Commentary Magazine


Article Preview

The First Hebrew City

- Abstract

Tel Aviv, the “first Hebrew city,” as it was once the fashion to call it, will soon turn one hundred—and, like the United States at that age, its frontier is shutting down.

Until now, the city has kept running forward. Ever since it was officially founded on sand dunes in 1909, originally with the name of Ahuzat Bayit, as a Jewish offshoot of predominantly Arab Jaffa to the south, it has continued to break away, stage by stage, from itself. Bordered on the west by the sea, it has developed by discarding its old neighborhoods, leaving them to those who could not afford to keep up with it and moving on, mostly northward.



About the Author