Tel Aviv

Azrieli Center is a complex of skyscrapers in Tel Aviv. At the base of the center lies a large shopping mall. The center was originally designed by... Israeli-American architect Eli Attia, and after he fell out with the developer of the center David Azrieli , completion of the design was passed on to the Tel Aviv firm of Moore Yaski Sivan Architects. The Azrieli Center is located on a 34,500 square meter site in Tel Aviv, Israel which was previously used as Tel Aviv's dumpster-truck parking garage. The $350,000,000 project revitalized the area. The Fain Towers are now expected to be built directly across HaShalom Road. The Azrieli Center Circular Tower, is the tallest of the three towers, measuring 187 m in height. Construction of this tower began in 1996 and was completed in 1999. The tower has 49 floors, making it the tallest building in Tel Aviv and the second tallest in Israel, after the Moshe Aviv Tower in Ramat Gan built in 2001. The top floor has an indoor observation deck and a high-end restaurant, and the 48th floor is home to Mr. Azrieli's personal office.
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The Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv is located on Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, just east of the Shalom Tower. The building was designed by Yehuda... Magidovitch in 1922 and completed in 1926. It was renovated in 1970 with a new external facade of arches. The synagogue is constructed with a huge dome and magnificent stained glass windows. The glass windows are replicas of windows of synagogues that were destroyed in Europe during the Holocaust.
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The Hassan Bek Mosque , , also known as the Hasan Bey Mosque, is considered to be one of the most well-known mosques located in Jaffa, which is now... part of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality in Israel. It has been a site of much controversy, as demonstrated in recent years. Its history is closely bound up with the various stages of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, from its beginnings as a communal strife under Ottoman and British rule up to the present. It has been on various occasions the subject of heated debate and eventful controversy, and has a deep symbolic and emotional meaning to Jaffa Arabs. The unique Ottoman style architecture it displays, is known to contrast sharply with the contemporary modern high-rises that are situated near it. It is located between Neve Tzedek and the Mediterranean Sea, on the fast road to Jaffa. The Hassan Bek Mosque was built in 1916, by Jaffa's Turkish-Arab governor of the same name.
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Shalom Meir Tower is an office tower in Tel Aviv which contains a small commercial center. The Shalom Mayer Tower was the first tall tower to be... built in Israel. When its construction was completed in 1965, it rivaled the tallest buildings in Europe in height, and was the tallest in the Middle East. The tower has 34 floors and stands at a height of 120–130 m. In its design, space under the tower was set aside for a future subway station. However, a subway has yet to be constructed in Tel Aviv and with the tower's importance being eclipsed by newer and taller structures in the city, even the Tel Aviv Light Rail lines now planned are not expected to pass under the tower. The tower is located on the site of the Herzliya Hebrew High School. The school's architecturally and historically significant structure was razed and the school relocated in order to build the tower in 1962. This decision was later widely regretted despite the many benefits that the tower brought over the years.
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The Eretz Israel Museum is a historical and archeological museum in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel. Eretz Israel Museum, established... in 1953, has a large display of archaeological, anthropological and historical artifacts organized in a series of exhibition pavilions on its grounds. Each pavilion is dedicated to a different subject: glassware, ceramics, coins, copper and more. The museum also has a planetarium. The "Man and His Work" wing features live demonstrations of ancient methods of weaving, jewelry and pottery making, grain grinding and bread baking. Tel Quasile, an excavation in which 12 distinct layers of culture have been uncovered, is on the grounds of the museum. Inside the pavilion, visitors find themselves in a reconstructed mine from the Chalcolithic period and the Late Bronze Age, showing marks of mining tools such as stone hammers, flint blades and copper chisels. Four smelting furnaces are on display: Remnants of a glass furnace from the 13th century CE were discovered alongside the Crusader fortress at Sommelaria, north of Acre. In the 14th century BCE, the Egyptian pharaohs dispatched mining expeditions to Timna.
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The Palmach Museum is a museum located in Ramat Aviv, Israel dedicated to the Palmach, the strike-force of the pre-state underground Hagana defense... organization, which was later integrated into the Israel Defense Forces. Opened in 2000, the Palmach Museum commemorates the contribution of the Palmach to the creation of the State of Israel. It was designed by the polish born Israeli architect Zvi Hecker. The museum is an underground in a series of multi-media experience chambers, starting with a memorial for the fallen. The first room one enters is a scale version of Tel Aviv's Herzl Street in 1941, where newsreel of the period reporting on the war in Europe projected on the street scene. This sets the stage for the telling of the formation of the Palmach, which was geared to dealing with two threats: the German army in North Africa and the attacks by Arabs on the Yishuv, the Jewish community. The next chamber is suddenly an eucalyptus grove at night, far from any prying eyes. Where visitors meet a unit of seven new Palmach recruits and their commander in their training orientation.
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Independence Hall, originally the Dizengoff House is best known as the site of the signing of Israel's Declaration of Independence. It is located on... the historic Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, Israel. Today a museum, it houses exhibits on the signing of the Declaration of Independence and on the history of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. From 1932 to 1971, it housed the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. On this site, sixty-six families gathered on April 11, 1909, to conduct a lottery for plots of land in a new Jewish neighborhood, to be known as Ahuzat Bayit. Meir and Zina Dizengoff acquired plot number 43, on which they built their home. Meir Dizengoff served as the head of the new neighborhood council. In 1910, at a general meeting, the residents of Ahuzat Bayit, inspired by Theodor Herzl's book Altneuland , unanimously decided to rename their neighborhood Tel Aviv. As the neighborhood grew and became a city, Dizengoff became the first mayor of the city of Tel Aviv. In 1930, after the death of his wife, Dizengoff donated his house to his beloved city of Tel Aviv and requested that it be turned into a museum.
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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu ; born 21 October 1949 is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a... Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel. Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the founding of the state. Netanyahu joined the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1967 Six-Day War, and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit. He took part in many missions, including Operation Gift and Operation Isotope, during which he was shot in the shoulder. He fought on the front lines in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory. He achieved the rank of captain before being discharged. Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, member of the Likud Party, and was Prime Minister from June 1996 to July 1999. Netanyahu withdrew from politics after losing the 1999 election for Prime Minister to Ehud Barak.
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Ofra Haza was an Israeli singer of Yemenite Jewish origin, an actress and international recording artist. Her voice has been described as... mezzo-soprano, of near-flawless tonal quality, capable of lending itself to a variety of musical styles with apparent ease. Inspired by a love of her Yemenite Jewish culture, the appeal of her musical art quickly spread to a wider Middle Eastern audience, somehow bridging the divide between Israel and the Arab countries. As her career progressed, Haza was able to switch between traditional and more commercial singing styles without jeopardizing her credibility. Her music fused elements of Eastern and Western instrumentation, orchestration and dance-beat. She became successful in Europe and the Americas; during her singing career, she earned many platinum and gold discs. Haza was born the youngest of nine children, to a Yemenite Jewish family, in the poor Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikvah. Her first home was at 39 Boaz Street. At the age of 12, Haza joined a local theater troupe, and manager Bezalel Aloni spotted her singing talent.
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Uri Geller is a self-proclaimed psychic known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other supposed psychic effects.... Throughout the years, Geller has been accused of using simple conjuring tricks to simulate the effects of psychokinesis and telepathy. Geller's career as an entertainer has spanned almost four decades, with television shows and appearances in many countries. Geller used to call his abilities "psychic" but now prefers to refer to himself as a "mystifier" and entertainer. Born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine, to Hungarian Jewish parents, Geller is the son of Itzhaak Geller , a retired army sergeant major, and Manzy Freud . It is claimed that Geller is a distant relative of Sigmund Freud on his mother's side. At the age of 11, Geller's family moved to Nicosia, Cyprus, where he attended a high school, The Terra Santa College and learned English. At the age of 18 he served in the a Israeli Army's Paratroopers Brigade, and was wounded in action during the 1967 Six-Day War.
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Dror Elimelech Feiler is a Swedish-Israeli musician, artist and leftist activist. He has been living in Stockholm, Sweden since 1973. He is married... to the artist Gunilla Sköld-Feiler. Feiler studied new music and its interpretation at the Fylkingen Institut for New Music from 1975 to 1977, musicology at Stockholm University from 1977 to 1978 and composition at the Music Academy of Stockholm from 1978 to 1983. His father, Eliezer Feiler, worked on a kibbutz and was a leftist activist. In 1978 he and others secretly met with a group of Palestine Liberation Organization representatives in Bucharest while it was still illegal. Eliezer Feiler was tried and eventually sentenced to six months of community service and a 4,000 Israeli lira fine. The fine was paid, but the sentence was never served beucase, while the legal process was ongoing, the law had changed and it was no longer illegal to meet with members of the PLO. His mother, Pnina Feiler, born 1923, works with mobile health centrals in Palestinian villages in the West Bank that have to travel far to get access to health-care and other services.
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Yvan Attal is an Israeli-born French actor and director. Born in Tel-Aviv to French-Algerian Jewish parents, he grew up in the outskirts of Paris.... His acting debut was in Éric Rochant's Un monde sans pitié , which earned him a César Award for Most Promising Actor. His first feature film as director was Ma femme est une actrice , which co-starred Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Attal's real-life partner. They have three children: son Ben and daughters Alice , and Joe . He also directed a couple of segments in the film New York, I Love You. He also acted in The Interpreter and Anthony Zimmer, and in Rush Hour 3 he played a French cab driver named George and dubbed the voice of Tom Cruise in the French versions.
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Miri Ben-Ari is an Israeli violinist, who currently resides in the United States. Ben-Ari grew up playing classical music; she started training at... age 5 and at age 12, she was presented with a violin by Isaac Stern. During her mandatory Israeli military service, she was chosen to play for the Israeli Army String Quartet. During her stint in the Israeli military, she heard an album by Charlie Parker and immediately fell in love with jazz; she later said "My soul was sold." Following her service, she moved from Israel to New York in 1993 in hopes of using her classical training on stage and attended Mannes College of Music, but was expelled after two semesters due to poor attendance caused by Ben-Ari playing gigs to pay the rent. She released her first solo CD Sahara in 1999. Her persistence earned her an appearance on BET's 106 & Park; the viewer response netted her a return visit a few weeks later. Her performances caught the eye of Jay-Z, who invited her to play as one of the headliners of New York radio station Hot 97's annual Summer Jam concert in 2001, where she netted a standing ovation.
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Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu ; born 21 October 1949 is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a... Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel. Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the founding of the state. Netanyahu joined the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1967 Six-Day War, and became a team leader in the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit. He took part in many missions, including Operation Gift and Operation Isotope, during which he was shot in the shoulder. He fought on the front lines in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, taking part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal, and then leading a commando assault deep into Syrian territory. He achieved the rank of captain before being discharged. Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, member of the Likud Party, and was Prime Minister from June 1996 to July 1999. Netanyahu withdrew from politics after losing the 1999 election for Prime Minister to Ehud Barak.
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Ofra Haza was an Israeli singer of Yemenite Jewish origin, an actress and international recording artist. Her voice has been described as... mezzo-soprano, of near-flawless tonal quality, capable of lending itself to a variety of musical styles with apparent ease. Inspired by a love of her Yemenite Jewish culture, the appeal of her musical art quickly spread to a wider Middle Eastern audience, somehow bridging the divide between Israel and the Arab countries. As her career progressed, Haza was able to switch between traditional and more commercial singing styles without jeopardizing her credibility. Her music fused elements of Eastern and Western instrumentation, orchestration and dance-beat. She became successful in Europe and the Americas; during her singing career, she earned many platinum and gold discs. Haza was born the youngest of nine children, to a Yemenite Jewish family, in the poor Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikvah. Her first home was at 39 Boaz Street. At the age of 12, Haza joined a local theater troupe, and manager Bezalel Aloni spotted her singing talent.
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Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-born violinist, conductor, and instructor of master classes. He is regarded as one of the preeminent violinists of the... 20th and early-21st centuries. Perlman was born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, were natives of Poland and had independently immigrated to Palestine in the mid-1930s before they met and got married. Perlman first became interested in the violin after hearing a classical music performance on the radio. At the age of three, he was denied entrance to the Shulamit Conservatory for being too small to hold a violin. He instead taught himself how to play the instrument using a toy fiddle until he was old enough to study with Rivka Goldgart at the Shulamit Conservatory and at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, where he gave his first recital at age 10, before moving to the United States to study at the Juilliard School with the violin pedagogue, Ivan Galamian, and his assistant Dorothy Delay. Perlman contracted polio at the age of four. He made a good recovery, learning to walk with crutches.
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Uri Geller is a self-proclaimed psychic known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other supposed psychic effects.... Throughout the years, Geller has been accused of using simple conjuring tricks to simulate the effects of psychokinesis and telepathy. Geller's career as an entertainer has spanned almost four decades, with television shows and appearances in many countries. Geller used to call his abilities "psychic" but now prefers to refer to himself as a "mystifier" and entertainer. Born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine, to Hungarian Jewish parents, Geller is the son of Itzhaak Geller , a retired army sergeant major, and Manzy Freud . It is claimed that Geller is a distant relative of Sigmund Freud on his mother's side. At the age of 11, Geller's family moved to Nicosia, Cyprus, where he attended a high school, The Terra Santa College and learned English. At the age of 18 he served in the a Israeli Army's Paratroopers Brigade, and was wounded in action during the 1967 Six-Day War.
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David Avidan was an Israeli "poet, painter, filmmaker, publicist, and playwright" . He wrote 20 published books of Hebrew poetry. He was born in... Tel Aviv, Israel, and studied Literature and Philosophy while briefly studying at Hebrew University. He wrote mostly in Hebrew, and was an avant-garde artist throughout his life. He translated many of his own poems into English, and received several awards both as a poet and as a translator. He was not popular with most critics or the general public throughout his life, often criticized as being egocentric, chauvinistic, and technocratic. His first book, Lipless Faucets , was attacked by nearly all poetry critics; the first favorable review was by Gabriel Moked, editor of the literary quarterly Akhshav, who later became one of Avidan's closest friends. By the early 1990s he could scarcely make a living, and his mental condition had deteriorated. Avidan died in Tel Aviv, the city which had played a central role in his life, and was, in many ways, the center of his creation.
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Ya'akov "Kobi" Shimoni , generally known by his stage name Subliminal , is an Israeli hip hop artist and music producer. Subliminal was born in Tel... Aviv, Israel to a Persian Jewish mother and Tunisian Jewish father. Subliminal started performing music at age 12, and at age 15 met Yoav Eliasi. The two quickly became friends as a result of their mutual love of hip-hop. In 1995 the two began performing in Israeli clubs geared toward a hip-hop audience, wearing baggy clothes and gold chains. They quickly developed a following among the nation's youth, and soon put out their first album, "The Light From Zion". After the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 the two began writing patriotic songs. They became known as creators of "Zionist hip-hop", a label still applied to them. In further contrast to the generally rebellious, "outlaw" nature of most hip-hop, they also praise army service and eschew drugs and smoking. Subliminal's being the son of Jewish refugees is at the core of his hard-line politics.
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