Tel Aviv glorified by Bauhaus architecture

Avraham Soskin House, 12 Lilienblum St 

by Zeev Rechter, 1933. Dezeen

Sir Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) was a Scottish urban planner, and having publicised his Cities and Town Planning Exhibition 1911, he was involved in town planning work mainly in India. But he was committed to Utopian ideals to be applied to the new Jewish homeland.

When Tel-Aviv became a city in 1921, Meir Dizengoff was elected mayor. In 1925 Dizengoff asked Geddes to submit a mas­t­er plan for the city, the limits being the Yarkon River in the North and Ibn Gvirol St in the East. Ged­des presented a great report in 1927, soon ap­prov­ed by the City Council. He brief was to cr­eate a European Garden City for 40,000 citizens, planning wide, main streets on a grid pattern, single plots for family homes, small pub­lic gar­d­ens in side streets and open access to beaches. He sp­ecified mixed residential-commercial use on the main roads.

This building designed for photographer Avraham Soskin was divided into two asymmetrical wings, each with its own entrance and stairwell. The front wing for the family had a flat roof with a pergola and a horizontal emphasis, expressed in rows of windows and the balconies' elongated ventilation slits. The large more industrial rear wing, invisible from the street, had 2 floors and basement for the photography studio. The balconies, windows, entrance details and roof pergola were all reconstructed meticulously according to historic plans and photographs. Three new flats were built in the back wing.

Cinema Theatre, now Cinema Hotel

1 Zamenhof St, 1934

Jerusalem Post

See the 1931 Master Plan of Tel-Aviv, drawn up by the Engineering Dept, on the original Geddes master plan of 1927. The primary roads, containing the city’s com­m­ercial activity, ARE broad and flow N-S. The second­ary roads, residential, DO flow E-W. Wide tree-lined streets increased shade and colour, and provided a pleasant public space.

Inevitably Geddes’ plan had to be modified. The city’s density soon needed growth to cater to the flood of 1930s imm­igr­ants. By the height of British Mand­ate, the city was home to 150,00 people and 8,000 buildings! Of Geddes’ 60 public gardens, only half were ever built.

The German Jews who arrived brought with them modernist architectural ideas from Le Corb­usier and Walter Gropius. Just as Tel-Aviv was burgeon­ing on the Mediterranean (1933), many of the lead­ing Bau­haus ar­chitects left Germany for Britain and USA, at least 20 Bauhausers and their colleagues migrated to the British Mandate in Israel.

By the mid-1930s it was the only city anywhere being built largely in the Bauhaus Style; its simple concrete curv­es, boxy shapes, small windows set in large walls, glass-brick vert­icals, asymm­et­ric­al fac­ades, horizontal lines and balcon­ies all washed in white. Tel-Aviv was a vis­ion of startling white: c4,000 buildings, all built from 1933.

65 Shenkin St. 1935

Archinect

Tel-Aviv city council design­ers chose the Bau­haus style because of four ideological reasons:

1. Tel-Aviv architecture wasn't historically consistent with buildings from the past; there WAS no past.
2. The architects’ job was to improve so­c­iety: housing for working famil­ies, trade unions, free clinics.
3. Prefabricated blocks of reinforced concrete, flat roof and sheer façade, no cornices or decoration saved money. Plus a three storey limit.
4. 20+ energetic Bauhaus-influenced architects fled Germany in 1933. Tel-Aviv city council drew on this amazing pool of available talent.

Bauhaus elements were characteristic of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, with some local Tel-Aviv adaptat­ions. Glass was used sparingly, and narrow, horizon­tal win­dows appeared on many of Tel-Aviv’s Bauhaus buildings. Vertical windows were used on stairwells.

Along the Mediter­r­anean, balconies in­creased the movement of breezes and sea views. So overhanging brows blocked dir­ect rays of sunshine from entering the win­dows. This changed in the 1930s when desperate, homeless immigrants were arriving. Bauhaus lines were then obscured by ugly balcony enclosures, while giving an extra bedroom.

Concrete stilts raised the buildings off street level, creat­ing space for green gardens and air flow. As with the balconies, much of the once-open area from stilts were later enclosed.

European Bauhaus buildings already had flat roofs, not shingled and slanted roofs. While Tel-Aviv roofs sometimes did not feature roof gar­d­ens a la Le Corbusier, they DID serve all building res­idents.

Bauhaus interiors in Germany were already white, functional and plain. But Tel-Aviv has a hot climate, so rooms had to be as cool as possible. No wall-to-wall carpets and curtains; marble floors instead; and shutters could close windows entirely. And space could be used flexibly, of necessity.

29 Idelson St. 1936

Greyscape

The original Bauhaus build­ings might have ended up being bull­dozed, but a miracle happened: In 1991 the Engin­eer­ing Dept of Tel-Aviv municipality created a Modern Heritage Preservation under architect Nitza Szmuk. Bauhaus Renovation Foundation organised a Conf­er­ence for May 1994 for 2,000+ inter­nation­al particip­ants. Along with Dizengoff, Geddes planned a Garden City of wide tree-lined boulevards, small roads with smaller green spots, clean-lined, boxy buildings with little ornamentation and a beach focus. In 2008 Tel-Aviv opened a Bauhaus Museum in Bialik St to dis­play its furnishing designs etc.

 
Tel Aviv is now home to c4,000 buildings of Bauhaus architecture (2,000 protected under preservation law), the world’s largest coll-ection of Bauhaus-inspired buildings. With the hearty help of Dizengoff, Geddes planned a Garden City of wide tree-lined boulevards, small roads with smaller green spots, clean-lined, boxy buildings with very little ornamentation and a beach focus.

Thank you to Bauhaus in Tel Aviv.

Honouring my late son, Israel & tourism.

Peter was the first child born to Helen & Joseph; first grandchild to Thelma & Les in Melbourne, and to Chaya & Yehuda in Sydney; and first great grandchild to Sarah and Peter. He was conceived in Israel, born in Brit­ain in 1972, went to pre-school in Perth and arrived in Melbourne ready for school. He had already been able to read by the time he was aged 3.5, so the biggest issue was to find the right way to st­im­ul­ate his intellect while quietening his excitement. 

Peter helping tourists

in his Tel Aviv office 

He later went to Mount Scopus College Melbourne with his brother Aron, the school that his mother, two uncles and all 5 of his maternal cousins had gone to. He loved English literature, Hebrew, history, pol­itics and ec­on­­om­ics, but less thrilled with physics, chemistry and biol­ogy. On Shabbat he went to a youth movement, and on Sun­d­ays he played sports and music. Carlton was his AFL football pass­ion, deb­ated in detail with his beloved Blues-supporting grand­father Les.

After school he couldn’t wait to do business studies at RMIT, graduating Bachelor of Business (Property) and maintaining his interest in politics by becoming the president of a Young Liberals branch. He was a brave rebel, considering his family had been devoted Labourites for 3 generations.

In 2001 Peter made Aliya to Israel because, he said, the girls were the prettiest in the world, half his family lived there and business opportunities for a young man were wond­erful. He married a beautiful, clever wife, improved his Hebrew from "accept­able" to "fluent", and had a precious son Ben.

He opened a travel agency called Peter Tours and became a tour operator centred in Tel Aviv. The agency provided land arr­an­g­e­ments in Israel, Jordan and Egypt, so Peter travelled yearly to plan tours for specialist groups eg Jewish travellers and Ch­ris­t­ian pil­grims from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Belgium, China and South Korea. Only when Covid caused tourists to stay in their own countr­ies did the travel industry suffer terribly.

Peter and his son lead a group to the Golan Heights

 

Here was one of Naftali’s favourite Israel Short Tours:

1. Go to Jerusalem hotel and visit the city. 
2. Explore the biblical and cultural high­lights of Old and New Jerus­al­em. Sights include Mount Zion, Old City and Western Wall, Stat­ions of the Cross and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. On Saturdays instead of Yad Vashem, go to Ein Karem, the birthplace of John the Baptist. Stroll in the narrow lanes of the picturesque neighbourhood, stop­ping by Mary’s spring and visit the remark­able Church of Saint John the Baptist.
3. Descend from Jerusalem to the lowest place on earth. Drive along the shores of the Dead Sea to the rock fortress of Masada. Visit Herod’s palace, 2000 years old. Discuss the zealots who defied the Roman Empire. Float in the Dead Sea; the water is rich in salts and miner­als! 
4. Leave north to Na­zar­eth, Joseph and Mary’s town. Visit Church of the An­nunciat­ion. Continue to Sea of Galilee via Canna to visit Capern­aum ruins & visit Tabgha re the Miracle of the Fishes and Loaves. Return via Yardenit baptisms. 
5. Caesarea and the Coastal Plain In Caesarea visit the Crusader Fortress, with its unique dry moat, and the Roman Theatre. Then go to the port city of Haifa to view the magnificent Bahai Gardens from atop Mount Carmel. Go north to Acre to explore the Knig­hts’ Halls and the secret escape tunnel dug by the Crusaders. Visit­ Rosh Hanikra, most northern coastal point & walk via beaut­iful grottos. 
6. Farewell group & guides. Visit Tel Aviv at your leisure

The best tour Peter organised for our family was Jordan:

1. Drive to Sheik Hussein Bridge to cross into Jordan. Explore Jerash, ancient Roman city of the Decapolis. Visit the Cit­adel and Roman Amphitheatre on an Amman city tour. 
2. Eat early, leave the hotel and travel along the Desert Highway on the road to Petra. Enjoy a spectacular full day tour in the rose-red city of Petra. Enjoy a short horse ride, and then travel on foot through the awesome SIQ valley. Visit the Treasury, and explore hundreds of buildings, tombs, temples and C1st AD 3,000-seat theatre.
3. See the complex ancient Mosaic map of the Holy Land at Madaba. Visit Mt Nebo where Moses viewed the Promised Land be­fore his passing. Explore remains of the Byzantine Church with a mo­saic floor, and from a platform in front of the church enjoy awesome views across Jordan Valley and Dead Sea. In the after­noon cross the border, to Tel Aviv. 
4. Farewell the group & guides. Visit Tel Aviv at your leisure

The Uri Geller Museum Tel Aviv was another of his much loved tours, feat­ur­ing Geller’s Peace Cadillac, 2000+ spoons, his 1963 Vespa, Sal­vador Dali sculptures, items from John Lennon, Picasso, Andy Warhol, Alb­ert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. The museum also features an incredible discovery found during the rest­oration of the 1000 year old building, a well preserved Ottoman era soap factory! A beaut­iful terrace under the gigantic arches over­looks the Mediterranean.

Leading a group around Old Jerusalem

He trained his tour operators and guides well. Toon Van Rompay wrote: Today, I lost my mentor, my boss, but most import­antly, my good friend Peter. I came to Israel for my wife. Peter gave me all the opportunities to make sure I could stay in the coun­try. He gave my job as a tour operator when I first arrived, and trained me. He let me do the tour guide course and I developed myself prof­es­sionally thanks to him. I will be forever in his debt. And he will be missed very hard. Peter, thank you for everything.

In all his travels, Peter never forgot Australia. In March 2017 in Euroa Victoria, the Israel Travel Centre hosted a luncheon to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Charge of Beersheba. The ev­ent was attended by notable dignitaries representing Ballarat, Sey­mour, Shepparton and Wangaratta RSL Sub-branches. Also there were MPs, senior committee members from Legacy Group, religious leaders and military historians. Attendees were privil­eg­ed to hear from Peter from the Israel Travel Centre. He recounted the miraculous and audacious Charge of Beersheba to commemorate the Charge. Then there was a dis­cussion on ways that the miraculous ANZAC legacy can be kept alive.

When my very fit son passed away at his gym class in April 2024 aged 51, it was a painful loss and a terrible shock. He was buried amongst the beautiful gum trees in Yarkon Cemetery Tel Aviv, a place where his heartbroken son can say mourner's Kaddish.

Mourning for Nepal's university students, massacred near Gaza

After the end of Year 12 in high school, I was too young to enter un­iversity so I looked for a Gap Year programme that my parents would be happy with. The best was a youth leadership course in Is­rael, with six months of lectures and six months working on kib­butz. 

Agricultural university students from Nepal at Tel Aviv airport 2023.

Welcomed by the Israeli ambassador to Nepal

Global Voices

So what is the connection to Nepal? There are currently 4,500 Nepali nationals working as caregivers in Israel, and a total of 265 Nepali students studying in Israel under the 11-month Learn and Earn Programme funded by the Israeli government. Of them, 119 are from Agriculture and Forestry University, 97 from Trib­huvan Univ­er­sity and 49 from Sudur Paschim University in Western Nepal, all of them bachelor-level students of agriculture.

I’d not heard of a gap year programme for agricultural univ­ersity stud­ents in Israel, but it made perfect sense. Israel has been a world lead­er in agricultural research and practice since WW1 ended. So it will not surprise us that 17 students from Sudur Pas­chim Un­iversity were working in Kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel, enthus­iastically gaining training they may not have had available at home.

But then Hamas let loose thousands of killing machines in Southern Israel on Saturday, and sent dozens of killers into settlements near the Gaza Strip. Hamas killed citizens and visitors by rockets, chopping off heads, taking young people as hostages into Gaza, and shooting others in the back.

Out of the 17 Nepali teens and early 20s in the kibbutz, 10 were massac­red by Hamas, four were injured and sadly one is still missing. Only two, who are still under police protection, were left uninjured. Nepal's ambas­s­ador in Jerusalem had to inform the devastated parents of the massacre and report it to the Government.

The embassy had to try to identify the students’ body parts located af­ter the massacre. The bodies will taken back to Nepal soon after ident­ification is completed and returned to their parents for funerals and memorials. A coordination meeting formed under the lead­ership of Foreign Minister N.P Saud is operating at his Ministry to identify all Nepalese nationals in Israel and to make efforts for rescue these nat­ion­als if they choose to. Foreign Minster Saud reported it was collab­or­ating with the Israeli government and the emb­assy in Tel Aviv to find planes go fly home, the Kathmandu Post newspaper reported.   

Nepal sends plane to evacuate citizens from war-hit Israel

Kathmandu Post

The minister said Foreign Affairs has directed the Nepali Embassy in Israel to locate all Nepalis, inform them of the situation and urge them to follow safety instructions and rules issued by the Israeli govern­ment. In the meantime, the Is­raeli government is providing all medical and surgical care required by the injured Nepalese citizens at a local hospital. This is espec­ially urgent since death and injured tolls in Israel WILL rise as a large number of people have been badly wounded. The Nepalese embassy is coordinating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on how the dead bodies can be repatriated after examination, Nepal’s amb­as­s­ador in Israel told the Post. Meantime the parents in Nepal, 5000 ks away, are mourning their young sons and daughters in silence. I am a mother but I cannot even imagine their pain.

The Nepalese are rightly devastated. Various political parties in Nepal have asked the government to take diplomatic initiatives to rescue and repatriate Nepalis. Issuing a s­t­ate­ment, Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba urged the govern­ment to ascertain the exact number of Nepalis in Israel and ensure their safety. The Opposition Party urged friendly nations, international human rights organisations, Internat­ion­al Organisation for Migration and International Committee of the Red Cross, to support repat­riat­ing Nepalis working in Israel and still in danger of Hamas murders.

One day after the massacre, all Nepali university students in Israel were shifted to secured and secret locations. 

Yitzhak Rabin's great career

Leah and Yitzhak Rabin

Jewish Boston

Years ago, I wrote a post about the terrible loss of Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) .  From his humble beginnings, Rabin’s family path exactly followed my own family’s and that may be why my parents admired him so warmly. Rabin’s parents, who came from the Ukraine, raised their children with a strong sense of Zionism, socialism and workers’ rights.

A book has been published called Yitzhak Rabin: Solider, Leader, Statesman, written by Itamar Rabinovich, by Yale University Press (2017). This re­vealing account of Yitzhak Rabin’s life, character and efforts drew both on original research and on the author’s memories as a close aide. The book covered Rabin’s military career before Israel’s War of Independence in 1948; the stunning victory in the Six Day War in 1967 when he served as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces; his term as ambass­ador to the USA (1968-72); his first term as prime minister (1974-77); and his role as Minist­er of Def­ence in the late 1980s.

Itamar Rabinovich asked how did Rabin move from be­ing a hawkish general and prime min­ister of a state whose political identity was forged in war, religious nationalism and the threat of destruction? How did he commit him­self to relentlessly struggling for peace?

The author analysed Rab­in’s relat­ionships with powerful leaders including Bill Clin­ton, Jord­an’s King Hussein and Henry Kiss­inger, and the political developments that shaped his tenure. There was also a focus on Rabin’s relat­ion­ships with imp­ortant Israeli pol­it­icians. Rabin and Shimon Peres dom­inated the Labour Party for many years, and the two men shared a long rivalry. Their rivalry during Rabin's first gov­ern­ment led to vigorous diff­erences regard­ing settlement the Occupied Territories. Rabin also disagreed with Abba Eban, Foreign Minister (1966-74).

 

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Ar­af­at, 

on the White House lawn with President Bill Clinton. 

Sept 1993, BBC

Already before Rabin began his second term as prime minister (1992-5), he saw that Israeli morale was declining. He noted the large numbers of Tel Aviv residents who left the city in 1991, due to the Gulf War Scud missiles that rained on the city. And he was devast­ated when the ter­rorists massacred Jewish school children in Jer­us­alem.

Rabin’s decision to push peace plans was extended to the most urg­ent of Israel's neighbours i.e Syria under Hafez al-Assad. Rabin's state­ment, which was con­vey­ed through the USA Secretary of State Warren Christoph­er, sug­g­es­ted a complete Israeli with­drawal from the Golan Heights; in exch­ange there would be a full peace, free-standing and started before Israel's full with­drawal. Rab­in­ovich blamed the Americans for mishandling Rabin’s peace proposal. Warren Christ­oph­er, for his part, believed Asad's reply was less negat­ive than Rab­in said it was. Rabin and Clinton’s team argued for the first time.

When Syria would not sign a peace agreement, Rabin turned his at­t­ention to the Palestin­ians under Yasser Arafat. Consider the Oslo Peace Process, the signature policy of Rabin’s second term as prime minister. This process recorded the emergence, the dev­el­opment and eventual breakdown of the peace negotiations bet­ween Israel and the PLO, from 1991 on. In Sept 1993 the two men sign­ed a historic declaration of princ­ip­les, pledging to pursue a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

I was very wary about reading more about Rabin’s assassination at the hands of a Jewish right wing killer. But there were still ques­tions to be asked and answered since 1995. What were the implicat­ions of Rabin’s policies? What were the effects of his assass­inat­ion? How did Netanyahu and the right wing win the next election, so soon after Rabin signed the Oslo Accord in 1993 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994? Why did Oslo fail? Had Rabin lived, might Israel have changed direction? Was Yasser Arafat’s unexpected death in 2004 the result of assassination as well?

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Foreign minister Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, 1994.

NobelPrize.org

Conclusion
Rabin’s second term as PM was momentous and to some extent dictates Israel's polit­ical debates even now. The Oslo process, which began in 1993, might appear to be dead, but its goal in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by partitioning the land is alive (UN Security Council Resolution 242, 1967). The Israeli govern­ment currently under Prime Minis­t­er Binyamin Netanyahu opposes it, but the two-state solution is the only viable option for the safety of Jews and the acceptance of a Jewish state by the rest of the world.

Danielle Celermajer suggested that all readers respond to this biography according to their pre-existing position on Israel. If they regarded the 1948 War of Indep­end­ence as an act of force­ful colonialism, then Rabin’s role in building the newly developed Israeli Defence Force would have been criticised. After all, he led the IDF as chief of staff in the 1967 Six Day War. If they saw the Oslo Accords as a betrayal of the Jewish people on right wing pol­it­ical grounds, the Prime Minister Rabin would have been seen a traitor. If read­ers believed Mid­dle Eastern terrorists wanted to wipe Israel off the map, they would have supported Rabin to the last day of his life. This political dove and a military hawk provoked very different responses.

Rabinovich served as amb­assador to the USA (1993-6) and headed the negotiation team with Syria under Rabin. Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing killer who opposed the signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin had been attending a mass rally in Tel Aviv in Nov 1995. I still cannot believe the sense of loss now :(

The author continued under Rabin's suc­c­es­s­or, Shimon Peres, until he resigned when Netanyahu won the 1996 el­ection. How appropriate that Rabinovich’s book on Rab­in’s bold peace initiatives appeared on the Six Day War's 50th anniversary.

Adoption in a time of family catastrophe in Italy and Israel

Amit and Tal Biran

with children Tom (L), and sole survivor Eitan (R)

Times of Israel

My late father Les was adopted. He was very happy to live with his aunt Sarah whose house was just around the corner from his biological parents and siblings. And he saw his brothers at school each day. But it wasn’t until Long Lost Family started on British tv in 2012 that the important questions were asked.

1. When his mother Annie was hospitalised for years, why did his father Solomon keep only the two teenagers and not the four youngest siblings under 10?
2. Of his mother’s brothers and sisters who fostered the four youngest children, why did the others eventually go back home but Les remained with the aunt?
3. Why did my father lose his proper family surname?
4. Did his biological mother still love him as much as she loved the other siblings?

Les passed in 2015, and I haven’t discussed adoption since. Now DUTA has raised the important issues anew. 

Let us examine the popular cable car that takes tourists from Stresa on Lake Maggiore to high on Mt Mottarone, in 20 minutes. Mt Mottarone reaches 1,491 metres and overlooks the pictur­esque lake and the Italian Alps in Piedmont. The dual cable system is split into two sections, 2+ ks between Stresa and Al­pino, then 3 ks between Alpino and Mottarone. The two cars each carry up to 40 passengers.  

ABC News reported that a mountaintop cable car plunged to the ground in northern Italy in May 2021, killing 14 people. The photos showed the cable car’s crushed remains in a thick patch of pine trees on Mt Mottarone. The Alpine Rescue Service said that the cause of this very serious accident had not been determined. In fact the cable line had had important maint­en­ance work, including changing the cabl­es, in 2016 and had only rec­ent­ly reopened after coron­avirus lockdowns. It appeared that a cable broke, sending the car careen­ing until it hit a pylon and the trees.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi condoled with the families of the victims, particularly the seriously injured chil­dren. Two ch­ildren were flown to hospital where the 10 year old died after card­iac arrests. The younger child, 5 years-old Eitan Biran, was cons­cious on arrival and und­erstood some Italian. His surgery stab­ilised multiple fractures, but had no idea about his dead parents. The hospital said nobody had contacted the hospital about him.

Searching for survivors and bodies

Sky News

Italian author­ities told Israel's Foreign Ministry that 6 Israeli nationals from one family had died. The 14 people who died on top of Mt Mottarone included Eitan Biran’s father Amit Biran 30, mother Tal Peleg-Biran 26, younger brother Tom, and great-grandparents Barbara and Yitz­hak Cohen of Tel Aviv. All five were buried in Israel a few days later by their devastated relatives.

Leap to May 2021 when The Guardian reported that an Italian judge has ruled that the three men detained over the cable car crash in northern It­aly could leave prison for now. Pro­secutors were invest­ig­ating susp­ected involuntary mansl­aughter and negligence. Perocchio and Nerini, own­ers of the Lift Company, were freed pending the outcome of the in­vestig­ation because, the judge wrote, there was no proof against Nerini and Peroc­chio yet. Tadini, the man in charge of operating the lift, was placed under house arrest.

Jewish Chevra Kadisha

Taking the coffins back to Israel

Now back to adoption. The Times of Israel reported that the Israeli family is fighting to adopt survivor Eitan Biran. His aunt Gali Peleg wanted custody of the orphan, claiming the aunt Aya Biran-Nirko in Italy is a stranger to him. Peleg was starting legal proc­eed­ings to adopt her nephew Eitan Biran; he has been living with an aunt from the other side of his family in Italy, since being released from a Turin hospital in June. Peleg, sister of Tal Peleg-Biran, accused Biran-Nirko, the Italy-based sister of Amit Biran caring for Eitan, of kidnapping the boy and prev­enting him from having a normal childhood. The boy doesn’t know the pat­ernal aunt at all, Peleg said at a press conference beside her husband and lawyer. She said short visits with the boy mandated by an Italian court had left him feeling as if he had done something wrong and they did not want him. In a few years he’ll look back and see where he grew up and who his parents were and it’s impor­tant that he knows that his family wanted him.

Though Eitan had some spent time in Italy, Peleg’s husband Ron Peri claimed that his Israeli parents had never wanted him to be there for long and would have wanted a quality Jewish education in Israel. He claimed that the family had only learned of Biran-Nirko’s existence recently and hinted that vast amounts of Go-Fund-Me money could have motivated her sudden appearance. Biran-Nirko is an Is­raeli who did her medical degree and post-grad work in Italy. Eitan suf­fered severe trauma in the crash and Biran-Nirko took on the temporary task of dealing with the hospital and his recovery. 

Since then Eitan was moved into his aunt and uncle's home in Travacò Siccomario nel Pavese. And an Italian court has ordered Ms Biran-Nirko to allow Eitan’s other aunt and grandmother to visit him as often as they can get to Italy. Bitter custody battles are losers for all the parties.

I am devastated by this story for two reasons. Firstly Joe and I, along with all the other medical graduate colleagues and their spouses, spent 3 years doing the House Year and Junior Residency in Israeli, British or European teaching hospitals. We too had two boys born overseas, exactly like Eitan and his baby brother, and brought them back to Australia before their schooling started. Secondly how will Eitan feel about the final adoption decision and will he have all his questions answered?

Zubin Mehta's busy, creative and memorable career.

Zubin Mehta, born in 1936 in India, to a Parsi Zoroastrian family. It was said that the Parsis in India were more receptive to European influence than the Hindus or Muslims.

The lad was ind­ucted early into the musical world by his father, Mehli Mehta (1908–2002), who had formed the Bombay String Quartet and Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Thus young Zubin had been surrounded by Western music as a child. He did his first cond­ucting when he was 16 years old, as his father was prep­ar­ing the orchestra to accompany the violinist Ye­hudi Menuhin. And in 1954 he began his formal music studies at the Vienna Academy of Music.

The young musician had been going to Tel Aviv to conduct the Israel Philhar­m­onic most years since 1961, and was simultaneously the conductor/music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (1961-7) and Los Angeles Philharmonic (1962-78). Mehta made his debut as an opera cond­uct­or with Tosca in Montreal in 1963. Later he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera New York, Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, La Scala Milano, opera houses of Chicago & Florence, and at the Salzburg Festival!

It changed in May 1967. 19 years after David Ben Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, Egyptian President Gamal Ab­dul Nasser ordered his soldiers into the Sinai on Israel’s bord­er. He demanded that UN peace keeping troops immediately evacuate the Sinai Peninsula, which the 4,000 UN soldiers promptly did. President Nasser immediately blockaded the Straits of Tiran between Sinai and Saudi Arabia, stopping ships moving in Israel’s southern port in Eilat, through which 90% of Israel’s oil was shipped. Egypt signed a military pact with Jor­d­an, to destroy Israel.

In Israel, IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin was con­vinced that war could not be avoided. Prime Minister Levi Eskol spoke to the count­ry about the events on radio, to calm everyone; alas anxiety reigned instead. A telegram reached the manager of the Israel Philharm­onic Orch­es­t­ra. It was sent from Puerto Rico by Indian cond­uctor Zubin Mehta who cancelled all of his perform­an­ces around the world, and flew directly to Israel. As Mehta arrived in Israel, paratroopers were seizing the Old City, only 60 ks away.

Mehta's last performance with the Israel Philharm­onic Orch­es­t­ra

in Tel Aviv Oct 2019

Brave Mehta suggested that the orchestra move into the amphitheatre on the newly captured Mount Scopus. They played Beethoven’s Victory Symphony, his 5th symphony, for the soldiers who had just reunified Jerusalem. Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek made the arrangements; it was a great event in the history of Israeli music. 

Mehta then performed the same program in Tel Aviv. The audience cried in relief and joy. A month later, in July 1967, Mehta conducted Verdi’s Requiem before thousands in the Basilica of the Nativity, Beth­lehem. The music was sublime, and for the first time in its history Israelis and Arabs listened to the music together, in solidarity.

A message from the Prime Minister, read in Hebrew by the Syrian-born Moshe Sasson and translated by him into Arabic, said that “the language of music speaks to every person regardless of belief, and unites everyone in the world". Sasson was soon chosen by Levi Eshkol as his envoy to the West Bank, and later become Israel’s first ambassador to Egypt. Note that the concert was delayed by the call to prayer sounding from the Muezzin, another fine ecumenical sound in the Bethlehem evening.

After this, Mehta took the Israel Philharmonic and the Mount Scopus concert to Toronto and Phil­adelphia, where aud­iences relived Israel’s heroic, recent history through Beet­hoven’s special music. At a 1968 summer concert in Vienna, Mehta spont­an­eously got the orchestra to play the anthem Ha-Tivkah, as the Austrian crowd stood crying.

It was then that Mehta was appointed the Musical Advisor of the Israel Philharmonic, and later, in 1977, he be­came their first Music Director. He was music director for the New York Philharm­on­ic Orchestra from 1978-91. In 1994 he conducted a performance by the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of the Sar­ajevo National Library, and held Israel Philharmonic Orchestra con­certs in Mumbai and New Delhi. He was music director of the Bavar­ian State Opera and the State Orchestra of Munich 1998-2006.

The Three Tenors in Concert was a live album recorded in Rome
Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Zubin Mehta and Luciano Pavarotti
orchestra of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 1990

Mehta said one of the most special moments for him as the orch­est­ra’s conductor was “when I stepped on the stage in Bombay/Mumbai with the orchestra. Because India broke off relations with Israel after the Six Day War and in 1991 it was resumed again and I was very happy. In 1993 and 1994, they proudly performed in India.

One of the most emotional settings for the music occurred when he led a group of Israeli and German musicians near the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp. In this 1999 event, he conducted Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.

Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are starting a two-week North American tour at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2017. They featured an all-Mozart program including the overture to “The Marriage of Figaro.” The orchestra travelled to Toronto, California and Florida before returning to New York. The American & Canadian audiences were thrilled and when he announced his retirement for 2019, benefit galas honouring the conductor were held in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami.

Mehta conducted 3,000+ concerts with the Israeli ensemble, inc­luding tours spanning 5 continents. In Oct 2019 Mehta conducted his final concert in Tel Aviv: Liszt’s Piano Concerto #2 and Mahler’s Symphony #2. As Mehta has spent a quarter of each of the past 50 years in Israel, he was overwhelmed. His one regret was not taking the orchestra to any Arab country.

Having been treated for cancer last year, Mehta earned a long stand­ing ovation from the packed house as he said goodbye. Though he has retired from his position as music director of the IPO at 83, Mehta has no plans of going quietly. This Indian man was the busiest, most talented and most morally com­mit­ted conductor-musician in the world.

Who owns Franz Kafka's manuscripts, diaries and letters? 1924-2016

I didn’t think I would be coming back to my Czech husband's hero, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) so soon.

Note the review of the excellent book called Kafka, The Early Years, written by Rainer Stach (Princeton 2016). I ended that post as follows: If Max Brod (1884-1968), Kafka’s German-speaking Jewish Czech literary execut­or, had complied with Kafka’s directions, we wouldn't know Kafka today. Happily Brod wrote the first biography of his friend and prepar­ed Kafka’s works for publication. Brod act­ual­ly collat­ed, edited and published The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), now literary classics.

Journalist Benjamin Balint sought to explain to literature lovers the complex story of Kafka’s manuscripts, after the author’s early death in 1924. In his book Kafka’s Last Trial (WW Norton, 2018), Balint described the legal and literary history that took place in an Israeli court - where three parties were fighting over Kafka manuscripts.

First the backstory. Kafka had told Brod that “everything I leave behind is to be burned unread and to the last page.” But when the Kafka died of TB in 1924, Brod could not bring himself to burn the unpublished works of the man he con­sid­ered a literary genius. Instead Brod became very pro-active literary executor, devoting his life to rescuing Kafka’s legacy. Thus the ownership question had been a problematic one since the 1920s!

Franz Kafka in Prague's Old Town Square, 1922,
two years before he died.

As WW2 started, Brod left Prague on the last train out, escaping to Palestine with a leather suitcase stuff­ed full of Kafka’s original manuscripts. So Brod twice rescued Kafka’s legacy, once from intentional de­struction and once from Nazi oblivion. Later the surviving documents were them­selves caught up in an endless bureaucratic tangle.

Esther Hoffe (1906–2007) worked as Brod’s Czech secretary and close friend in Israel for more than 20 years. When Brod died in 1968, he had already written a will in which he gifted Kafka’s manuscripts and letters to Hoffe as his literary executor. Hoffe sold some of these still unpublished papers and held on to the rest.

When she died in Tel Aviv in 2007, Hoffe willed the manuscripts to her two daughters, Eva and Ruth, who sought to probate her will. Just as the will was about to be approved, the National Library of Israel petitioned the Tel Aviv Family Court to prevent the estate from passing to the daughters. A series of articles in Haaretz argued that the manuscripts were being held in unsuitable conditions, scattered between apartments in Tel Aviv and bank safes abroad, instead of being made available for scholars.

The State of Israel contested the part of her will that concerned the material she inherited from Brod either long before his death, or from his will. The position of the State was that Brod's literary estate was not hers to dispose of as she wanted; Brod's two ambiguous wills (1948 and 1961) both expressed the wish that his literary estate be placed in a suitable library at home or abroad.

Eventually the Israeli court awarded the manuscripts to  the National Library in Jerusalem. The book thus became a fascinating tale of literary friendship, loyalty, political power, law and re-trials.

The issue had already been adjudicated in court in 1968 and 1973, but it had never been the story of two conflicting countries before. Now an international legal battle erupted to determine which country could claim ownership of Kafka’s work: 1] Israel, where Kafka dreamed of living but never entered or 2] Germany, where Kafka’s three sisters were exterminated during the Holocaust. In the book Kafka’s Last Trial, Benjamin Balint described this provocative trial in Israeli courts, packed with legal, ethical and political debates. Of course in this contest I noted Germany’s and Israel’s national obsessions with overcoming the Holocaust traumas of the past.

Esther Hoffe, Max Brod and Otto Hoffe, c1958
photo credit: Haaretz

In the third court case, the legal issue of who the property belonged to became less important than a much larger question Who owns Kafka? Two arguments were made for Germany over Israel. Firstly Esther Hoffe had sold some of her holdings to the German Literat­ure Archive of Marbach am Neck­ar. This archive already had a good col­lection of Kafka material, so that Marbach, one of the world’s most import­ant literary institutions, should have been a more suitable home. And Marbach was clearly much better-equipped to deal with scholars.

The second argument for Germany was based on one of the identity-issues raised by the case i.e for all their embrace of Kafka as Jewish personal­ity in Israel, interest in Kafka's writing there was always a bit limited. Kafka had never become part of any Israeli project of national revival! Nor was there a Kafka cult in Israel, as there had been in Germany and Czechoslovakia. The author had not explicit­ly dealt with Judaism in any of his writing, so was he simply a Czech national who wrote in German?

The Balint book examined Eva Hoffe in court in 2016 running the Last Appeal. In that year it was determined that Esther had only been the caretaker of the Brod estate during her lifetime, but that the Nat­ional Library of Israel was indeed the appropriate repository for the papers.

Benjamin Balint's book

Fortunately Balint did understand the far-reaching implicat­ions of the unusual case, beyond the strictly legal aspects. The story of who owns the manuscripts was a long and fascinating tale of literary friendship, loyalty, political power and trials. Max Brod’s estate, which was locked up for years by their elderly custodians (Brod’s secretary and her daught­ers), was willed to Israel’s National Library. The irony of a Kafka estate being blocked for many decades was not lost on Kafka readers, though the final judgement did order the papers back into the National Library’s hands.

The National Library in Jerusalem has since announced that Kafka's papers will be digitised, with access to researchers wherever they live.

Bauhaus exhibitions, exactly 100 years after the Academy opened in Germany

I wrote about Bauhaus' 100th anniversary: 1919-2019 a few months ago. Basically, when the tragedies of WW1 finally ended, architect Walter Gropius founded Bauhaus School of Art & D in Weimar Germany to design for the new world. Although operating for only 14 years (1919-33) be­fore being shut down by the Nazis, Bauhaus was said to have become the most influential art and design academy in history.

In 1976 the Galerie am Sachsenplatz in Leipzig sold 148 Bauhauser works to the City of Dessau. The objects kept in this dist­inctive Dessau Collection told the story of teaching and learning, free design, the development of indust­r­ial prototypes, artistic experiment and links with the market­place. And consider its stars across a range of dis­cip­lin­es, including typo­grapher Herbert Bayer, textile art­ist Anni Albers and sculptor Mar­ianne Brandt. Teachers included artist Wassily Kandinsky and arch­itect Mies van der Rohe.

The Bauhaus Museum Dessau design came from Barcelona, selected from 800+ submissions in a 2015 international competition. The jury want­­ed a soaring steelwork block in a glass envelope, designed in the Bauhaus spirit and paid for by the Federal and the State Governments in Germany.

Architect FRS Yorke and designer Marcel Breuer. 

RIBA Collections

The foundation stone for the new museum was laid in Dec 2016. The transparent ground floor, the Open Stage museum foyer, serves as an open platform offering temporary exhibitions of cont­emporary works. The museum is located in the city park in the centre of Dessau, connecting the central business district and the periphery of the park. In Sept 2018, the upper floor and roof area were completed.

The opening of Bauhaus Museum Dessau in Sept 2019 was a highlight of the centenary. And the unique collection, with 49,000 catal­og­ued objects, has been on display. Called Versuchs­stätte Bauhaus - The Collection visitors can travel the historical exhib­it­ion that follows the history of the school in Dessau. See the furniture, lamps, text­iles and works of visual artists. The Arena con­nects directly to the social understanding of his­toric Bau­haus as a collective community. An Open Stage as platform for contemporary and temporary exhibitions on the ground floor.

For the school's 100th anniversary year in 2019, art and design museums and galleries around the world have hosted, and will host events. The Moscow, Sao Paulo, Munster, New Delhi, Berlin, Gera, Rotterdam, London, Essen, Tel Aviv and Chicago exhibitions have already ended.

Note the following important exhibitions and conferences that will be continuing into 2020 and beyond:

April–Oct 2019 In Herzogliches Museum in Gotha Germany, the exhib­it­­ion focused on the life and work of Oskar Schlemmer: Bauhaus and the Path to Modernity, famous for his multi-disciplinary work as a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, stage designer and muralist.

March 2019–Jan 2020 Centred around his Haus Schulenburg in Gera Germany, this exhibition explores the life and work of modernist architect and artist Henry van de Velde. It also features his neo-impressionist paintings and book designs.

April 2019–March 2024 The Neues Museum in Weimar is celebrating the legacy of the school with the early works of modernist Weimar art, and its relat­ion­ship to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. See Van de Velde, Nietzsche and Modernism.

Sept-Oct 2019 Operating over 3 consecutive weeks in three different cities (Berlin, Dessau and Weimar), the Triennale der Moderne has built a network of modernism.

Architect William Lescaze
High Cross House, Devon, 1932
RIBA Collections

Architect Marcel Breuer  
Sea Lane House, West Sussex, 1936-7
The Modern House

This exhibition highlights include:
A] Drawings and plans by the partnership of Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry, including the unbuilt Isokon 3 building;
B] Unseen illustrations, sketches and personal photography from the archive of Leslie Martin;
C] Furniture & interiors by Marcel Breuer & Wells Coates;
D] Photographs by ex-Bauhaus student Edith Tudor-Hart;
E] Works by Elizabeth Denby, Sadie Speight, Margaret Blanco-White, Norah Aiton & Betty Scott, important female architects engaged with modernist avant-garde ideals.
F] Archival 1930s films incl László Moholy-Nagy; and
G] Personal correspondence and ephemera that tracked the personal lives of the key protagonists

Oct 2019–Feb 2020 The Royal Institute of British Architects/RIBA in Lon­don explores the development of British modernist architecture via the Bau­haus movement. The exhibition foc­uses on 3 notable Bau­haus­ers: Wal­t­er Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, and their impact on Britain. In 1936 Breuer left Germany for England and associated with British architect FRS Yorke, which led him to some design motifs he later used.

Enjoy the article “Bauhaus exhibitions in 2019 celebrating the school’s centenary”.

Walter Gropius and Bauhaus' 100th anniversary: 1919-2019

Bauhaus Academy was Eden for architects in those revolut­ionary times when the new wave of Bauhaus designers foll­ow­ed Walter Grop­ius (1883-1969), not traditional or cl­ass­ical architects. It foll­owed a new Western spirit, as soon as WW1 ended. In Germany the Kaiser had gone, the Weim­ar Republic had been est­ab­lished, and cultural modernity would be Germany’s reparations to the world. That led to a search for a new vehicle of aesthetic expression.

Thank you to Darran Anderson for his review of Fiona Mac­Carthy’s biography of Bauhaus founder, Walter Grop­ius: Vis­ionary Founder of the Bauhaus. MacCarthy retained admiration for Gropius through­out. Gropius managed to create the most influential design school of the C20th, having proved him­self architecturally with modernist works created during the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II!!

When contrasted with his brutal WW1 exper­ien­ces, MacCar­thy show­ed that Gropius conducted himself with immense cour­age, retaining his integrity throughout the Bauhaus years, even when the school suffered vicious Nazi attacks.

Fagus Factory, 

by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, 

Alfeld Lower Saxony, 1911

Throughout MacCarthy’s book there was a dominant sense of Gropius remaining a figure of resolve at the eye of the storm. See the webs of intrigues, rivalries and love aff­airs which MacCarthy explored, often via mail. Characters popped in & out in great colour, particularly the tempestuous Alma Mahler.

MacCarthy emphasised how the existence and legacy of the Bau­haus had not been secure, financially or philosophically. She ended the ill-founded cliché of a rigorous architectural technocrat, imperv­ious to human needs and feelings by show­ing an individual dedicated to the artist’s creative free­dom. Flaw­ed as he inevit­ably was, Gropius’ genius was shown as he encouraged collab­or­ation, empathy and subjectivity. And he shared this spirit with Bauhaus and its graduates. 1st April 2019 marked Bauhaus’ centenary, exactly the right time for visit­ors to see Bauhaus Academy’s design influence.

To celebrate, Karen Chernick recommended seeing 8 sites, starting with The Fagus Factory  in Alfeld, Lower Saxony, designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer in 1911. Years before Gropius ever thought of Bauhaus, he designed this shoe factory that exactly foreshadowed the concepts he would bring to his avant-garde Academy. The Fagus project, an architectural space for craftsmen, ech­oed Grop­ius’ marriage of art and craft. He designed the factory as a space that maximised sunlight and fresh air for the workers, in order to improve their productivity. He lin­ed the exterior with revolutionary curtain walls of glass. It was a feat of both design & engineering! To replace con­ventional load-bearing exterior walls with thin window sheets, Gropius placed reinforced concrete columns in the buildings.

When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in 1919, his utopian Manifesto proclaimed that a] minimalism and b] a fusion of fine arts and craft would become clear symbols for crafts­men. Only 700 students attended the Bauhaus during its short, 14-year life, but the school’s modern design philos­ophy spread. Bauhaus teachers and students scattered world­wide when the Nazis closed the school in 1933.

In 2003 UNESCO proclaimed Tel Aviv’s White City a World Cul­tural Heritage site, an outstand­ing example of early C20th town planning and architecture. That referen­ced the many sites constructed in pre-state Israel in the Bauhaus or International style. Thousands of Bauhaus-style buildings are on display at the Bauhaus Centre on Dizengoff St.

Poli House, 

by Shlomo Liaskowski, 

Tel Aviv, 1934. 

The new city of Tel Aviv rose out of the sands in 1909. Later Sir Patrick Geddes was the town planner for the urban centre and the area now called Old Tel Aviv. Over time infrastructures were created eg Dizengoff Square was designed in 1934 by architect Genia Averbuch as a focal point of the city.

Architecture graduates who managed to get out of Germany in 1933 brought Gropius and Bauhaus values with them. UNESCO noted that such influences were adapted to the cultural and climatic cond­it­ions of the place, and integrated with local traditions. There are still 4,000+ Bauhaus-style buildings in Tel Aviv, more than any other city in the world.

One such building was the triangular-shaped Poli House, built in 1934 at a six-point intersection in the city cen­tre. It was orig­in­ally an office building planned by Shlomo Liaskowski, an architect trained in the Bauhaus Internat­ion­al Style in Europe. Because Poli House faced two streets, a single façade was forgone in favour of dynamic horiz­ontal ribbon windows that shape the building. The building under went a meticulous, multi-year restoration process preparing it for its current life as the boutique Poli House Hotel.

The use of concrete was a popular choice for Bauhaus-style architects, and the flowing concrete strips highlighted the horizontal movement between the bal­conies and external walkways of each building in a con­tin­uous movement. While Bauhaus was a utilitarian school, Israel’s stronger natural light and hotter weather had to be dealt with.

Gropius House,

by Walter Gropius & Marcel Breuer, 

Lincoln MA, 1938 

When Walter Gropius left Europe in 1937, they were smugg­ling rad­ic­al new design ideas to the USA. Note Gropius House, the family home they built in colonial Lincoln Mass. Gropius designed the home in 1938, after accepting a teach­ing position at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design; appar­ently it shocked New Englanders with its bizarre glass blocks, chrome banisters and metallic Marcel Breuer-designed furnishings. With time, as mid century modernism swept across the country, Gropius House looked less out of place. Gropius worked at a window-facing nook purposely built to house a wide double desk designed by the Bauhauser Breuer.

Revisit Villa Tugendhat in Brno Czech Republic, designed by Bauhaus architect-director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in c1933. 

Freestanding bachelor’s wardrobe 1930 

designed by Bauhaus student Josef Pohl

And now for something totally different. The Bauhaus and Harvard, mounted to celebrate the 100th ann­iv­er­sary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, has 200 works by 74 artists, drawn largely from the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s exten­sive Bauhaus collection. In the Special Exhibitions Gallery at Harvard Art Museums, Bauhaus and Harvard ends in late July 2019. Or see decorative art items at original bauhaus, the centenary exhibition of the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum fur Gestaltung at the Berlinische Galerie. It runs from early Sep 2019 until late Jan 2020.

An amazing World Fair in Tel Aviv 1934

Organised by the Trade and Industry Co, through a private init­iat­ive of three businessmen, a small Tel Aviv Fair did attract attention in the 1920s. It all began at the Zionist Club on Rothschild Boul­evard and then trav­el­led to sev­eral schools, to sell locally manufactured goods to local cust­om­ers. When they realised they were on to something special, the Trade and Industry Co came up with the idea of establishing a major trade show a la Barcelona.

But it was the hugely suc­cessful 1929 Barcelona World Fair that pro­moted a massive, international effort. After Barcelona finished, large advert­ising campaigns were launched in Europe that invited business own­ers to come to Tel Aviv. The response was satisfy­ing and continued growing.

By late 1932, the Tel Aviv Municipality understood they needed to build a proper home for a World Fair. The British Mandate authorit­ies were enthusias­tic and alloc­ated 25 acres on the very attractive Yarkon Penin­sula at the far end of Tel Aviv. And they extended assistance to the project.

The Levant Fair was planned as the largest public event ever held during the British Mandate period. Beautiful, white Bauhaus buildings, built by German architects who had emigrated in 1933, were beginning to define the city.

The Italian pavilion

 British pavilion

  Gal­ina Coffee House

The Norwegian pavilion

Romanian pavilion
Credit for the photos: Levant World Fair in Tel Aviv.

Two of the most prominent architects in the country, Arieh Elhanani and Richard Kaufmann, were chosen to design the new World Fair com­plex. Kauf­mann was in charge of the urban master-plan and Elhanani designed some buildings and the outdoor scul­p­tures. The fair­grounds also feat­ured modern street lamps, benches, well-tended gardens and a main entrance square, Plumer Square.

This Levant Fair was the best model of a white, utopian city with a modernist palace, square, axes and Bauhaus flats. Note the Produce of the Land Palace with its original ship-like facade that became a source of local pride; it was the largest and most important structure of the Levant Fair. Designed by Richard Kaufmann in 1934, it too was in the In­ter­national or Bauhaus Style. The interior space soared to a height of 3 storeys, with an observation tower situated on one side and an apse on the other. Next to the entrance of the sparkling white fac­ade stretched a large public plaza with Arieh Elhanani’s sculpture.

Manuf­acturers and consumers flooded into Israel and many exhib­ited their wares in national pavilions – Britain, Soviet Union, Lebanon, Poland, Bulgaria, France, Cyprus, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Romania, Czechos­lov­akia etc. The best architects from Israel were recruited to build the pavilions. Each architect was resp­on­sible for design­ing one of the participating countries’ building, giving each pav­ilion a unique look, within the overall plan. Britain and its col­on­ies had an entire cluster of pavilions, designed by the respected architect, Yosef Neufeld. Genia Averbuch, Aryeh Sharon and others provided Tel Aviv with one of the widest coll­ections of Bauhaus Style architecture. 

The ceremony marking the laying of the cornerstone was held in the presence of the British High Commissioners Herbert Samuel, Herbert Plumer, John Chancellor & Arthur Wauchope, plus Tel Aviv mayor Meir Dizengoff and the Arab mayors of Jaffa and Jerus­alem. The new fair covered 10 dunams and housed 1,225 exhib­itors, including 821 for­eign companies from 23 countries. Emerging nations in the Orient were particularly welcomed.  And Gal­ina Coffee House, built in the International or Bauhaus Style, was hugely popular.

Opening day crowds

So holding an occasional Fair seemed plausible in this growing city of Tel Aviv and another Levant Fair was held in 1936. 30 countries took part, drawing c600,000 visitors in the 6 weeks it was open.

Now it was possible to combine commercial promotion with en­t­ertainment and culture; the Tel Aviv Municipality was quick to grasp the importance of the Levant Fair as a strong attraction in pre-State Israel and in the Diaspora. The first concert of the Palestine Philharm­on­ic Orchestra started its concert tour in Dec 1936, led by the greatest conductor in Europe, Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957). Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion and every other communal figure in Palestine were at the first concert, held in the Italian Pavilion.

Those were imp­res­sive numb­ers given that the Arab Revolt was about to begin, shut­ting down Jaffa port. But the fair's organisers suffered financial losses and after the 1936 Fair closed, it stayed closed till after the state was established.

However the spaces were later put to good use. During the Jaffa dock workers’ strike, the Brit­ish Government approved the construction of a jetty on the Tel Aviv seashore, on a beach just south of the Levant Fair-grounds. Pavilions in the fair grounds were initially used as temporary st­or­age space for the Tel Aviv port, built in 1938. Later, they were appropriated for British Army use, and after 1948, for the Israel Defence Forces.

World Fair facilities all over the world were accidentally or intentionally torn down, except for Melbourne's. Even in Tel Aviv, the pavilions fell apart and the works of art moved. So the Levant Fair project was re-launched in June 2013 at the orig­inal location, now offering restaur­ants, shopping, exhibits, sports activities, playgrounds for children, and performances at the amphitheatre.