Although only a century old, Tel Aviv is imbued with the great cultural heritage of the diverse communities that built it. In particular, it attracted refugees from the most highly cultured Jewish communities of central Europe.
The official Tel Aviv website
www.tel-aviv.gov.il has a full guide to current and upcoming cultural events in the city. The English-language daily
Jerusalem Post and the English version of the daily
Ha' Aretz newspaper both include listings and reviews, as does fortnightly magazine
The Jerusalem Report.
Tickets for all events can be bought in advance from box offices, ticket agencies and sometimes from hotels and tourist offices. Reservations for several venues can be made at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center box office (tel: (03) 692 7777) at 19 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard, open Sunday to Thursday 0930-2030, Fri 0930-1300.
Music: The
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (tel: (03) 621 1777
or 1 700 703 030; website:
www.ipo.co.il), considered one of the world's best, gives more than 150 performances each year and is today housed at the city's superb main concert hall, the 3,000-seat
Mann Auditorium, 1 Huberman Street (tel: (03) 629 0193
or 620 0076; website:
www.hatarbut.co.il). The orchestra was founded in Tel Aviv by Jewish settlers as the
Palestine Orchestra in 1936 in the midst of anti-Jewish rioting by the Arabs. Leading European musicians dismissed from their jobs due to the rise of Nazism fled to Israel and found positions with the Philharmonic. The Indian conductor Zubin Mehta, regarded as one of the greatest living conductors, took over in 1969.
The
Israel Chamber Orchestra (tel: (03) 518 8845; website:
www.ico.co.il) is based at the
Jaffa Music Center, 10 She'erit Israel Street, Jaffa. Numerous internationally acclaimed musicians have performed with the chamber orchestra, which has a repertoire ranging from baroque to modern.
The
New Israel Opera (tel: (03) 692 7777; website:
www.israel-opera.co.il/eng) performs at the
Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center and hosts an annual season there from October to July. Tickets for all shows at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center can be purchased by telephone or in person at the box office, 19 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard.
The city has long been the home of many of the world's leading classical conductors and soloists, including Zubin Mehta and Itzhak Perlman, as well as Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) and Isaac Stern (1920-2001). It attracts guest musicians and conductors of the standing of Lorin Maazel, music director of the New York Philharmonic, and Pinchas Zukerman (a native of the city), music director of the National Arts Center Orchestra of Canada.
Theater: Theater in Israel continues to thrive and productions at the
Cameri Theater (also called the
New Cameri since its move to new premises), 19 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard (tel: (03) 606 1900/0900; website:
www.cameri.co.il), and
Habima Theater, 1 Tarsat Street (tel: (03) 629 5555; website:
www.habima.co.il), are impressive. Every week the Cameri presents its most popular productions with screened simultaneous English translation.
Audiences seeking an alternative evening's entertainment will enjoy the
Israeli Yiddish Theater Company, frequently on stage in Tel Aviv, usually at
ZOA House, 1 Daniel Frisch Street (tel: (03) 695 9341; website:
www.zoa.co.il).
Gesher Theater, 7-9 Yerushalaim Boulevard (tel: (03) 681 3131; website:
www.gesher-theater.co.il), founded in 1991 by new Russian immigrants including leading Moscow director Yevgeny Arye, specializes in both Russian and Hebrew plays.
Dance: Israel is especially known for the high standard of dance performance. The city's main venue for modern and classical dance is the
Suzanne Dellal Center, 5-6 Yehieli Street, in the Neve Zedek quarter (tel: (03) 510 5656; website:
www.suzannedellal.org.il).
Home of the Inbal (tel: (03) 517 3711) and
Batsheva (tel: (03) 517 1471) dance companies, as well as the popular
Orna Porat Youth Theater, the center has four performance halls surrounding a square used for outdoor performances. Founded by Martha Graham in 1964, the
Batsheva Dance Company is Israel's most acclaimed contemporary dance troupe. Another interesting modern dance company is
Bat Dor, 30 Ibn Givrol Street (tel: (03) 696 3175), featuring works by renowned modern choreographers.
For ballet and classical dance, the
Israel Ballet (tel: (03) 604 6610; website:
www.iballet.co.il) is based at the
Israel Ballet Center, 4 Har Nevo Street. Comprising 30 dancers, this much-acclaimed international company performs a repertoire of classical, neoclassical and contemporary works. There is a website that provides more information on dance in Israel as a whole -
www.israeldance.co.il.
Film: Cinema is extremely popular in Israel and many cinemas screen three daily shows of international and local films. American films often reach Israel before the UK, giving British visitors a chance to enjoy sneak previews of the latest Hollywood blockbusters. New movies from France, Spain and around the world are also shown. All foreign films are shown in the original language, with Hebrew subtitles. Likewise, all Hebrew films are subtitled in English and sometimes French.
Israel has its own thriving movie industry, focusing through drama, edgy thrillers and even comedies on the pressing concerns that confront the country - the Israel-Arab conflict, integration of newcomers, the legacy of the Holocaust, the religious-secular divide and other important Israeli issues.
Art house movies screened at the
Tel Aviv Cinemathèque, 2 Sprinzak (or Shprintzak) Street (tel: (03) 691 7181) are mostly subtitled in English. The cinematèque screens premieres of short and full-length Israeli films every evening and also holds a variety of film festivals including the Festival of Animation
, Comics and Caricatures, the Student Film Festival, the Jazz, Film and Videotape Festival and Salute to Israeli Cinema. There are several multiscreen cinemas around town, for example on both the top floor and in the basement of the
Dizengoff Center. New films always start showing on Thursdays. Current movie listings can be seen in
Ha'aretz and the
Jerusalem Post.
Literary Notes: Haim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) is celebrated as the first Hebrew literary figure of the modern age. Israel's national poet, he was also an essayist and a champion of the Hebrew language.
In the City of Slaughter (1904) was acclaimed as a powerful statement of anguish at the situation of the Jews during the early part of the 20th century. His renovated house at 22 Bialik Street (tel: (03) 525 4530) is now a museum.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was the first Hebrew writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1966). His themes concern Jewish history and the Jewish inner conflicts between faith and rationality, tradition and modernity. He was fascinated by language and used many words of his own invention.
More recently,
In the Land of Israel (1982) and the autobiographical
A Time of Love and Darkness (2005), both by internationally acclaimed author Amos Oz (1939-), are timeless poignant works, drawing from his family's history and personal encounters with religious Jews, Palestinians and new immigrants to convey the dilemmas of Jewish identity and the plight of the Israeli people. Most of Oz's work is set in the neighborhood where he grew up. Almost rivaling Oz in his collection of international accolades is David Grossman (1954-), many of whose books are for teenagers or about the difficulties of growing up in Israel. Grossman's
See Under: Love (1997) is a heartfelt novel, whose central character Momik is the only child of two Holocaust survivors, confronting the darkness of his ancestry. His novels have drawn comparison to Gabriel García Márquez for their sombre, yet poetic rendering.
More accessible and more popular than either Oz or Grossman, the novelist, poet, playwright and essayist Abraham B Yehoshua (1936-) also deals in varying ways with the difficulties of the Israelis' situation. His early work having been more allegorical, he moved to a realistic style with
The Lover (1975), about the Yom Kippur War. One of his most admired novels,
Mr Mani (1993) is a six-generational epic of a wandering Jewish family.
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