Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is located on the cost and the second largest city in Israel – right after Jerusalem.

Israeli’s often like to tell me that it is like Manhattan since it is very vibrant and metropolitan.

I never let them finish their sentence because Tel Aviv is nothing like Manhattan. If anything, it’s like San Francisco.

Often titled, as the Gay Capital and the Vegan Capital of the world, and the Nonstop City, it really is a place all it’s own.

Tel Aviv was originally founded in 1909 as a Zionist suburb where the community members could live an independent Hebrew life.

This is where it got the nickname of “First Hebrew City.”

The Jews who started the city wished to leave Jews ancient port city Jaffa with dreams to have houses surrounded by gardens.

The city was at first called Ahuzat Bayit, named after the association because they couldn’t decide on a name.

So, a committee was elected to come up with a new name.

Some of the names proposed were: New Jaffa, Neve Jaffa, Aviva, Yaffiafia, Ivria and “Herzliya” after Benjamin Zeev Herzl.

Tel Aviv was brought up because it was the name Nahum Sokolow chose for his Hebrew translation of  Theodor Herzl‘s book Old New Land.

Old New Land was published seven years earlier, and in it, Herzl described what he thought the Jewish state would look like when it was established.

Sokolow had adopted the name Tel Abib which is mentioned in Ezekiel as a place where the exiles to Babylon sat by a river.

What they didn’t know, is that a neighborhood in Ness Tziona was already named Tel Aviv.

However, city council members were divided over the name.

David Ben-Gurion, who later became Israel’s first prime minister, desperately wanted the name “Jaffa” to strengthen the city’s connection to biblical sources.

In the end, it was finally decided as a compromise to call the united city “Tel Aviv-Jaffa.”

Although it was a small settlement on the sand dunes north of Jaffa, Tel Aviv was envisaged as a future city from the start.

Today, Tel Aviv is Israel’s second to largest city and known for it’s lively and vibrant metropolitan energy and lifestyle.