Tel Aviv

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict breaks hearts every day. So many dreams, so often dashed. In From Tel Aviv to Ramallah, opening tomorrow at the Painted Bride Art Center, beatbox artist Yuri Lane hip-hops through a one-man show scripted by his wife, religion scholar Rachel Havrelock, and set against a backdrop of multimedia projections by video artist Sharif Ezzat. Their goal: to depict the everyday hardships and aspirations of prototypical Arabs and Jews, "not just the headlines and images of violence" shown on TV, said Lane, speaking by telephone as he prepared to fly to Philadelphia from his home in Chicago.

As the usual dance of death unfolded in the Israeli periphery, thousands frolicked at the hedonistic Love Fest in Tel Aviv. During the dark week of the lynch in Ramallah the Israel opera performed an opulent Don Giovanni before packed audiences. It's funerals on the front pages, restaurant reviews in the back. As I drive the swim team car pool I listen to casualty figures of the latest terrorist bombing Wednesday in an Israeli town half an hour from my house; in the back seat the kids discuss how many laps they swam today.

Philadelphia University announced yesterday that it will leave the New York Collegiate Athletic Conference and join the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference in the fall of 2005. University president James P. Gallagher said all 11 sports that compete in NCAA Division II will play in the conference. The men's soccer team will stay in NCAA Division I, where the Rams compete in the Atlantic Soccer Conference. Gallagher said the CACC offers less travel. Several members, including Holy Family, the University of the Sciences, and Wilmington College and Goldey-Beacom in Delaware are close to the Rams' campus.

Rabbi Martin I. Sandberg was grappling with a sad and unusual problem yesterday: How to conduct services for Purim - normally a joyous holiday - in the wake of Israel's fourth deadly car bombing in 10 days. So the Havertown rabbi logged onto a worldwide computer network of 250 conservative rabbis to see if he could learn what his colleagues in Israel had done. The network is so guarded that Sandberg won't reveal its name. One of the entries was from a rabbi in the Israeli coastal city of Herzliyya, who - because the Middle East is hours ahead of the United States - had already held his evening service.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP - Palestinian militants targeted densely populated Tel Aviv in Israel's heartland on Thursday with rockets for the first time, part of an unprecedented barrage that threatened to provoke an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Israel responded by moving troops and heavy weapons toward Gaza and authorizing the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists. The fighting, the heaviest in four years, came after Israel launched a ferocious air assault Wednesday to stop repeated rocket fire from Gaza.

Randy Schulz and Brett Goldman will head to Tel Aviv next month to try to lure Israeli clean-technology companies to the Philadelphia region. Enabling their trip is a collaboration among the state, a local economic-development marketing agency, and an airline in an effort unique enough that participants decided Monday to break the secrecy characteristic of such business scouting missions. "We don't always broadcast what we're doing," said Tom Morr, president and chief executive of Select Greater Philadelphia, which markets the region elsewhere.

Although I used to crisscross the continent on TWA, the airline never made much money on me. I flew regularly on what was once the greatest bargain ever for American youth: half-price standby fare. Studying in Chicago and having a boyfriend in New York, I was a familiar face around O'Hare. I took unashamed advantage of the deal and usually got a seat, but if I had to wait for the next flight, no tragedy. TWA took off for LaGuardia every hour, so even if I was anxious to get going, it wasn't like missing a grown-up obligation like an appearance in court or a meeting with your kid's math teacher.

In her home in Jenkintown last night, Annelie Nossbaum, 62, saw the people on television talking through gas masks in Tel Aviv, explosions and sirens in the background. All at once, there were awful memories and sickening fears. Memories of the Nazi concentration camp she survived. And fears for the safety of her 34-year-old daughter and 5-month-old granddaughter, living in an apartment in Jerusalem. "I was in shock," said Nossbaum. "Just sitting here and knowing she is there, she and thousands of others, I am absolutely petrified.

On Dec. 30, the Rev. James P. Quinn was all packed and ready for his two-week trip overseas. He flew from Philadelphia to Kennedy airport in New York. There, he walked up to the Swiss Air counter, checked in for a flight to Zurich and flashed his passport. That is the last time anyone reported seeing Father Quinn, a Roman Catholic priest. Although someone used his boarding pass and sat in his seat on Flight 101 to Zurich, Switzerland, authorities are not sure that that person was the 66-year-old associate pastor of St. Ann's Church in Browns Mills, in Pemberton Township.

JERUSALEM - Israeli authorities arrested an Arab Israeli on Thursday on accusations that he planted a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv that wounded 27 people and threatened to sabotage efforts to broker a cease-fire to end the fighting in Gaza, police said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that the man, from the village of Taybeh, in Israel, was connected to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups. A Palestinian militant cell based in the West Bank village of Beit Lakiya sent the man on Wednesday to place a bomb connected to a mobile phone on the bus, Rosenfeld said.