A prayer for a secular town

A new synagogue tour in Tel Aviv aims to draw Orthodox tourists, but nonreligious visitors are also surprised at the depth of the city’s religious roots.

By ARIEL ZILBER
The Belz Synagogue 521 (photo credit: Lior Golgher/Wikimedia)
The Belz Synagogue 521
(photo credit: Lior Golgher/Wikimedia)
Haim Nahman Bialik was in his Tel Aviv home on the street that today bears his name when he called Yehuda Matmon, then-principal of the Herzliya Hebrew High School, to make an unusual request.
The man who would become recognized as Israel’s national poet was calling on behalf of the rebbe of Lutsk, who had just received a plot of land from Tel Aviv mayor Meir Dizengoff after making aliya from Ukraine.
The rebbe was hoping that Bialik could help him build the headquarters for a hassidic dynasty on the plot, which lies near what is today the Carmel Market. After all, though he had the land, he didn’t have the labor or raw materials needed to realize his vision.
When Bialik called Matmon, the principal agreed to provide 100 high-school students, each of whom would haul a brick to build the home.
“That’s really indicative of the way this city used to view the religious community,” says Chaim Gellis, the former secretary of the Tel Aviv Religious Council and now the chief tour guide for visitors who wish to learn more about the little-known history of hassidic activity in Israel’s most secular city.
The walking tour, which is titled “In the Footsteps of the Rebbes,” is a venture jointly operated by the Tel Aviv Religious Council and the municipality’s tourism arm, the Association for Tourism Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
“Whoever takes the tour is simply mesmerized,” says religious council chairman Eldad Mizrahi. “To come to Tel Aviv, which is the capital of culture, an international cultural hub, and to see all of these charming little places where the heads of hassidic dynasties lived 60, 70 years ago before they all moved out to Bnei Brak gives an entirely different perspective as to what Tel Aviv was and what its founding fathers intended the city to be.”
Gellis begins the tour with a 20-minute lecture on the hassidic movement and its history. He then leads tourists to at least eight sites out of the dozen that tell the story of Tel Aviv as a way-station for hassidic leaders who sought to get acclimated in the Holy Land upon arrival from an increasingly hostile Europe in the 1930s. The tour focuses on key spots in the heart of Tel Aviv, where hassidic dynasties such as Ger, Belz, Husiatyn and Sokhachov built shtiebels (Yiddish: ‘little rooms’, used for communal Jewish prayer) and synagogues for their followers.
One presumes few Tel Avivians are aware that the Kotsk dynasty, which no longer exists, was headquartered in a building on King George Street, or that the Modzitz and Koydinov dynasties set up shop just a few steps from what is today Dizengoff Center.
The Modzitz synagogue is still in existence, although the movement’s rebbe is based in Bnei Brak.
Gellis said that there are close to 70 synagogues, shtiebels and institutions belonging to hassidic dynasties – many of which have long been defunct – within what is commonly referred to as “the heart of Tel Aviv” – the area encompassed by Dizengoff Street, Rothschild Boulevard, Allenby Road, King George Street and Bialik Street.
“In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, people in Tel Aviv would see masses of men in hassidic gowns wearing shtreimels,” Gellis said. “There were streets that were sealed off in deference to Shabbat. Even Dizengoff issued an edict to all of the city’s residents to honor Shabbat and to bathe in more modest dress.”
Tel Aviv was the preferred landing spot for hassidim who fled Europe and were not eager to set up shop in Jerusalem due to the presence of “gentile abominations,” like churches and mosques, according to Gellis.
“The hassidic leaders wished to live in a city that was built by Jews,” he says. “They didn’t want to have to deal with ringing church bells, since those things really bothered them.”
The tours, which have been running since 2007, are part of an effort by the municipality to boost tourism in Tel Aviv among the religious constituency as well as to raise the issue of the city’s religious heritage in the public consciousness.
Although the municipality previously offered over 30 tours, none of them had any religious element to boast of.
According to Mizrahi, however, the tour has also drawn considerable attention from secular visitors who are surprised to learn of the city’s religious roots.
“There’s a huge gap between what people think about this city, and what it really is,” Mizrahi says. “Tel Aviv was not born a religious city, but since its founding there has been a significant expression to its religious character. You can see it in the size of the synagogues, like the one on Allenby Road.
“This tour encourages people to think outside the box when it comes to Tel Aviv,” he said. “If I told you that there were 500 synagogues in Tel Aviv, you’d think I was crazy. But it’s true.”
While the leaders of many hassidic sects have set up shop in Bnei Brak, Tel Aviv can still boast of its reputation as fertile ground for rabbinical figures. Yisrael Meir Lau, who is currently the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, also served as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel. In pre-state days, Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel was appointed chief rabbi of Palestine following a stint as the top cleric in Tel Aviv. Most famously perhaps was Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi in the Holy Land whose first rabbinical post was in Jaffa.
While Tel Aviv is the undisputed hub of secular activity, Gellis and Mizrahi aim to use the tour to burnish its religious credentials as well.