Tel Aviv @ 100 – Resources for Educators

When we have an opportunity to celebrate, we ought to embrace it fully. Tel Aviv@100 provides just such a chance to celebrate – to appreciate where we came from, what we have achieved, and to gather strength for projects yet to be undertaken.

At first glance, Tel Aviv seems to be another relaxed sea-side city, dominated by sidewalk coffee sippers and beach front sun worshippers; a city that never sleeps and never looks beyond its own municipal borders. But another glance will reveal a city full of the urban racket of creative life; a city that embodies the twists and turns of the Israeli story, of the Jewish people's ongoing effort 'to be a free people in our own land."

As Joachim Schlor writes: (Tel Aviv: From Dream to City, Reaktion Press, 1999)

Tel Aviv represented a provocation. From the moment of its foundation it was called into question by those who built it and voice conflicting views about its future, by visitors who came with certain expectations and could not believe what they saw, by its enemies, who made a point of writing its name in inverted commas. But Tel Aviv lived and by its very existence posed other questions – about the ability of immigrants to settle successfully; about the course and the portrayal of Jewish history, which here faced a new challenge; about the city’s neighbours and their ability to tolerate its existence; about our assumptions and the methods we normally use when thinking about and studying large cities. The city’s motto is (Jeremiah 31:3) ‘Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built.’

Hopefully, Tel Aviv's centennial will be a provocation to set out for the building yet to come.

Next year in rebuilt Tel Aviv!

בשנה הבאה בתל אביב הבנויה!

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