Well past midnight, hours before the Middle East erupted once again into war, Tel Aviv was doing what it loves most — partying.
For a place founded a century ago to be the world’s first Jewish city, the atmosphere was decidedly unkosher. Christmas decorations lined the bars and the delis were open, selling pork. In the clubs, the dancers dripped sweat. Outside, tipsy women in revealing clothes stumbled in the streets, and even at 2 a.m. drivers were hunting in vain for parking spots.
Inside the Zizitripo lounge, Omer Gershon downed a shot of vodka.
“The nightlife here is crazier than anywhere in the world. I’ve got people drinking here all night long,” the 34-year-old owner yelled over the thumping electronic music. “There’s a lot of escapism involved. Carpe diem [seize the day] takes on a whole new meaning here.”
And there was plenty to escape from that night. An hour’s drive south, Palestinian militants were firing missiles at Israeli communities, and Israel would shortly invade the Gaza Strip with air and land strikes to stop the barrages — an operation that ultimately claimed more than 1,000 lives by both sides’ count.
It was hardly an auspicious prelude to a year in which Tel Aviv has begun celebrating its 100th birthday with art shows, outdoor concerts, a marathon and the inevitable all-night street party. But this is a city hardened to the shocks of Mideast conflict.
In the 1991 Gulf War it was hit by Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles. A decade later it suffered an onslaught of Palestinian suicide bombings. In the 2006 war against Hezbollah the fear loomed that Tel Aviv might be hit from Lebanon by Iranian-supplied missiles, and during the Gaza war similar fears were felt.
But whatever threats may loom, the party goes on.
Tel Aviv was founded on April 11, 1909, on deserted Mediterranean sand dunes north of the Arab port of Jaffa. Its name, which it took later, means “Hill of Spring,” and is drawn from the writings of Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s visionary founding father.
Its first inhabitants were Jews from Russia, Germany and Poland. Successive waves of European anti-Semitism culminating in the rise of Nazi Germany swelled the immigrant population. In 1934 it was declared a city. After World War II came Holocaust survivors and Jews from the Middle East.
Today, nearly 61 years after Israel became a state, Tel Aviv is a world-class, high-tech metropolis and financial capital of 400,000 people. With its suburban sprawl, the population swells to 3 million, out of the country’s total population of 7.3 million.
Some critics say Tel Aviv’s dominance has cut a wedge between it and the rest of the country. Some deride it as “the bubble,” detached from the “other” Israel of religious purists, kibbutzniks, the communities under missile attack from Gaza and the military occupation of 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank, just 20 miles away.
But Tel Aviv’s defenders counter that their city is leaping forward into the future.
“Tel Aviv is the model for what Israel needs to be,” said Yael Dayan, chairwoman of the city council and daughter of late war hero Moshe Dayan. “Jerusalem is not a city, it’s a symbol. It’s a place people are leaving. We are the exact opposite.”
Tel Aviv has always prided itself on being both a bastion of secular Jewish life and a place where the religious live in peace alongside their bohemian neighbors. Trendy Shenkin street has an unwritten agreement: On Fridays it’s open to gay parades, tattoo parlors and fresh fruit juice stands; on Saturdays it shuts down to respect the Sabbath.
It is also a city of refuge for Arab gays and lesbians rejected by the conservative societies in which they have grown up, though the Arab population is mostly concentrated in the neighboring city of Jaffa, or Yafo in Hebrew. The two cities are merged under the formal Hebrew name Tel Aviv–Yafo.
Unlike biblical cities such as Jerusalem, where Jews resettled after thousands of years of exile, Tel Aviv was the first attempt to build a Jewish city from scratch, and Dan Karmon, a 33-year-old marketing manager, is glad of it.
“It’s a place where you can live a secular life, without having to escape your Jewish past,” he said. “Tel Aviv best represents the struggle to live a normal life in Israel.”