The city of Tel Aviv, known as "the first Hebrew city", was established as the realization of the Zionist vision of Theodor Herzl and is the second largest city in Israel, after Jerusalem. Before the establishment of the Tel Aviv neighborhood, the Jews of Yaffo settled for building Jewish neighborhoods outside of Yaffo. The official founding year of the neighborhood, 1909, marks the year when lots were drawn, and the first houses were built which would later become known as the independent Hebrew city, first called "Ahuzat Bayit" and later renamed Tel Aviv, after the Hebrew translation of Herzl's book Alteneuland (meaning old new land). The city has also been known by its nicknames: "Little Tel Aviv," "The White City," and "Garden City."
Tel Aviv would grow to become the cultural center of Israel with several prominent members of Odesa's Jewish cultural elite establishing themselves in the city, including Haim Nahman Bialik and the first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. In 1914, "Eden" opened as the first Israeli Cinema and Opera house. In 1925 with the establishment of the Histadrut art studio by Yitzhak Frenkel who brought the influence of French modern art, Tel Aviv soon eclipsed Jerusalem as Israel's art capital. Several theatres established themselves in Tel Aviv during the interwar period, including the Ohel Theatre, Habima Theatre and the Matate Theatre. In 1932, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art was first opened in Meri Dizengoff's home. In 1957, the Charles Bronfmann Auditorium was opened housing the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and concerts.
Jewish community in Yaffo Yaffo's Jewish community In 1825, during the period when the Ottoman Empire ruled over the Land of Israel, Rabbi Raphael Yehuda Menachem Levi, known as , was appointed by the rabbis of Jerusalem to establish a Jewish settlement in Yaffo to receive Jewish immigrants, as he maintained good relations with the Ottoman authorities. At that time, there was no Jewish community in Yaffo, and Jews arriving through the port of Yaffo often suffered due to the lack of Jewish assistance. The rabbi's life in isolation, in a city without any other Jews, was far from comfortable or pleasant, even though he occasionally traveled to Jerusalem to stay there for a while. In 1829, the rabbi influenced 12 survivors of a ship carrying Jewish immigrants from Morocco that sank near Acre to become the first Jews to join him and settle in Yaffo. Over time, more Jews gathered in Yaffo, and the community came to include both Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
In 1834, the Jewish cemetery in Yaffo was purchased to spare the city's Jewish residents the need to transport their dead to Jerusalem. The establishment of this cemetery can, in fact, be regarded as the beginning of the Chevra Kadisha (Jewish burial society) of Tel Aviv-Yaffo.
In 1863, Rabbi Yehuda Margosa initiated the "City Committee for the Jews of Yaffo," which was the first public committee in the country not based on sectarian or communal divisions, with both Sephardim and Ashkenazim participating together. This committee was responsible for the religious and social affairs of Yaffo's Jewish community. From the early 1920s, the committee gradually transferred its authority to the Tel Aviv municipality and the Tel Aviv religious council, until it ceased to exist in May 1939.
Departure from Yaffo In 1842, Rabbi Yehuda Margosa, together with Hakham Chaim Avraham Pinso and Hakham Yechiel Bekhar HaCohen, purchased a plot of land of 103 dunams outside the walls of Yaffo, on the banks of the Ayalon River, northeast of Yaffo, today the Montefiore neighborhood and the Azrieli Towers. The rabbi planted an orchard there with 5310 trees, assisted by the American Clorinda Minor from the Protestant Millennialist Christian farm "Mount Hope."
In 1853, Rabbi Yehuda Margosa sent a letter to the British Jew Sir Moses Montefiore, former Sheriff of London, and wrote (originally in English):
"By the grace of God, I hereby declare that I am the first Israelite who came here to Yaffo, one of the tribe of Dan... I began alone to cultivate the land by planting a garden, as I am about to tell Your Excellency, and if I could accomplish my plan, I would cause other Jews to do as I do, following my example. But everyone knows that the beginnings of everything new are very difficult, and even the Muslims here were astonished to see a Jew cultivating the land... I will do all that I can to encourage agricultural labor among the members of my community, numbering seventy families. All this is written by the rabbi who is here, and he is the appointed leader of the Jews who pray to God for your welfare. Raphael Yehuda Menachem Levi, Yaffo, July 28, 1853."
Margosa continued to lead the community until he died in 1879.https://files.ybz.org.il/periodicals/Cathedra/2/Article_2.5.pdf Cathedra (Journal), 164-162, Shoshana Halevi
In 1876, the first Jewish house outside the walls of Yaffo was built and inhabited by Chaim Shmuel Shmerling. The walls of Yaffo themselves were dismantled during that time.
In 1887, the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls of Yaffo, Neve Tzedek, was founded, followed by additional neighborhoods: Neve Shalom in 1890, Mahane Yehuda in 1896, Mahane Yosef in 1904, and Ohel Moshe and Kerem HaTeimanim in 1906.
Altogether, eleven separate residential neighborhoods were established outside of Yaffo before Ahuzat Bayit (Tel Aviv) was founded.
Ahuzat Bayit
In 1906, a group of Jews from Yaffo decided to leave the city, driven by the desire to live independent Hebrew lives and to improve the harsh living conditions, which included overcrowding, filth, and the Ottoman decree that required Jews in Yaffo to change residences every year (the "Muharrem"). This group of Jews first convened in July 1906 and organized under the name "Society of Home Builders," later changed to "Ahuzat Bayit." At this meeting, they presented a plan for building a modern Hebrew city that would serve as a gateway to the Land of Israel for Jews around the world. The plan envisioned a city constructed according to the late 19th century Western European model.
The neighborhood the nucleus of the future city was located outside the walls of Yaffo, north of the railway line, on sandy lands of Kerem Gibli, purchased with the help of a loan from the Jewish National Fund. The neighborhood was founded in 1909 as a community of low-rise houses surrounded by gardens, under the name Ahuzat Bayit. The official founding date is April 11, 1909 (20 Nisan 5669), the day the lot-drawing ceremony with seashells was held for the neighborhood. The neighborhood contained a few streets, set perpendicular to one another. Its main street was Herzl Street, and at its northern end stood the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium (today the site of the Shalom Meir Tower), the first Hebrew high school. At the center of the neighborhood, Rothschild Boulevard was laid out in a valley where sand was cleared after leveling the dunes.
By the outbreak of World War I, Tel Aviv had only 140 houses, including two neighborhoods annexed to it: Nahalat Binyamin, located to the north along the street of that name (40 houses), and Hevra Hadasha ("New Society"), situated east of Tel Aviv along the coastal road, later to become Allenby Street (15 houses). During the war, the city's development came to a halt, and it suffered from a locust plague that destroyed all vegetation in the neighborhood, as well as from the persecution of the Ottoman authorities, especially Yaffo's governor, Hassan Bey. In April 1917, the Turkish authorities expelled their residents together with the Jewish residents of Yaffo.
The nostalgic term "Little Tel Aviv," coined by Haim Hefer and Dan Ben-Amotz during the 50th anniversary celebrations of Tel Aviv's founding, refers to Tel Aviv of those early years, which consisted mainly of the Neve Tzedek neighborhood and the area of Herzl, Rothschild, and Allenby streets. One of its central buildings was the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium.
Tel Aviv during the British Mandate Tel Aviv came under British control on November 17, 1917, and the front line was established north of the city.Cyril Falls, Military Operations Egypt & Palestine, vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1930), pp. 177–178. With the beginning of the British Mandate, Tel Aviv residents were able to return to the city, and from 1921 onward the city entered a period of rapid development.Tamir Goren, “Tel Aviv and the Question of Separation from Jaffa 1921–1936,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 3 (2016): 473–487. That same year, the Jaffa riots of 1921 broke out, during which Arab residents of Jaffa attacked the city’s Jewish population and killed 47 people, including Yosef Haim Brenner. In the aftermath of the riots, many Jews moved from Jaffa to Tel Aviv.
On May 11, 1921, the Mandate government announced the formal administrative separation of Tel Aviv from Jaffa through the “Tel Aviv Township Ordinance.” Two years later, on May 11, 1923, the ordinance was implemented in practice, granting most of Jaffa’s Jewish neighborhoods autonomous municipal status under the Tel Aviv Community Committee and establishing an official municipal boundary between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. In certain cases Tel Aviv remained subordinate to the Jaffa municipality.
The city then expanded rapidly: from 3,600 residents in 1914 to 34,200 in 1925, and to 72,000 by 1934. In the early 1920s, this rapid population growth created temporary housing camps in which hundreds of people lived in tents, shacks, courtyards, along the seashore, and in the Nordia area. The municipality viewed these settlements as a sanitary hazard and worked to remove them. Some of the homeless residents organized into the society for building houses for the homeless, founded by Haim Boger to establish and settle in the Nordia neighborhood.
Cultural development of Tel Aviv
Art
In 1919, the Ruslan, dubbed the "Zionist Mayflower" a ship carrying Jewish immigrants and refugees departed from Odesa, the cultural center of Eastern European Jewry and arrived in the port of Yaffo carrying on board numerous figures who would settle in Tel Aviv and become leading cultural figures in Israel's cultural scene. Among its passengers was the historian Joseph Klausner, the artists Yitzhak Frenkel and Chaim Glicksberg, the cartoonist Arieh Navon the architects Ze'ev Rechter and Yehuda Megidovitch, the art collector Jacob Pereman and others.Pereman had brought with him a collection of 200 artworks, mostly post impressionist art works. In 1920 he, along with Joseph Constant organized the HaTomer, the first Jewish art cooperative of which Consant and his wife, Yitzhak Frenkel, Lev Halperin and Miriam Had Gadya were members. Frenkel and Constant taught art in the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, among their students was Ziona Tagger. The cooperative had its first exhibition in 1920 however was cut promptly after a week due to a pogrom. The exhibition was a financial failure. Mayor Meir Dizengoff was only able to convince one person to purchase an artwork. Peremen subsequently opened "The Permanent Art Exhibition in the Land of Israel" in the first art gallery in Israel. The artists attempted to survive on the production of ceramics and odd painting jobs however due to financial difficulties Joseph Constant and Yitzhak Frenkel left to Egypt with Frenkel continuing to Paris. In 1924 Haim Nahman Bialik settled in Tel Aviv upon invitation by Meir Dizengoff.