Tel Aviv

From the ancient to the modern, from a bare hill to a bustling city, from Gath to Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is mentioned in the Bible, but it is not referring to the city that we know today. A little contest: anyone know where Tel Aviv is found in the Bible? The modern Tel Aviv was founded by a group of Jewish settlers in the early part of the 20th century. Tel Aviv, however, is right next to Yaffo (Joppa), which is a biblical town. It was one of the few ports the Israelites had on the sea, but they only controlled it for a short period of time. In the NT, Yaffo was known for being distinctly Jewish, which gives a flavor to the Peter-Cornelius story. Peter was in the distinctly Jewish city of Yaffo and was called to the totally Gentile city of Caesarea to witness to a group of Gentiles.

Today Yaffo is inhabited by Arabs while Tel Aviv is very Jewish. It is not the capital, but most of the foreign countries have their embassies there because they do not recognize Jerusalem as a Jewish city. Israelis say that you go to Jersualem to pray, Haifa to work, and Tel Aviv to play, and this certainly describes the city well. It is very secular and is in many ways the center of Israeli life.  Tel Aviv used to be known as a beautiful "city of white," but today it is run down. The first block or two in from the beach are beautiful, but once you get into the heart of the city the lack of maintanence so typical of Israelis becomes very evident, as you will be able to see in some of the pictures. The weather is obnoxiously humid. One time when I flew out I left Jerusalem very early in the morning when it was quite pleasent and somewhat chilly. I arrived in Tel Aviv about forty five mintues later and just about died when I got out of the car and got slammed by the humidity, and it was only five in the morning. Tel Aviv is not a nice place to be in the summer, in my opinion. But then, I did grow up in the Northwest!

Part of the reason that Tel Aviv is famous for leisure is beaches. Miles of nice beaches.

On the beach you can get food at this store, which you migh recognize.

For those of you who know Hebrew, you can practice on these two movie posters.

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