/herself.

From my vantage point this made sense - this blog, small and insignificant as it may be, is one part of 'my world'. Each of us carries a world inside us and I know, as I struggle with my own physical 'debility' to make my way through the hours of exhibits and video and audio, something of this vulnerability, something of this personal crisis, this threat - even as, in all humility, I experience, not humiliation and violence but the warmth, generosity and support of my own, newly-met, Jewish family.