The Girls of Israel

She stands below you, at the foot of the steps that have been wheeled up to the door of the jet. She's wearing a rather dowdy ground-hostess uniform and a modified overseas-style cap set almost squarely on her head and looks much as you might expect--buxom, dark-haired, dark-eyed and slightly stocky. But, contrary to the Broadway-Hollywood-musical-comedy version of Israeli life in which beautiful girls dance in a circle and sing "Shalom, shalom" to all visitors, this girl--the first Israeli you have encountered--says only, "Please stand here until all the passengers are off the plane," and then marches you across the concrete ramp to the (text continued on page 150) doors of the terminal building.

Don't be discouraged by your first contact with a sabra, as a native-born Israeli is called. Instead, bear in mind that the word sabra means a prickly pear, an indigenous fruit that is thorny on the outside but sweet and succulent inside. Though it often takes a few slightly painful attempts before one learns how to peel a sabra, it's worth the effort, for the rewards are great, indeed. The Israeli girl, you will discover, is both complex and simple, combining sophistication with naïveté, subtle Middle Eastern femininity with open strength and an intense interest in the world with a fierce pride in being Israeli. She has a passionate desire for equality with males yet is touchingly thankful if she's treated as a tender female. At times, she has a straightforward, willing approach to sex; on other occasions, she seems puritanical. In other words, an Israeli girl is thoroughly unpredictable. You think you have her fixed in your mind as you first see her, brisk and businesslike in a uniform, until suddenly she appears before you in the shortest miniskirt you've ever seen. Soon you see her again, lying on a beach under the hot Mediterranean sun in a brief bikini.

Thus, from the moment you step onto Israeli soil, be prepared for surprises. After you've been escorted to the terminal by a hostess who fits your stereotyped notion of a Jewish girl, you'll get your first pleasant shock. Once inside, she'll wave you into a little booth for passport inspection by an immigration officer, who turns out to be a slender, blue-eyed blonde. A Jewish girl who is a natural blonde, looking as if she lives in Copenhagen? Yes, it's true. Then another girl in uniform--this one a tall redhead--directs you to the baggage area, where a customs inspector chalks OK. on your bag after only a perfunctory question or two.

Outside the airport, a babel of voices rises and falls; there, as everywhere in Israel, you will hear people shouting excitedly at one another in Hebrew, German, English, French, Spanish and Arabic. It is no everyday event for Israelis to travel abroad, so the scenes of departure and arrival are always tumultuous and emotional. You may also have arrived at the same time a famed Hasidic rabbi is being welcomed home by his followers, who joyously dance in a circle around him, the men wearing long beards, black suits and huge fur hats, singing their happiness at his safe return, the women discreetly standing a little distance away.

As you sit in the taxi or bus taking you to Tel Aviv, you will see another young Israeli girl in a dark-blue uniform when you stop at a barrier across the highway. She is one of a small police team checking vehicles for possible Arab saboteurs. And when you approach the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the roadside will be crowded with more reminders that Israel is in a state of war: soldiers, sailors and air-force personnel, half of them female, waiting at bus stops or hitchhiking.

Under any circumstances, one would marvel at the women who make Israel such an unexpected delight for the visitor. But when you realize that they are the product of a nation that has existed for less than a quarter of a century and was built by people who came to the Middle East from such diverse cultures as the staid pre-Hitler life of the assimilated German Jews and the quasi-Arabic bazaar life of the Moroccan Jews, they seem even more remarkable. The Israeli girl today, from the tiny Yemenite with her dark-coffee, slightly reddish complexion to the tall, peaches-and-cream blonde, is a totally new kind of woman, one still in the process of being created, almost without any ties to her past. By tangible necessity as well as by temperament, she lives almost entirely in the present.

For the outsider, an essential key to understanding her is knowing that every girl--like every boy--in Israel is conscripted into military service beginning at the age of 18. The only exceptions to this rule are conscientious objectors and girls from strict Orthodox Jewish families, whom no outsider is likely to meet, anyway. The Israeli girl doesn't view her military service as an onerous burden. On the contrary, she looks forward to it, not only because she's totally committed to the survival of her country but also because she knows that in the service she will meet Israeli boys and girls with whom she has never had contact before. Despite the smallness of the country, the military service is Israel's great leveler, its version of the melting pot, the one common experience of all young Israelis.

Thus, it doesn't matter how an Israeli girl grew up--in a sheltered middle-class family in Nahariya, where so many of Israel's German Jewish refugees are settled; in the much more open life of a kibbutz, where she alternated schoolwork with work in the fields; or in the semi-slum atmosphere of a mabarot, a temporary housing settlement in which the immigrants from Arab countries so often lived. It doesn't matter, because all of the girls come together in their military service; for 20 months, they are away from home except for an occasional weekend visit. They also come together with the young men of Israel, all of whom must serve two and a half years. Within the military, the girls are considered almost the equals of their male contemporaries, doing many of the same jobs, working side by side with them and living in close physical proximity to them. The girls sleep in separate barracks, but after the day's duties are over, they are free to exchange their uniforms for mini-dresses and to dance in a communal lounge. And if a girl wants to get on the back of a friend's motor scooter and go for a late-night swim or picnic, no superior officer will tell her she's forbidden to do so. The swim and picnic may even last past midnight, when the gates to the barracks are locked; but any girl in military service learns such useful skills as scaling a fence, made easier by a friendly male boosting from the rear.

Such daily contact with young men puts the Israeli girl in the position of learning other important matters as well, not the least being the use of the pill, which is easily available in Israel. Even so, an Israeli girl often has contradictory attitudes toward sex. One visitor to Israel recalls taking a girl to her apartment after a party and, since it was late, asking if he could stay all night on the sofa. She agreed, on the condition that he stay on the sofa. The next morning, she asked him why he'd made no attempt to come into her bedroom.

"You were pretty emphatic when you said you didn't want me," he answered, "so I took you at your word. I wouldn't force myself on you."

She told him, "If you had been an Israeli man, you would have forced your way into the bedroom."

"And then?"

"Then I would never see you again. Where are you going to stay tonight?"

Perhaps the best illustration of this ambivalence is found in another incident in which a young Israeli girl soldier went out on a date and found the barracks gate locked when she returned. Her boyfriend suggested that rather than try to scale the fence, she spend the night at his apartment. She agreed but insisted that he allow her to sleep and not try any other activity. Once in the apartment, he found it impossible to lie in bed, listening to her even breathing. So he began to make love to her and she responded. The night was long and wonderful; but the next morning, when he asked to see her again that evening, she very calmly told him that she would never date him again.

"Why not? Didn't you enjoy last night?"

"Yes, but you broke your promise."

The Israeli girl has learned to be wary of the overaggressive approach that is characteristic of so many Israeli men; so initially, she extends this wariness to other males, too. But if she senses that a foreigner won't treat her disrespectfully and will behave as if she has the right to make a choice, the barriers will drop.

The foreigner starts out with a great advantage over his Israeli counterpart: He comes from outside the narrow borders of Israel and brings with him all the glamor of the world known to most Israeli girls only through films, books and magazines. Travel beyond the borders is very difficult for Israelis; their immediate neighbors are all at war with Israel and the only way to leave is by plane or ship, both rather expensive. In addition to the fare, an Israeli traveling (continued on page 160)Girls of Israel(continued from page 150) outside the country must pay a heavy travel tax and a surcharge on the price of the ticket. So the Israeli girl, patriotic though she is, sees the foreigner--especially a young, handsome one--as a romantic figure, indeed.

In all of Israel, no better place than Tel Aviv can be found to begin your acquaintance with the local girls. Extending for four miles along the Mediterranean coast, Tel Aviv lacks architectural beauty, with balconied apartment houses no more than rectangular blocks built in solid rows, one right next to the other. But Tel Aviv is alive--a bustling, noisy city abounding in busy cafés, restaurants, coffee bars, pizza parlors, ice-cream shops, bookstores, concert halls, cinemas and beaches. Tel Aviv is the country's heart, its cultural center. Israel's newspapers and magazines are published there and, although Jerusalem is the nominal political capital, Tel Aviv is the real seat of power.

This vibrant city is quiet only on Saturday, the Sabbath, and from about 1:30 P.M. to 4:30 P.M. every day, when people drowse in their apartments, especially when the city is being blanketed by the hamseen, the hot wind that blows in from the desert. Of all the streets in Tel Aviv, Dizengoff Boulevard is the best one on which to view a representative sampling of Israel's girls. Dizengoff combines the characteristics of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Michigan Avenue in Chicago, King's Road in London and the Boulevard St. Germain in Paris. Dizengoff intersects Dizengoff Circle, where four other streets pour vehicular and pedestrian traffic together to make a mad whirl around a plaza in the center.

From the circle, Dizengoff stretches for two miles, but the part of the boulevard that everyone means when they say Dizengoff rus from Dizengoff Circle to Keren Kayemet, a distance of only five blocks. In that short stretch are crammed an incredible number of sidewalk cafés and restaurants, most of them so close together that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins. It's the cafés--jammed with Israelis talking and looking up from their food or drink to stare, openly and unabashedly, at the parade of people walking back and forth on the street--that give Dizengoff its special place in the city. "Chaticha!" someone will say, and all eyes will turn to a trio of beautiful girls strolling leisurely by, arms linked, their voices rising and falling as they talk to one another in the moder, slang-filled Hebrew that has developed among the young. Chaticha means a slice of bologna, but everyone uses it to express his admiration for the beauties passing by.

The girls of Tel Aviv dress in a special way. Some of their clothes are modeled after the styles worn in New York, Paris, London and Rome; but Israel's own fashion industry has succeeded in creating an original mode of rakish couture, filled with bold colors and wild patterns--anything new, different, daring. Israel's climate is partially responsible: The temperature in Tel Aviv rarely drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, so no one needs heavy outerwear. In the summer, Tel Aviv is hot and humid to the point of mugginess, so the girls seldom wear more than a minimum of clothing -- and they concentrate their energies on making that minimum as arresting as possible. For the price of a beer, which in Israel is not only good but inexpensive, a visitor can take a café seat facing the sidewalk on Dizengoff and watch the female panorama pass before him. These lively, attractively dressed girls may be secretaries, models, nurses, salesgirls, teachers, actresses or engineers. Whatever their occupation, chances are that they view their work as more than just a job: Israeli girls tend to be quite concerned with achieving a high occupational status.

Each café on Dizengoff has its own band of regulars. If you're looking for girls from the younger bohemian set, head for Café Casit, where young artists, film directors and novelists sit drinking coffee or miz tapuzim, the orange drink that is consumed by Israelis in enormous quantities. (Imported liquor is very expensive in Israel, although good gin, vodka, cognac and beer are produced domestically.) But the main feature of Casit is the talk, which goes on incessantly, as it does in every other café; for Israelis--including the girls--must be numbered among the great talkers of the world. The talk at the California a café on Frishman Street just a few hundred feet west of Dizengoff, is mostly about politics. The California is owned by Abie Nathan, a man who once quixotically flew his own plane to Egypt in an effort to seek peace with Nasser.

But as lively as the Casit and the California are, they aren't necessarily the best places to meet younger Israeli girls. The café clientele tends to be a little older, more settled in their relationships, less inclined to favorably view an outsider moving in on one of the girls in the group. So if the visitor tires of just looking at the girls on the street, he can move on to the coffee bars, in which the younger girls congregate, or to a discothèque. There, he is more likely to find what he seeks by simply asking a girl to dance. In a discothèque, you need not worry about approaching a stranger; she may refuse, but she won't be offended. One cautionary note here: If you wander into a discothèque where everyone seems to be from Morocco or Iraq, use discretion, for the young Israeli men and women whose families come from Arabic lands tend to frown upon a stranger trying to find a dancing partner.

If operation discothèque has been successful and your dancing partner is ready for another scene, a good place to begin is The Pub, known in Hebrew as Ha Pub. Inside Ha Pub, which is directly opposite the Dan Hotel on Tel Aviv's beach front, is a replica of a British bar. But the duplication extends only to decor, for Ha Pub's clientele--unlike the British, who tend to exchange no more than a nod with their neighbors--doesn't go there to sit and quietly drink. Instead, Ha Pub bursts with life, with continuous table hopping and noisy conversation, loud laughter and shouts of recognition from the actors, writers, painters, politicians, journalists and jet setters who keep it open late at night.

At some point, you may discover that the animated conversation that excites the head doesn't quite fill the stomach. But a newcomer to Israel will be very disappointed if he looks for what is known in America as Jewish cooking--there are no kosher delicatessens, no corned-beef and pastrami sandwiches and hardly a bowl of chicken soup with matzoh balls. For many years, the country was poor and the early Zionist pioneers were more concerned with building their society than with becoming gourmets. Recently, though, a change has taken place. The country is more affluent, the tourist trade more important and immigrants from the Arab countries and from central Europe have imported their eating habits, often opening restaurants for those who share their cultural background. So, scattered throughout Tel Aviv are many small restaurants--some owned by Romanians, who specialize in serving grilled meats and vegetables, others offering "Oriental" food, which is not Chinese or Japanese but Arabic in origin. In these tiny places, Israelis sit dipping pieces of flat bread called pita into humus tachina, a succulent mixture of ground chick-peas, spices and lemon juice, topped with sesame paste and olive oil. And after that dish come kabobs and chips--ground meat cooked on a skewer, usually over charcoal, accompanied by French-fried potatoes. Another marvelous snack is falafel, a mixture of ground vegetables formed into small balls, deep-fried in oil and then plunked into a pita split open like an envelope. The falafel stand is as much a part of the Tel Aviv scene as the hot-dog stand is in many American cities.

If you want a more substantial meal, Tel Aviv has scores of eating places of almost every kind. None of them are great, but almost all are adequate and a few are very good. And at such non-tourist restaurants as the centrally located Acropolis, which serves Greek and Mediterranean food, Shaldag, near the city's port, or the Cashbah on Jeremiah Street, the tables will be crowded with Israelis (continued on page 228)Girls of Israel(continued from page 160) who enjoy dining, as well as good eating.

South of Tel Aviv, along the sea, lies its sister city, Jaffa once an Arab city. A minaret still dominates its low skyline and its narrow streets are jammed with people, cars and trucks. Just along the waterfront at the southern edge of Jaffa, a transformation has taken place. An artists' quarter has been established and the old Arab buildings, with their domes and arched entrances, have been modernized and converted into studios and shops. And along with that change has come another: the opening of coffeehouses, night clubs, restaurants and more discothèques in a setting so striking that its attraction for young Israelis is magnetic.

You can dine well in Jaffa. Two restaurants, Via Maris and Toutoune, offer fine food and lovely views of the Mediterranean; and Jeanette's is famed for its seafood. If you want thick Turkish coffee, walk over the cobblestones to Aladdin, a former dwelling turned into a coffeeshop. And if you don't want to leave Jaffa without visiting a night club, Oman Khayyám and Khalif are there waiting to welcome you, complete with Oriental belly dancers. But bear in mind that most patrons of the night clubs will be tourists: Israelis tend not to frequent them.

No Oriental dancers display their navels in Haifa, Israel's northern harbor fact, not many dancers of any kind can be found in Haifa, for this city--built on terraces and hills overlooking the Mediterranean--is a staid and quiet place given to little entertainment other than movies. The girls of Haifa are more conservative than those of Tel Aviv, less interested in original clothes, more concerned with propriety. Only at the waterfront, where ships from all over the world tie up, especially during the citrus season, will signs of liveliness be found. But the waterfront cafés of Haifa and the girls who use them as a base are hardly distinguishable from the waterfront cafés and girls of any major port in the world.

Yet every city in Israel has at least one place where young people congregate, and Haifa is no exception. The knowledgeable man seeking feminine companionship should head either for the Technion, Israel's world-famous technical college, where a few girl students are studying, or to a more likely place--Gan Ha'em--Mother's Park, a name that gives rise to many an obvious joke about what happens there. Within its borders--strolling or sunning themselves--you will find those Haifa girls who seek to break from the settled pattern of their parents. But after Gan Ha'em, about the only place left to go is back to the apartment where the girl lives with her parents. And unlike parents in Tel Aviv, they will not be likely to leave the flat for two or three hours of café sitting.

Just a dozen or so miles south of Haifa, at Ein Hod, is a totally different kind of scene. Ein Hod was once an Arabic village, high up on a mountainside overlooking the sea. Now it's a thriving artists' colony in which some of Israel's most eminent sculptors, potters, ceramists, painters and writers maintain homes year round or for weekends and vacations. The houses themselves are marvelous creations, for the residents of Ein Hod have managed to retain Arabic architectural forms in their modern studios. And the Ein Hod colony includes many girls.

The romantic setting creates a sense of wonder as you wander up and down the terraces, perhaps accompanied by the unofficial mayor of Ein Hod, known as Itchy. A small man filled with energy and an endless fund of stories about Israeli personalities, Itchy will take you from studio to studio, introducing you proudly to each artist. Then you may sit in the open air on the terrace of Ein Hod's restaurant with a cup of coffee or a beer and take in the vista of the Mediterranean Sea. As evening approaches, the restaurant will grow crowded, particularly on weekends, when people come from miles around to meet old friends and make new ones.

Weekend nights at Ein Hod, especially during the summer, are extraordinary. On the stage of the amphitheater, some of the best entertainers in Israel perform; though their Hebrew may not be understood by the foreigner, their gestures, mimicry and dancing will be, for the spirit of the colony overcomes all language barriers. Everyone seems to know everyone else, and even if they don't, they're willing to establish contact.

Also to Ein Hod come girls from the kibbutzim in the area of Galilee. Usually, the inhabitants of these agricultural collectives travel very little. The larger settlements provide the kibbutzniks, as their residents are called, with most of their cultural activities--movies, plays and even concerts; while the smaller, newer ones are generally located in rather isolated places with no means of easy transportation available.

So kibbutz girls tend to lead more isolated lives than their urban counterparts. But some can be seen at Ein Hod, wearing shorts, blue jeans or slacks. Their hair will not be carefully coifed and they will not have spent much time applying make-up. They cluster together and, for the most part, stay close to the young men of the kibbutz who brought them to town.

Despite what seems to be an air of boisterousness, the kibbutz girls are rather shy creatures. Brought up in the kibbutz children's house, they have been living with other girls and boys almost from the day they were born. Little is kept from them and little can be, considering the lack of privacy that characterizes communal life. Yet kibbutz girls tend to be more limited in sexual perspective than any other group of girls in Israel. For one thing, they seem more concerned with the kibbutz than with sex ("Finished now? OK. Let's go pick oranges."); and since they live and work almost as equals with the men, the traditional notion of femininity is not prevalent. Yet they are worth drawing out, and the rewards may equal the effort, especially if you enjoy picking oranges.

It's not very far from a kibbutz in Galilee to Jerusalem, Israel's capital city. But the psychic distance is enormous--a trip "up to Jerusalem" is a voyage to a separate world within Israel. All Israelis go "up to Jerusalem," no matter from what part of the country they approach the capital. The phrase has both a physical and a spiritual meaning: Jerusalem is 2740 feet above sea level at the peak of the Judaean Hills, making it one of the highest points in the country. But even more important than its physical height, Jerusalem is the Holy City, a place to be approached with reverence, a city above all others.

The atmosphere of Jerusalem is strikingly different from that of any other Israeli city. It's cooler than Tel Aviv; the old buildings are built of stone and many of the new ones follow the old style. Jerusalem is also much quieter than Tel Aviv in every way, from dress to demeanor. Indeed, in the Mea Shearim, the quarter in which strict Orthodox Jews live, study and pray, females are seen only in dresses with long sleeves and long hemlines, heavy stockings and wigs.

Despite its decorum and solemnity, however, Jerusalem manages to provide some social life. The campus of Hebrew University is crowded with students from all over Israel, looking and behaving much like students in any other part of the world, except, perhaps, that they're a little more serious, a little more dedicated to study. The university students -- especially the girls -- tend to be older than their counterparts in America; most of them don't enter the university until they're in their 20s and have completed military service. The university girls are more likely to be interested in politics than those encountered at a coffee bar in Tel Aviv -- and they will talk more seriously, at least in the beginning. Not surprisingly, the war with the Arabs is very much on their minds; last year, a bomb exploded in the university cafeteria and more serious bombings have occurred in markets and at bus stops near the university.

But when they take a break from the books and the barricades, they congregate either at the coffeehouse and bar right on the campus or at the T'a Mon Coffee House on the corner of King George and Ben Hillel streets, a mile or two from the campus. There, in an atmosphere redolent of the cafés in the Latin Quarter of Paris, the students meet and talk under the kindly eye of a tolerant proprietor, willing always to extend credit. A somewhat more raffish group of students attends the Bezalel School of Art in the heart of Jerusalem. The girls dress in wilder clothes than do the university coeds and are much less interested in politics. At the school restaurant--which serves French food, no les--the student artists talk excitedly of their own work and about what is being shown in the New York or Paris galleries.

But the city closes down early in the evening and especially early on Friday, when the Sabbath begins. After sundown that day, the gas stations close and the buses stop running until Saturday night. The students' parents stay home, too, more so than those in Tel Aviv. During the week and on Saturday and Sunday nights, however, a few places offer a chance to meet Jerusalem's girls in unsolemn settings: Puss-Puss-Teq and Bacchus are discothèques as lively as any in Tel Aviv; and right across from the city's tiny railroad station is the Khan a theater-night club. You can be sure that almost any Israeli girl you meet at the Khan will be willing and able to talk with you on a wide variety of subjects, including the last performance of the Israel Philharmonic at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv--before telling you that she lives in an old Arabic house with another girl. At this point. the intelligent foreign male will ask her to join him for a bowl of goulash at Fink's, one of the great bars of the world. And even if she says no, pleading she must work the next morning. he should go to Fink's alone, confident that he will not leave the same way.

Fink's is a tiny place, at the intersection of Tzarfat Circle and King George Street, and its one room is always crowded with a volatile mixture of foreign journalists, Israeli political leaders, the resident intellectual establishment, diplomats and very few tourists. The ambiance at Fink's is one of the great phenomena of Jerusalem. Even in a country where people always feel free to engage one another in conversation, Fink's is the ultimate in informality. You may join in a conversation or get into an argument; and you may leave with a group or with one member of a group who has decided she would like to talk some more with the interesting foreigner who had enough sense to visit one of the favorite eating and drinking places of astute Israelis.

Not far from Fink's is another Jerusalem institution. My Bar, a restaurant/bar much like those on New York's thriving Upper East Side. My Bar has loud music, the best martini in the Middle East, and a clientele that includes a bevy of quite sophisticated girls.

Fifty-three miles southwest of Jerusalem is Beersheba, the ancient Biblical city that is still the gateway to the Negev desert. To Beersheba come the Bedouins, the nomadic Arab tribes that move continuously across the changing sands. At the camel market in Beersheba, the Bedouin women stand silently, shrouded in their Moslem clothes, faces hidden, while their husbands and fathers argue, gossip and finally complete their complicated business transactions. The Bedouin women remain as mysterious today as they were 1000 years ago, so immersed in the Arab Moslem culture that they're hardly assimilated at all into Israeli life.

But the Jewish girls of Beersheba, who grow up in new apartment houses and attend modern schools, are a different breed. For one thing, the desert is everpresent in their consciousness. The Negev nearly encircles Beersheba, and the desert's extraordinary colors and rock formations make the area look like another planet. And the girls of Beersheba integrate their lives with the desert, using it as a picnic ground, helping an archaeological party dig in its ancient ruins or making the flowers bloom at a desert agricultural station. Beersheba also has a thriving artists' colony, and to it come Israeli girls anxious to paint in desert hues or to use the desert sand as raw material for pottery and sculpture.

The girls take camping trips into the desert, returning after a few days sunburned and tired but refreshed by the contact they've made with their ancient past. Then they plunge back into the present, shaking their hair loose from underneath their broad-brimmed hats, changing from desert boots into sandals and from shorts into dresses, ready to start the evening. That evening may begin with a movie and end at a coffee bar or with dancing at one of the city's discothèques.

At the southern end of the Negev sits Elath, near the ancient site of King Solomon's mines. Once just a tiny port and Israel's only access to the Red Sea, Elath is far better known today as swinging beach town, a winter resort filled with hotels, bars, coffeehouses and restaurants. The center of life in Elath is the beach, where Israelis and other tourists come for holiday weekends. The scuba- and skindiving there rank among the best in the world, for in Elath's clear-blue water are some of the most fantastic coral reefs found anywhere.

Israel's beaches are the country's most popular playgrounds--and a good place to find the Israeli girl in one of her most natural settings. The popularity of the beaches is easily understandable: They are readily accessible; the climate makes them tempting almost year round; and most of them are free--an important factor in a country where personal income isn't very high. Young Israelis usually cannot afford automobiles or weekends in the country. Most of the action at an Israeli beach is on the sand rather than in the water. Israel has no surfing enthusiasts because the Mediterranean has little surf. Water-skiing isn't very popular, either, because of the high cost of speedboats. Scuba- and skindiving are growing sports, but the most popular beach sports, such as bikini watching, are played right on the sand.

Israeli bikinis, like other Israeli fashions, are in the vanguard, and in them the Israeli girls turn the beach into a scenic spectacle. Israeli girls don't bother much with such strenuous activities as swimming; instead, they're content to exercise by patting sun tan oil all over their bodies, turning from side to side and manipulating themselves into positions where a minimum of cloth exposes a maximum of body.

One place to enjoy a maximum number of bodies is poolside at the Tel Aviv Hilton, where yearly membership in the hotel's cabana club entitles young Israelis to sun themselves for hours under the wishful eyes of the hotel guests. But an Israeli need not be affluent enough to join a private club in order to get in plenty of beach time: Within Tel Aviv's city limits, just across the Yarkon River, Tel Baruch beach is one of the most popular in Israel, always crowded in good weather with young Tel Avivians.

A few miles north, the beach scene changes because of the big vacation hotels in Herzliya and Accadia. The people there are more likely to be family groups taking a holiday. The resort town of Natanya also attracts an older segment of the population, but Nahariya, north of Haifa, combines family vacationers with a younger crowd. Nahariya has a lovely wide stream, Brook Ga'aton, flowing through the middle of its main street; on both sides of the brook are cafés, restaurants and the ever-present discothèques.

But Israel's beaches aren't limited to the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Elath. Lovely beaches can be found all around Lake Kinneret up north; the center of life at the lake is the ancient city of Tiberias, now a popular resort area. The cafés and restaurants on the waterfront offer a marvelous combination of the new and the old. At one table may be a group of early Zionist pioneers, men and women now in their 60s, reminiscing about the days when the lake was a place to fish in peace and quiet, rather than a busy setting for a tourist holiday. Close by, a much younger group of Israelis talks excitedly of a new movie they're going to see that night, of new books they've read, of how they'd like to travel and see America, Europe and Asia.

They are the youth of Israel, the evolving Israelis of the future, a new breed so varied in physique and complexion that it's impossible to say, "There's a typical Israeli." What is typical of Israeli girls is their infinite variety--plus a nearly insatiable curiosity, an intense interest in foreigners, a fervent sense of patriotism and the ever-present excitement in their eyes that beckons a visitor to take his first step on what can be an exhilarating journey of discovery.