Young Tel Aviv Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 1 25 August 2010 2:08:05 PM The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies editors S. Ilan Troen Jehuda Reinharz Sylvia Fuks Fried The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies publishes original scholarship of ex- ceptional significance on the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. It draws on disciplines across the academy, from anthropology, sociology, political science, and international relations to the arts, history, and literature. It seeks to further an un- derstanding of Israel within the context of the modern Middle East and the modern Jewish experience. There is special interest in developing publications that enrich the university curriculum and enlighten the public at large. The series is published under the auspices of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. For a complete list of books in this series, please see www.upne.com Anat Helman Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities Nili Scharf Gold Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz, editors Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 2 25 August 2010 2:08:06 PM YoungCT[0eXe 0CP[T^UCf^2XcXTb Anat Helman Translated by Haim Watzman b randeis u niversity p ress Waltham, Massachusetts Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 3 25 August 2010 2:08:06 PM Brandeis University Press Published by University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2010 Brandeis University All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Eric M. Brooks Typeset in Whitman and Mostra Two by Passumpsic Publishing The publication of this book was generously supported by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise Publication Grant and the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. Originally published as Or veyam hikifuha: tarbut tel avivit bitkufat hamandat by Haifa University Press, Haifa, 2007. University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Helman, Anat. Young Tel Aviv: a tale of two cities / Anat Helman.—1st ed. p. cm.—(The Schusterman series in Israel studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-58465-893-1 (cloth: alk. paper)— isbn 978-1-58465-890-0 (ebook) 1. Tel Aviv (Israel)—History. 2. Tel Aviv (Israel)— Description and travel. 3. Tel Aviv (Israel)—Social life and customs—20th century. 4. Tel Aviv (Israel)— Economic conditions—20th century. I. Title. ds110.t34h45 2010 956.94'804—dc22 2010023308 5 4 3 2 1 Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 4 25 August 2010 2:08:06 PM CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 chapter one Portrait of a City 11 chapter two Public Events 45 chapter three Tel Aviv’s Consumer Culture 77 chapter four Entertainment and Leisure 105 chapter five Subcultures in the First Hebrew City 131 Conclusion 155 Notes 165 References 185 Index 207 Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 5 25 August 2010 2:08:06 PM Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 6 25 August 2010 2:08:06 PM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is based on a PhD dissertation submitted to the Hebrew University ten years ago. I wish to express my gratitude to my teachers, Em- manuel Sivan and Hagit Lavsky, for their inspiring supervision. The primary sources were collected in the Central Zionist Archive, the poster collection at the National Library, the Pinhas Lavon Institute for Labor Movement Research, the Jabotinsky Institute, Bialik House, Kibbutz Afikim library, the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archives, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, Ahad Haam Library and Beit Ariela’s journal collection, the Eliasaf Robinson Collection at Stanford University, and the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town. Thanks are due to all the librarians, archivists, and workers in these institutions. Spe- cial thanks to Ziona Raz, Nellie Verzerevsky, and Rivka Pershel- Gershon of the Tel Aviv–Yafo Municipal Historical Archive. I wish to thank Atalia Helman, Ada Schein, Yael Reshef, Elchanan Reiner, Yael Zerubavel, and Orit Rozin, who read earlier drafts of the book, for all their helpful comments; the staff of the Haifa University Press, which published the Hebrew edition in 2007; the Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute and the Association of Israel Studies, for awarding it the Ben-Shalom prize and the Shapiro prize in 2008. Thanks are also due to Danny Helman for the book’s title. Preparing a book for the Schusterman Series in Israel Studies was a de- lightful experience. I wish to thank Sylvia Fuks Fried of the Brandeis Uni- versity Press and Phyllis Deutsch of the University Press of New England, as well as Ilan Troen and Jehuda Reinharz, Jason Warshof, Amanda Dupuis, and Katy Grabill. I am very grateful to Haim Watzman for his attentive and creative translation. vii Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 7 25 August 2010 2:08:07 PM Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 8 25 August 2010 2:08:07 PM Young Tel Aviv Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 9 25 August 2010 2:08:07 PM Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 10 25 August 2010 2:08:07 PM INTRODUCTION In 1933, a young South African Zionist named Marcia Gitlin wrote up her impressions of her first visit to Palestine for the South African Jew- ish Chronicle. The first installment, devoted to Tel Aviv, opened with these words: When I look back now on the days before I visited Palestine and try to recall the conception I had of Tel Aviv I find myself at a loss. I do not re- ally know what I expected to find. This I do remember, that I felt I knew a great deal about this first hundred percent Jewish town. I had fed on the reports of numerous people who had visited it, on the statements of Zionist propagandists and on various photographs that had come my way. From these, no doubt, a picture had been built up in my mind, but whatever it may have been its outlines have become blurred and faded in the live dynamic thing which is the Tel Aviv I have seen that I would scarce recognize it if I saw it today.1 The city Gitlin visited dated back to 1906, when an association of Zion- ist Jewish merchants and professionals purchased 120 dunams (30 acres) of land northeast of Jaffa. A predominantly Arab city, Jaffa had a number of Jewish neighborhoods, built at the end of the nineteenth century. The members of the association wanted to escape Jaffa’s crowded and substan- dard housing by creating a garden suburb. Construction commenced in 1909, and before the year was out the association members had decided to call their neighborhood Tel Aviv. The name, literally “ancient mound of spring,” was the Hebrew translation of the title of Theodor Herzl’s Zionist novel Altneuland (Old-New Land).2 Tel Aviv grew rapidly, but its growth halted suddenly at the outbreak of World War I in 1917. When the fighting approached Palestine, the country’s Turkish rulers expelled the city’s inhabitants. After the British conquest, the exiles returned to their homes and a new era of Tel Aviv’s history began. From a small garden suburb, it quickly turned into a commercial and man- ufacturing urban center. In 1921, Palestine’s Arabs carried out a series of 1 Helman - Tel Aviv.indb 1 25 August 2010 2:08:07 PM 2 y oung t el a viv attacks on the Yishuv, as the Jewish community in Palestine called itself. Jewish refugees from Jaffa settled in Tel Aviv. That same year, the Mandate administration granted Tel Aviv independent municipal status, and soon thereafter attached Jaffa’s old Jewish neighborhoods to the new city. Dur- ing the period of the British Mandate, 40 percent of the Jewish immigrants who arrived in Palestine settled in Tel Aviv. Most of the Yishuv’s political, economic, and cultural institutions were located there. The city became the territorial, demographic, and economic center of the Yishuv.3 Tel Aviv’s population, about 2,000 in 1919, swelled during the 1920s, reaching 40,000. By the end of the 1930s, it had quadrupled to 160,000. The municipality estimated that about a quarter of this population growth was due to natural increase, with the rest attributable to immigration into the city. At the beginning of the 1920s, Tel Aviv’s territory totaled 1,400 dunams—slightly more than half a square mile. By the end of the 1930s, it encompassed about two and a half square miles. Its geographical expansion to the east and southeast was blocked by the Arab neighborhoods of Sumil, Salameh, and Sarona, the last a neighborhood built by the German Tem- plar sect. With land in limited supply and demand burgeoning, real estate prices soared upward. The high price of land encouraged intensive, dense construction, including the addition of wings, rooms, and upper stories to existing structures.4 Prior to World War I, Tel Aviv’s only manufacturing took place in small workshops. But during the Mandate, with the arrival of new waves of immi- grants and the resulting construction boom, the first factories were built, and existing facilities were enlarged. During the 1920s and 1930s, about half the country’s industrial plants were in Tel Aviv, but most of these en- gaged in small manufacturing enterprises.