Bursting the ‘Bubble,’ as Tel Aviv Turns 100

[Scurrilous]

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"Every few weeks, gay Arab men from all over Israel gather for a party at a rented nightclub on Tel Aviv’s Herzl Street. The highlight of the evening is a drag show, with heavily made-up amateur performers dressed as sexy, pouting Arab pop stars. They are followed by Raafat, a performance artist from Jaffa, who lip-syncs old-fashioned Palestinian nationalist songs. Nearly all these men lead double lives; if they were to reveal their sexual orientation in their conservative communities, they would risk ostracism or even death. But in Tel Aviv they are free to celebrate their Palestinian, gay identity — at a club located on a street named after the founder of modern Zionism.

This scene probably wasn’t exactly what Tel Aviv’s founders had in mind when they envisioned the first Hebrew city. But when one recalls that their intention was to build a truly modern city, informed by the ideals of 19th-century European liberalism and of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, it makes perfect sense. They laid the groundwork for the Middle East’s most forward-looking and culturally vibrant metropolis.

A famous black-and-white photo, taken on a beach just north of Jaffa, is believed to show a group of Zionist pioneers in April of 1909 drawing lots for plots of land, on which they would build what was then intended to be a new Jewish neighborhood. They called it Achuzat Bayit, or “Homestead.” A few months later, the name was changed to Tel Aviv, or “Hill of Spring,” after the Hebrew title of Theodor Herzl’s seminal novel, “Altneuland.”

Thus began one of Zionism’s greatest success stories — a thriving, intensely vital city built from scratch in only a few decades. It became home to the first high school with a curriculum taught entirely in Modern Hebrew. All the Hebrew-language newspapers that dominate Israel’s contemporary media were founded in Tel Aviv, their offices today still in their original locations. Habima, the Hebrew theater started in Moscow, ultimately found its natural home in Tel Aviv. And let’s not forget the first casino with Hebrew-speaking croupiers, or the modern era’s first brothel with Hebrew-speaking prostitutes and clients.

The Zionist pioneers who founded Tel Aviv 100 years ago did not intend to create a New Jerusalem by the sea. Instead, they wanted to create a utopian environment for the New Jew — secular speakers of Modern Hebrew. The evidence of their utopianism can be seen all over the city — from the urban planning to the architecture to the vibrant avant garde culture that has flourished in Tel Aviv for most of its history."

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