Tiyul to Tel Aviv:  Cultural Zionism

by Joanna Ray,     11^th grade,       Silver Springs MD

 

Here I am in Jaffa overlooking the modern city of Tel Aviv!

The day of our Tiyul in Tel Aviv was beautiful and warm, a great day to learn about cultural Zionism and the dreams of those who established Tel Aviv, as well as the modern culture of the city. We learned about the founders of Tel Aviv along with the interesting street art and graffiti.

Some cool Tel Aviv street art

The vision of the founders of Tel Aviv was to eventually create a Jewish state. Their goal was to create a Hebrew speaking Jewish city by bringing their Jewish culture from Europe and other diaspora communities. Tel Aviv was not planned to be a religiously Jewish city, but a cultural Jewish city. The concept was that everything was Jewish, even the sky is Jewish in Tel Aviv!

the carpentry workshop buildings in the Florentine neighborhood have become a graffiti display

My first impression of Yaffo and the first neighborhoods of Tel Aviv was that it was a very beautiful area and had a very interesting history to go along with it. We learned that Jaffa was once a port and that every person who immigrated to Palestine under the Ottoman Empire came through there. All the Jews living in that area stayed there and lived in Yaffo because there was a wall, which was safe. During the Second Aliyah, the idea to create a Jewish city was born.

Here's Omri our madrich posing with some street art

On this tiyul, we also learned the history of the Jewish nation’s language, and how the Hebrew language was revived. We learned that it was a generational process. Through lots of hard work and through the adoption of Hebrew by the Kibbutz movement it was ultimately revived. One method that was even used to encourage Hebrew was people would stand on the street and pass out notes telling people to speak Hebrew and that it’s the language of the Jewish people. One man in particular, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, is credited for being the leader responsible for the revival of the Hebrew language.

The famous graffiti artist "Solomon" made this mural of the Beit HaMikdash on a synagogue

From what we saw on the tiyul, Tel Aviv today is a fulfillment of the cultural Zionist dream. It is a culturally Jewish city and also has a very modern feel to it. Tel Aviv is very different than Jerusalem in its “character” and atmosphere, and after having visited both of them, there are some major things that stand out which indeed make them feel different. In Tel Aviv, it feels very modern with a very progressive lifestyle, where as the atmosphere in Jerusalem feels much more old fashion and traditional. People in Tel Aviv wear all kinds of clothes; often you will see shorts and tank tops due to the warm weather and beaches in Tel Aviv, whereas in Jerusalem, there are a lot more people dressed very modestly, especially in the Old City.  In Jerusalem, the lifestyle and the feel of the city is based a lot on religion, and in Tel Aviv, just as the founders intended, it is based on a cultural form of Judaism and less religiously based.

the street artist Yonatan Kislev made this "27 Club" mural of famous people

This was one of the most interesting tiyuls we have been on and I loved the history we learned about the city as well as contrasting it by learning about how the city has developed into the way it is today. From the beaches to the graffiti the modern city life in Tel Aviv is fascinating to see while learning about the way the city was when it was originally founded.

 

a political message about asylum seekers was written here on this street art