Considering its size and importance today, it comes as a
surprise that Tel Aviv was nothing but a sand dune 100 years ago.
Tel Aviv actually began as a suburb of Jaffa, the adjoining city with which it melded in 1950. Jaffa (meaning "beautiful") is an ancient and venerable town which is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments.
According to Jewish tradition, Jaffa was first established
after the Flood by Noah's son Japheth, from whom the town took its name. Jonah,
it is said, was swallowed by a whale after he left the port of Jaffa, and Peter
performed the Miracle of Tabitha here. In Greek mythology, Andromeda was
chained to a rock in Jaffa port.
First inhabited 4,000 years ago, Jaffa was once a Philistine town. Later King Solomon used the port to bring cedars from Lebanon which were used for the great Temple in Jerusalem.
Though King Herod built Caesarea to replace Jaffa as his
main port, Jaffa became important again under Moslem and Crusader rule. The
town then declined until the 19th century, when it began to grow in size and
influence.
So crowded did Jaffa become that a group of Jews decided to
leave Jaffa's lively, noisy and dirty environs to create a garden suburb which
would become Tel Aviv. They bought uninhabited sand dunes north of Jaffa,
formed an association called "Ahuzat Bayit" and divided property into
parcels of land by drawing lots.
The romantic name Tel Aviv ("Hill of Spring") was
chosen for the new community in 1910 partly because of its associations with
rebirth and revitalization, and partly because it recalled the vision of
Ezekiel. In the biblical Tel Aviv of Babylon, the exiled prophet saw the vision
of animated dry bones, which drew him back to Israel. Yet another association
is with Theodor Herzl's visionary book "Alteneuland". "Tel
Aviv" is the free Hebrew translation of that title.
It is amusing today to think that Tel Aviv's founders once
banned commercial enterprise in the city. That ban, of course, did not last
long; after the First World War (during which the settlers of Tel Aviv were
dispersed), the town took enormous commercial strides. In 1921 it became a
separate township and the first modern Jewish city in the world. By 1924 Tel
Aviv had a respectable population of 35,000, which was to grow to over 200,000
by 1948.
Tel Aviv's most significant moment in modern history came when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel on 14 May 1948, in the home of mayor Meir Dizengoff.