Nostalgia Sunday – The Levant Fair

September 19, 2010 - 9:39 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel 

Sukkot is festival and exhibition season in Israel which means everything will be celebrated, feted and displayed over the coming weeks. But, though they may not know it, they owe a debt to the granddaddy of all Israeli events, the Levant Fair.

Fairs in the Yishuv, the early Jewish settlement, first started in the 1920s as agricultural exhibitions but by the second half of the decade their nature had changed to commercial and industrial. According to Levant Fair collector and historian Dr. Arthur H. Groten, “The need to promote the Palestine of the Yishuv, as the Jews of Palestine were called, as a vital economic link between West and East reflected the cosmopolitan attitude of many of the new immigrants…”

The 1932 Palestine and Near East Fair was the first to be called a “Levant Fair” and “was the first to have official foreign governmental representation including Great Britain, U.S.S.R, Egypt, Cyprus, Romania, Turkey, Switzerland, Poland, Latvia and Bulgaria. 831 foreign firms exhibited and 285,000 people attended.”

It was that year that the fair adopted a new mascot: a flying camel. (Groten relates “an apocryphal tale” that when Tel Aviv’s Mayor Meir Dizengoff said to his colleague, the Mayor of Jaffa that he wished for his city to host a Levant Fair similar to those held throughout the Near East, “he was told that it would happen ‘when camels fly’”). True or not, the logo was much loved; it appeared on stamps, and is still used today by the Israel Trade Fairs & Convention Center.

But things really got going in 1934, “through the construction of an entirely new complex on the banks of the Yarkon River by a group of young architects, trained in Europe, many at the Bauhaus, under the direction of Arieh El-Hanani. The fairgrounds were an integrated assemblage of International Style buildings. In fact, it was the largest such integrated grouping ever constructed… Over 600,000 visitors paid to attend an event that included 36 foreign governments and 2200 firms (1500 being foreign).”

El-Hanani also designed the sculpture “Hapoel HaIvri” (The Jewish Worker), one of the Yishuv’s first works of urban public art.

On a personal note: my Israeli mother was born in Jerusalem in 1929; five years later, her family came to live in Tel Aviv. So I like to think that maybe, just maybe, she was one of the children who climbed on the statue, sat on her mother’s knee during the opening ceremony audience or rode the “Luna Park” carousel.

The last fair, held in 1936, was not well-attended due to the increasingly troubled situation in Europe, the rise of Nazism and the war against the Jews, as well as the Arab revolt.

Over the years, the fairgrounds fell into disrepair and the pavilions used mainly as ceramic and tile warehouses. The port closed to ships in 1965. The fairgrounds were moved to North Tel Aviv. Only in 2001 did reconstruction of the historic Tel Aviv port commence and with it, the rehabilitation of the Bauhaus structures — those few that remain. However, the statue of a flying camel still sits atop a flagpole at the main entrance and the modernist statue of the Hebrew Worker has also survived.

Today’s photos come mainly from the G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, a rich source of historical images of the Middle East photographed from 1898 to 1946.

For more about the early days of Tel Aviv, see “City of Work and Prosperity”: The Levant Fair, part of the Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv Collection at Stanford University. And there are more great photographs of the Levant Fair on a site called Abraham Stern’s Tel Aviv.

Also, check out Dr. Arthur H. Groten’s wonderful collection of stamps, ephemera and additional photos of the fair in his online paper, Semiotics and the Levant Fairs of Palestine. It is an amazing and enjoyable read.

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Entrepreneurial

September 14, 2009 - 1:48 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Bike_Ad_small (2)I often think that Israelis, and Israeli immigrants in particular — those of us that have made their lives here — are an enterprising lot. I’m not just talking about the high-tech heroes and business brains that have put Israel on the global village map, but the many individuals who open their own businesses, becoming independent contractors who want to control their own professional destiny and bank account.

Sure, part of it has to do with earning some more shekels, as many professions in this land are not well paid and are nowhere near the U.S. scale, even in these economically trying times. But no matter the reason, the results are often very creative.

Take my friend, Moshe, for example. He just launched Midnight Cycling Through Jerusalem, three-four hour tours, starting at midnight, through the streets and alleyways of Jerusalem. He’s done a few of them so far, isn’t so certain about the prices — but can tell you that he’s getting more than a few phone calls for his Hol Hamoed Sukkot rides. You can also rent bikes and helmets through Moshe, if needed.

He’s far from the only one. Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking about JewButt by Beverly, the Dinah Project by another Beverly and not exactly a business but a wiki, SiddurWiki.com, by friend Brian.

There’ll be more to come, but if you want to take a midnight bike ride around Jerusalem, contact Moshe, tour guide and teacher.

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