In 1912, an Austrian-Jewish man by the name of Leo Kahn traveled to the Land of Israel. He was on assignment from a Jewish newspaper in Austria to photographs the Jewish Yishuv in Israel. The "Yishuv" is what the Jews called the entirety of the Jewish communities in the Land of Israel before 1948, when the State of Israel gained its independence.
Kahn traveled the length and breadth of the land, and he took some wonderful photos that commemorated the life of Jews in that time.
One of the places he visited was Tel Aviv, the First Hebrew City, as it was fondly called. In this post, I'd like to share with you some of the photos he took.
Bear in mind that Tel Aviv was founded just three years prior, in April 1909, so the city was still in its infancy, and is, in fact, not yet a city.
Still, there is much to celebrate in these photos, as you can see how Tel Aviv rose from the sands on which it stands to this day.
In this photo, you can see children playing in the sandy playground of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium. The gymnasium was the first Hebrew high school and the first major building in Tel Aviv.
It used to stand at the edge of Herzl Street (the school is named after Theodore Herzl) until the late 1950s, when it was torn down. The school still exists, but in a different location.
By the way, my fictional detective, Adam Lapid, visits this school on one of his cases in book 5 of the Adam Lapid Series, "A Deadly Act".
Here's another photo of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, this one showing the building itself.
Note the majesty of the architecture and also the unpaved road and sidewalk. The founders of Tel Aviv venerated education, so they chose to build this school as their first major communal project.
This is a photo of Herzl Street, and at the back, you can see the Gymnasium, standing like some temple at the edge of the street.
The tearing down of the Gymnasium was a sad moment in the history of Tel Aviv and local architecture.
And finally, here is a street photo of one of the first streets in Tel Aviv. If you visit Tel Aviv these days, you'll see apartment buildings and skyscrapers, but in 1912, you would have seen houses of one or two stories. The place was still a neighborhood in those days, not a major metropolis like today.
I hope these photos gave you a sense of what Tel Aviv was like in its infancy. A small, developing place that rose from the sand dunes of the central coastal area of Israel.
It was a simple place in many ways, but its founders had a grand vision, to turn it into the major city it is today.