Proudly secular and downright sexy, Tel Aviv pulses with cutting-edge energy.
Ever since the 1940s and '50s, when authors and poets crowded the intimate cafes
of Dizengoff Street, the citizens of Tel Aviv have been dedicated to taking Israeli
culture in new directions. Still a bastion of the literati, Tel Aviv is a famed hot spot
for other cultural interests as well; most Israeli bands rocket to stardom from local
clubs, and dozens of theater groups perform everything from Broadway exports to
avant-garde IsraeU plays. Today, the city's exuberant youth spends its time shop-
ping for combat boots and navel rings in trendy Sheinkin Street boutiques, bronz-
ing at the beach on Shabbat, and clubbing 'til sunrise.
Not surprisingly, given its never-ending quest to stay current, Tel Aviv is a very
political city. Despite the government's effort to make Jerusalem the recognized cap-
ital, most countries keep their foreign
embassies here. For a brief period
during the Gulf Crisis in the winter of
1991, Tel Aviv became a target for
Saddam Hussein's SCUD missiles and
CNN videos of gas masks being dis-
tributed to children demonstrated the
unique tension that exists here. It was
also here in November 1995 that Yigal
Amir, a Jewish student, fired the bul-
let that killed Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin (see Assassination of Rabin,
). The assassination cast a shadow
over all of Israel, but no place felt it
more acutely than Tel Aviv. The Mid-
dle East conflict has taken its toll
since then; in the last few years,
Hamas bombings have claimed a
number of lives in the city.
Tel Aviv sprouted from Jaffa
{Yafo, or "beautiful," in Hebrew;
Yafa in Arabic), its neighboring city,
at the end of the 19th century. Jewish
settlers, unhappy with the crowded
and dilapidated condition of Jaffa
and its high Arab population,
founded the first two exclusively
Jewish neighborhoods just to the
north in 1887 and 1891. In 1909, the
Jewish population of Jaffa parcelled
out another northern area, naming it
Atuzat Bayit (Housing Property).
One year later, the suburb was
renamed Tel Aviv (Spring Hill) after
the town Theodore Herzl had envi-