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Last update - 00:00 24/10/2008
Family affair / The Keinans
By Avner Avrahami and Reli Avrahami
Tags: Family Affair, Israel News

Jerusalem

  • The cast: Dan (34, "never 'Danny'"), Ina (32) and Ymca the cat ("who was found injured and healed well").

  • Friday morning: Rehavia, a three-story stone building, a professor watering a small vine and geraniums in front, then a small, new elevator, recently installed. Crowding in, we ascend. Somewhere a compressor is drilling into the Jerusalem rock. We enter.
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  • The apartment: Second floor, two rooms, well-lit, rented (NIS 2,350 a month). They have lived here seven years ("since we were students").

  • Students: At Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. On to the tour.

  • The tour: On the right is the living room, then the bedroom. That's it. A total of 46 square meters including the kitchen (the kettle is whistling) and bathroom (with an architecture book, to look at). Each room has a balcony. We sit in the living room.

  • The living room: Multi-purpose - for work and entertaining. Its walls are in two shades: "Jerusalem brown and Soviet pink" (Ina). The guest wing contains a blue sofa and a black table ("secondhand from a family in Ramat Danya"); the work area (opposite) has a green Formica-covered table along with two computers and two office chairs. Dan is on the left, Ina on the right. The table is university surplus ("NIS 30"). Close by is a bookcase laden with Bialik, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann and books on art and architecture. On a shelf, in an open drawer, are CDs, some classical (Chopin), others classic rock (The Who). We peek at the small, open balcony and discover two chairs and a round table that overlook Dunash Ben Labrat Street. Ina offers a date cake from Tomer's Bread on Azza Street. We accept. Next to us is a silent green turtle ("It used to be a lamp").

  • Livelihoods and occupations: Dan and Ina are architects. They graduated together two years ago and work for two different firms in the city, Dan for Carlos Prus (near Mamilla) and Ina for Guggenheim Bloch (in the German Colony). Both of them walk to work ("out of awareness").

  • Dan's work: Currently part of a team that is designing a residential building on Agnon Street (across from the Youth Village), "that will be one of the most beautiful in Jerusalem." He works a five-day week, sometimes also Friday, officially from 9 to 5, in practice more. He likes his work ("very much"). Planning public residences is consistent with his social outlook, he says.

  • A good day: "I found a solution for the good of the street."

  • Ina: Works on public projects of municipal and governmental development companies, currently designing a two-story addition to an existing building on Haneve'im Street. Dreams that one day she will build something of her own and that everything she believes is right in architecture will be concretely expressed.

  • Right in architecture: "We would like to realize values we believe in for the common good." Example: the plazas of Rome. Dan says the fences of the homes in Rehavia have become one meter higher in recent years, as part of a trend toward insularity. "It's very noticeable when you walk around."

  • Calatrava's Chords Bridge: "Show-off" (Ina); "The city doesn't need it" (Dan).

  • Ina's bio: Born 1976, Ekaterinburg, in the Urals ("When it was called Sverdlovsk and Yeltsin was mayor"), immigrated to Israel in 1991. Her older sister lives in Canada, her parents in Petah Tikva. Her father, a former fencing coach, is a factory worker at irrigation systems manufacturer Rotem. Her mother looks after babies. The family's motivation to immigrate was economic, not ideological, she says ("There was terrible chaos"). She feels responsible for her parents ("You absolutely become a parent").

  • Immigration: The family lived in the Ramat Chen tenements ("after the Scuds"), and after a difficult year she entered a Givatayim branch of the ORT vocational schools network, majoring in graphics. She devoted herself to art and earned a matriculation certificate, but was mainly a fencer.

  • Fencer: As the daughter of a coach she became national champion ("in epee"). Despite being eligible for "outstanding athlete" status she did her army service in a remote Armored Corps base ("at my request"), where she met Israelis she hadn't yet encountered ("I acclimatized"). She remembers Yitzhak Rabin's assassination as a great disappointment ("I felt it was a betrayal by the Israelis"); it's since then, she says, that the political corruption began, which stems not only from the politicians but also from the people, which creates its leaders.

  • Bio (cont.): After army service and a year at Tel Aviv's Ascola design school, she moved to Jerusalem to study at Bezalel, where she met Dan. They were classmates.

  • Dan's bio: Born 1974 in Jerusalem's Baka neighborhood, the eldest of three. His father, who immigrated from Casablanca in 1948, worked as a printer and later opened a gift and houseware store in Baka, called Dan's Gifts ("named for me and as old as I am"). His mother, Jerusalem-born, of Yemenite origin, is a laboratory assistant in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Chemistry Department. Dan attended the Rubin Academy of Music high school, where he played the cello.

  • Cello: "Mom wanted me to learn an instrument, and that's what was available at the conservatory on Emek Refaim." He always had long fingers, he says, and then as now "I was disciplined." After high school he set aside the cello and entered the army, where he was a tank commander in the 501st Brigade. He then backpacked for four months in South America, studied international relations and economics ("out of confusion"), switched to computers ("still confused"), left and got a job at the Tav Hashmini music store ("with the original staff"). Later on he returned to school and earned a B.A. in history and business administration ("the confusion persisted"). Finally, in 2001, it dawned on him that he was cut out for architecture. "Go for it," the family said. And go he did.

  • Going: "We walked to our wedding, too, in our bride and groom outfits." They were cheered in the streets and offered beer at the Giraffe kiosk (on Ramban Street). But before that came the meeting.

  • The meeting: 2001. In their first week at Bezalel. Ina remembers thinking Dan was a funny guy but wasn't for her. That day someone from the class asked her out. Dan heard and realized that "it was now or never." He got up, made a counter-offer, and won. After six years of studies and going out, they wed.

  • The wedding: 2007, a year after their graduation, in the courtyard of the century-old Bezalel building in the center of Jerusalem ("We asked and they said we could"). They didn't want a regular banquet garden ("We wanted a place connected to the soul"). They got the idea in the Old City, when they saw a couple in wedding attire leave a church and walk on the street. Their wedding clothes were designed by Hani, Dan's sister. He was in a Sergeant Pepper shirt, she in a dress made of pantyhose.

  • Russian and Moroccan-Yemenite: "That didn't play a part." They eat at his parents' place every Friday night, "and it's really tasty" (Ina).

  • Daily routine: Dan gets up at 5:30. He likes to read and also has to do the accounts for his second job.

  • Second job: On Thursdays he distributes ("with Dad's car") fresh-squeezed orange juice ("made by Pomeranz") in Mevasseret Zion and Har Adar, where he is known as Dan Tapuzan ("the orange juice man, approximately").

  • Rest of the morning: He has a cup of black coffee (half a spoon of sugar) and a vegetable omelet and heads for the office between 7:30 and 8 (on foot). Ina too is an early riser. She gets up at 6 to read or to drink coffee at the Coffee Mill (on Emek Refa'aim Street). In any event, she eats her yogurt at work.

  • Lunch: Each makes his/her own in the office kitchenette with their colleagues. "It's a construction workers' meal," Dan says. "You order two tomatoes and two cucumbers from a five-star grocery store and everyone adds olive oil and za'atar." There is also hummus and matbuha (a cooked red pepper and tomato salad). In Ina's kitchenette they take turns preparing a "rich salad with thought put into it." They both return at around 7, unless they meet in the city for coffee (in Rehavia or at Kadosh, on Shlomzion Street).

  • Evening: A hot meal at 7:30, which they prepare together. It might be steamed cabbage (Ural Mountains style) or perhaps quinoa. Dan does the dishes ("I like to stack them neatly in the rack"). They do not have a television.

  • No TV: They read or watch movies on the Internet (on the monitor to the right).

  • Books: They recently enjoyed Pirandello's "The Late Matthew Pascal" (Dan) and Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" (Ina).

  • Household chores: "A good floor-washing once a month." Dan washes the floors, Ina is in charge of the bathroom, she says. They do not have a cleaning woman "and I don't think we ever will" (Dan).

  • Going out: Movies (Smadar Cinema), walking (the Old City). On Saturday nights they go to a friend's place in the Talpiot neighborhood to read the Bialik-Ravnitzky "Sefer Ha'agada" ("Book of Legends: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash") together, and Dan also plays in a chamber-music group with friends ("at a different person's home each time").

  • Romance: "The moonlight reflected through the window into the living room" (Dan); "Whatever is good at the moment" (Ina).

  • Quarrels: "They exist." They say they are natural peacemakers.

  • God: "Doesn't interest me" (Dan); "It's good that certain people have something to believe in" (Ina).

  • Children: "My family model is three" (Dan). Ina agrees.

  • Education: "State or even state-religious school." Ina says she once heard a conversation between 15-year-old religiously observant girls and was impressed by the depth of the discussion.

  • Elections: Ina - Tzipi (Livni), Dan - Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu) - ("I used to be Meretz-Labor").

  • Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Ina 9, Dan 8.

  • Update: Ina moved to Arieh Rachmimov Architects and City Planners, in Lifta (bus plus a walk).
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