The Mythography of Tel Aviv

Shared myths reveal something elemental about the people who sustain them. A scholar of cultural memory describes the layers of myth that illuminate Israel's quintessentially modern city.

In his 2007 book Tel Aviv: Mythography of a City, Maoz Azaryahu explores the role that Israel’s largest city plays in the Israeli imagination. Tel Aviv has been seen, over time, as an urban expression of Hebrew nationalism and as a cosmopolitan beach destination no different than Saint Tropez or Barcelona, as a city of capitalism and private enterprise and as a showcase of the Bauhaus architectural style.

Last month, Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver sat down for a conversation with Azaryahu, a professor of cultural geography at the University of Haifa and the director of its Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism. The two discussed what Azaryahu calls “the myth of Tel Aviv,” and its different incarnations. Below is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Jonathan Silver:

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