On Its 100th Birthday, Modern Israeli City Revels in Its Openness and Vibrancy

TEL AVIV The city's story starts south of town in the ancient port of Jaffa, where the Old Testament says Jonah departed on the voyage that took him into the belly of a whale and the New Testament says Peter sorted out some of the basics of Christianity.

But that's only an opening act. On a morning walk, tour guide Karl Walter is moving toward more contemporary events.

When the walls of Old Jaffa came down in the late 1800s, people started moving to the countryside, he said. Muslims went in one direction, Christians in another. The Jews went north, to a few plots of sand on which they built a school and some houses and started what would become Tel Aviv -- the first modern Jewish city and a destination for the earliest waves of Zionist immigrants.

The city celebrates its centennial this year, its role in the nation changed from point of arrival for emigres to notorious party town and cultural and financial hub -- a bit Manhattan, a bit L.A., a bit Ibiza, as a morning-to-dusk-to-dawn walk will show.

There are those who consider it a fulfillment of Theodore Herzl's early Zionist vision -- a Jewish city, yes, but one that has a strong bohemian streak, that's creative, tolerant and wide open in its politics. There are others who see it as a bit of an abomination, removed from the daily sense of conflict that runs through cities such as Jerusalem and a place, as one Israeli columnist called it, of "mass Shabbat desecration."

About 400,000 people live in the city proper. But close to half of the country's 7 million people live in Tel Aviv's suburbs or nearby coastal towns, so the dichotomy is a reflection not just of the city but of Israel itself.

Tel Aviv -- where David Ben-Gurion declared the Jewish state's independence -- has seen its share of violence, including suicide bombings and Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.

On the southern Tel Aviv waterfront, Walter pointed out the stone house that used to belong to one of Jaffa's Arab leaders. It's in a field where, he said, Jewish forces converged in a battle on the eve of Ben-Gurion's declaration. The house is now a museum.

Most of the Arab families were forced out or fled to the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and elsewhere. A few thousand remained, their descendants clustered in Jaffa neighborhoods that have since been incorporated into a combined municipality.

But as city conservation director Jeremie Hoffman said, the frame of reference is often different here than in other parts of Israel. Tel Aviv residents are as apt to identify with what's happening in New York and Paris as they are with the small towns of Israel, he said.

Hoffman's work is a case in point. In a country defined in some ways by ancient disputes, he is trying to preserve architecture that is only a few decades old -- the Bauhaus apartments built by immigrants who imported the style from Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

It's mid-afternoon, and Hoffman is strolling through downtown neighborhoods where the city has imposed strict rules on renovating hundreds of Bauhaus buildings. The United Nations has designated the area a heritage zone. Apartments that once housed new arrivals are now million-dollar investments. This is not where the new immigrants come anymore -- it is a second or third step, Hoffman said.