Tel Aviv: (With Its) Back to the Sea?

A “mock trial” charging “the Jewish people” with a “lack of seamanship” was organized by the Zevulun Seafaring Society in the city of Tel‐Aviv on 19 May 1938. This curious event forms the starting point for a discussion of the role of the sea and the port for the images and self‐images of Tel Aviv, both in the 1930s and today. The city on the Mediterranean built its first streets and houses a hundred years ago, “with its back to the sea”. The small garden suburb of Jaffa reached the shore only after World War I and the establishment of the British Mandate. In 1936, when the port of Jaffa was closed in protest against increasing Jewish immigration, Tel Aviv opened its own harbour: Sha'ar Zion, the gateway to Zion. Has it also become a port city? And (how) do the characteristics of a port city challenge Tel Aviv’s image as an exclusively Jewish and Hebrew city?