The Tel Aviv Centennial

Up to now I haven't mentioned Tel Aviv's centennial. I guess I should do so in honor of Rosh Hashonah. Here's a page with some links.

There's the usual amount of celebration going on, and it started earlier this summer; currently, in preparation for the High Holy Days, 500,000 flowers have been laid out in a carpet of flowers in Rabin Square, the city's ceremonial center. That report prompted me to post on the subject.

Tel Aviv was founded on some sand dunes north of Jaffa in 1909, at least according to the received version (there are others that note there were Arab villages in the area too), and thus it's 100 this year. It eventually incorporated the ancient city of Jaffa into its municipality, though most of Jaffa's Arab population left in 1948. Old Jaffa does still have a different feel to it.

Not everyone shares in the celebration. Over at History News Network, a piece by Mark LeVine on Tel Aviv's centennial. [A little background: LeVine is one of those scholars who particularly infuriate some Israelis and their American allies, who already consider the University of California at Irvine, where he teaches, as an enemy camp, since he obviously has a profound knowledge of Israel; but he also brings a left-wing but sometimes quite challenging interpretation to issues. He's written a book on Tel Aviv and Jaffa which I haven't read, but I have edited an article of his (one of those let's-throw-the-fox-in-the-henhouse-and-see-what-happens moves every editor does once in a while, because it was iconoclastic), and he is certainly a maverick in the field: this website profiles him and has a link to his new book, Heavy Metal Islam, a title I rather suspect has never been considered before.]

The varying approaches to Tel Aviv aside, Israel's two biggest cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, have always seemed to be polar opposites in so many ways. Jerusalem is the city whose past seems so ancient: seat of the three Abrahamic religions, traditions as deep as Genesis (Melchisedek is a "priest of Salem"), old stones that seem to echo the millennia. Tel Aviv is a new place. Sure, Jaffa is part of the same municipality today, but Jaffa, unlike Jerusalem, feels more like an old town that's had a Yuppie makeover. And while a lot of Tel Aviv is early 20th century, it never feels all that Middle Eastern. (Jaffa does a bit more.)

Tel Aviv has better restaurants, more ethnic ones, and of course it has beaches where people are sunbathing in clothing that would get them stoned in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim.

Sometimes you're not sure where you are. Not because — as in Jerusalem — you're liable to stumble on an Ethiopian monk or an Armenian procession, but because the city seems so insistently European. I haven't been to Tel Aviv for a while and I'm told Dizengoff Street isn't what it used to be, but it always seemed some sort of blend of Vienna and New York, recreated by immigrants to seem cosmopolitan and echo their origins. Sometimes it is almost funny for an American to see all the signs for genuine New York deli food, or genuine American bagels. Once an executive of Israel Aircraft Industries took me to dinner and I expected something nice, but got a little New York style deli where he swore by the matzoh ball soup. I guess he thought (despite the Irish name) that this is where you take Americans. (Katz's on the Lower East Side has better deli than Tel Aviv, trust me. But Tel Aviv has a lot more ethnic restaurants than Jerusalem.)

Walk through Jerusalem and I'll guarantee you'll probably be approached by a proselytizer, Christian or Jewish depending on the neighborhood. Walk unaccompanied down HaYarkon street in Tel Aviv, it's more likely you'll be approached by young ladies offering an entirely different kind of services.

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem really do, however, despite such stereotypes (and they are stereotypes) offer a window into the enormous differences within Israeli society, the huge disconnect between the haredi religious communities (who are increasingly dominant in Jerusalem) and the old, European Asheknazi secularist elites who still dominate in much (not all) of Tel Aviv. I haven't been there for a while and I understand it's changing. Most centenarians do. But in a part of the world where Jericho is perhaps the oldest still occupied walled human settlement, Damascus is the oldest major city in the world, Jerusalem has been fought over since the late Bronze Age and Cairo looks out on the pyramids, and even Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv) goes back to the Bronze Age apparently, Tel Aviv at 100 is the new kid on the block, still.