by HAGAL SEGAL
The Lonely Planet guide wrote this summer that “Tel Aviv is the total flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea rather than an ancient Holy City on a hill. Hedonism is the one religion that unites its inhabitants. There are more bars than synagogues, God is a DJ and everyone’s body is a temple.”
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai has not protested this compliment to this day, which may explain why religious Israelis have been deserting the city over the past decade. Tel Aviv’s fate may have been sealed when former Mayor Shlomo Lahat characterized it as “the city that never stops,” thereby officially declaring its aspiration to become secular and meet the challenge of cultural assimilation.
In a proper Jewish city, breaks are part of the municipal essence. People go to pray three times a day, businesses and restaurants shut down for one day of the week, and once a year people even stop eating.
When Meir Dizengoff and his comrades established Tel Aviv, some 102 years ago, they were not plotting to deviate from this ancient tradition. In the recently published Shabbat Book by Yonadav Kaplon we read that during the first mayor’s era, people who would publically desecrate the Shabbat were slapped with a fine. Even the watering of private backyards was forbidden.
Y Net for more