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First Jewish city turns 100

Tel Aviv celebrates with concerts, a marathon, its famous all-night parties.

Fireworks marked the 100th birthday of Tel Aviv on Saturday. Israel's second-largest city, built on Mediterranean dunes, is hardened to the shocks of conflict. "The nightlife here is crazier than anywhere in the world," said a pub owner.
Fireworks marked the 100th birthday of Tel Aviv on Saturday. Israel's second-largest city, built on Mediterranean dunes, is hardened to the shocks of conflict. "The nightlife here is crazier than anywhere in the world," said a pub owner.Read moreBERNAT ARMANGUE / Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel - Well past that Sabbath midnight in December, hours before the Mideast erupted again into war, Tel Aviv was doing what it loves most - partying.

For a place founded a century ago to be the world's first Jewish city, the atmosphere was decidedly un-kosher.

Christmas decorations lined the bars, and the delis were selling pork. In the clubs, dancers dripped sweat.

Inside the "Zizitripo" lounge, Omer Gershon downed a shot of vodka.

"The nightlife here is crazier than anywhere in the world. I've got people drinking here all night long," the 34-year-old owner yelled over the thumping electronic music. "There's a lot of escapism involved."

And there was plenty to escape from that night. An hour's drive south, Palestinian extremists were firing missiles at Israeli communities, and Israel would shortly invade the Gaza Strip to stop the barrages - an operation that ultimately claimed about 1,400 lives.

It was hardly an auspicious prelude to a year in which Tel Aviv has begun celebrating its 100th birthday with art shows, outdoor concerts, a marathon, and the inevitable all-night street party.

But this is a city hardened to the shocks of conflict.

In the 1991 Gulf War it was hit by Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles. A decade later, it suffered an onslaught of Palestinian suicide bombings.

In the 2006 war against Hezbollah, the fear loomed that Tel Aviv might be hit from Lebanon by Iranian-supplied missiles. During the Gaza war, similar fears were felt.

But the party goes on.

Tel Aviv was founded April 11, 1909, on Mediterranean sand dunes north of the Arab port of Jaffa. Its name, which it took later, means "Hill of Spring" and is drawn from the writings of Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism's founding father.

Its first inhabitants were Jews from Russia, Germany, and Poland.

Successive waves of European anti-Semitism culminating in the rise of Nazi Germany swelled the immigrant population. In 1934, it was declared a city. After World War II came Holocaust survivors and Middle East Jews.

The founders built theaters, museums, promenades, and universities. The political and military bodies of the state-to-be were born here. Nearly 61 years after Israel became a state, Tel Aviv is a high-tech metropolis and financial capital of 400,000 people.

With its suburban sprawl, it swells to three million, more than half the Jews in Israel.

Baruch Kipnis, a geography professor who recently published a book celebrating Tel Aviv's centennial, said the city "controls almost every aspect of life" in Israel and has become "an enormous head on a shriveled body."

Some deride it as "the bubble," detached from the "other" Israel of religious purists; kibbutzniks; communities under missile attack from Gaza; and the military occupation of 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank 20 miles away.

Forty miles southeast in the mountains is Jerusalem, divided among secular Jews, Orthodox Jews, and Arabs.

While Jerusalem suffers from bouts of religious and Arab-Israeli strife, Tel Aviv's defenders counter that their city is leaping forward into the future.

"Tel Aviv is the model for what Israel needs to be," said Yael Dayan, chairwoman of the city council and daughter of the late war hero, Moshe Dayan. "Jerusalem is not a city, it's a symbol, it's a place people are leaving. We are the exact opposite. We are a city of live-and-let-live."

Trendy Sheinkin Street has an unwritten agreement: On Fridays, it is open to gay parades, tattoo parlors, and fresh-fruit-juice stands; on Saturdays, it shuts down to respect the Sabbath.

In last year's mayoral election, a third of the vote went to Dov Khenin, a Jewish member of a mixed Arab-Israeli party. He finished second.

After independence, Tel Aviv spread to encompass several Arab villages whose inhabitants had fled or been driven out in the 1948 war.

Still, having been founded as an entirely Jewish city on empty land purchased from its Arab owners, "in that regard," said Khenin, "it is not a Zionist city, because in no way was it based on the oppression of the Arabs."