Tel-Aviv Celebrates 100 Years

by Charles Lenchner

category: Middle East

Published April 17, 2009 @ 05:07AM PT

The first modern Hebrew city was founded 100 years ago on some sand dunes north of Jaffa. Today Tel-Aviv plays host to the largest gay pride march in the Middle East and calls itself 'a city without interruption,' the Hebrew version of 'the city that never sleeps.'

For Israeli Palestinians living in Jaffa, the narrative is just a little bit different. Not to mention the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere still calling themselves 'Jaffans' because that is where they actually come from.

Here is a great clip that pulls together different narratives and juxtaposes them side by side. (Thanks Jewschool!) It's a visual technique that does a real service to helping us experience the 'issues' of the region as 'stories' of real people. Check it out:

Here's a little of my Tel-Aviv story....

Part of my youth was spent in Ramat Aviv, one of the neighborhoods adjacent to Tel-Aviv University. The heart of the neighborhood was the area around the old mercaz, or shopping center with the 'Co-op' supermarket. It had a plaza with an ramshackle kiosk in the center, a movie theater with wooden seats, an old-fashioned cafe/pastry shop, and the local health clinic.

The homes surrounding the mercaz were almost entirely small 2 bedroom apartment buildings laid out in rows, three or four stories high. In the 70s, class differences were not so great, which meant that students lived side by side with professors, school teachers, shop clerks, secretaries and other white collar jobs. The neighborhood was diverse, but overwhelmingly Ashkenazi.

We also had Beit Brodetsky, a large hostel for new immigrants. This particular hostel was used for new arrivals with education, who had a connection to the university, or from an educated background - but not enough resources to move directly into a rented apartment. The children had an amazing time together. I remember playing with kids from Turkey, the Soviet Union, Argentina and the United States, among other places.

Ramat Aviv of that time represents of a kind of Tel-Aviv that is now buried and gone forever. It was, as they say, a simpler time. The schools were not fenced and guarded, allowing kids of all ages to scamper about being late, early, or cutting class altogether. Not as many people owned a car, there weren't any chain stories, and every store had a proud small business owner to unlock in the morning and greet arriving customers by name. I can still picture the owners of the toy store, the shoe store, the used book store and the bicycle repair shop. Each of those places had a special smell, which they lost decades ago.

It's true that all this nostalgia is from before I learned about the conflict, met any Arabs, or thought in political terms. It might be useful for some to realize that Israel is not only the sum total of Jewish allegiance to a jewish State. It is also the sum total of many very local patriotisms. In my mind - and I'm not alone - Tel-Aviv is also a holy place, one without the complications of two-thousand year old ruins and sites of religious veneration.

For those of you who see Jerusalem as the Israeli capitol - go ahead and have your Israel. My Israel is the one that looks to Tel-Aviv, before all those highways, high-rises and fast-food joints. I can't help but think that normalizing Israel into being 'just another country' instead of carrying all the burdens of being a Jewish State won't actually be better for Tel-Aviv.