Nahalat Binyamin Explained

Nahalat Binyamin
Native Name:נחלת בנימין
Settlement Type:Tel Aviv street & neighbourhood
Subdivision Type:Country
Subdivision Name:Israel
Subdivision Type1:State
Coordinates:32.0681°N 34.77°W
Established Date:1909

Nahalat Binyamin (Hebrew: נחלת בנימין, also spelled Nachalat, Nachlat, and Nahlat Binyamin) is a partially car-free street and a neighbourhood in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Name

Nahalat Binyamin is translated as "the estate of Benjamin".[1]

Nahala (with different ways of transliterating/spelling it), is a Hebrew word for either heritage or estate.

The second part of the name, Binyamin (the original Hebrew form of the English name Benjamin) has two possible origins: officially it refers to the Hebrew name of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism.[1] However, local lore has it that the founders of Nahalat Binyamin asked for money from both the Jewish National Fund (JNF) organisation, closely linked to Herzl's activity, and from Baron Edmond de Rothschild, whose Hebrew name was also Benjamin,[2] a man famous for being a major benefactor of Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine.

Location

Nahalat Binyamin Street runs north to south. It begins in the north at Magen David Square, where it intersects with four other streets: Allenby, King George and its continuation HaCarmel, and Menahem Sheinkin. As of 2020, it has a car-free section down to Gruzenberg Street, and the municipality is planning to add to this the section between Kalischer Street and Rothschild Boulevard.[3] Continuing southwards, Nahalat Binyamin crosses Jaffa and Florentin Streets, and ends ar Shalma Road.

The street's pedestrian section runs very close to the Carmel food market and Allenby Street, which is one of Tel Aviv's major arteries, and is close to the Kerem HaTeimanim quarter (lit. "Vineyard of the Yemenites"), an old, poorer neighborhood boasting a great number of good eateries, all of which helped Nahalat Binyamin becoming fully commercial, and since 1987 adds to its attractiveness as an arts-and-crafts fair.[1]

History

Ahuzat Bayit, the home-building association of wealthy Jewish families which started off the city of Tel Aviv, started building in 1909. The purpose was escaping the crowded and unsanitary Old City of Jaffa. At about the same time, the Nahalat Binyamin Association, consisting mainly of tradesmen and clerks, craftsmen, shopkeepers, booksellers,[1] a baker and a laundress, had trouble financing their own, similar project. The Jewish National Fund, which had helped out Ahuzat Bayit, was not forthcoming, as was the bank they approached. In 1911, a journalist and Zionist activist known as Rabbi Binyamin (actual name: Yehoshua Redler Feldman), a pioneer of the Second Aliyah (see

  1. External links
), wrote an angry article accusing the two institutions of favouring the well-off. Soon after its publication, the association acquired a long strip of land among the sand dunes running parallel to the coast. The 20 dunams (five acres) the association had purchased were divided into 35 plots.[1] They started building right away, at first modest Arab-style homes with two rooms and a kitchen.[1] The first houses of both Nahalat Binyamin and Achuzat Bayit were one-storey buildings with residential purpose, with Jaffa still being the main hub for work and business. Most houses were built of local kurkar, by Arab workmen from Jaffa, without an architect's plan and just following their experience. That same year, 1911, the association also signed an agreement with the renamed Ahuzat Bayit, by then already called Tel Aviv, partly joining it and agreeing to connect its streets to Tel Aviv's and to participate in the infrastructure costs, in exchange for being connected to Tel Aviv's water supply system and other services. The next year, with 23 houses already standing,[1] Nahalat Binyamin became an integral part of Tel Aviv. The neighborhood consisted of Nahalat Binyamin Street itself, which ran parallel to Herzl Street, Tel Aviv's main axis, as well as Kalisher Street.[4]

In its early years, Nahalat Binyamin Street was the longest road in Tel Aviv.[1] Along with its residential role, right from the beginning it housed small shops,with many of its first inhabitants being metal craftsmen, as well as booksellers and various shopkeepers.[1]

In the 1920s, a decade of repeated anti-Jewish Arab riots in Jaffa, many Jews left that city and moved to a constantly growing Tel Aviv.[1] At this time Nahalat Binyamin Street became Tel Aviv's main commercial thoroughfare.[1] The houses underwent a process of transformation, additional storeys being added and the shops occupying the bottom floor.[1] The residential buildings of the neighbourhood had been initially planned to be surrounded by gardens, and were built on raised platforms or podiums lining the pavements. Also in the 1920s, the dirt road called Nahalat Binyamin was paved, the workers being mostly women.

The location and length of Nahalat Binyamin made it into a preferred spot for city ceremonies and events, eventually becoming fully commercial.[1]

Before being transformed into a pedestrian mall in 1987, Nahalat Binyamin was one of Tel Aviv's noisiest streets, with some 60,000 vehicles passing through daily. The city decided to close off Nahalat Binyamin and two adjacent streets to vehicles, at the same time establishing the arts-and-crafts fair, the first of its kind in Israel.[1] What began with several dozen stands, by 2011 had reached over 200.[1]

Architecture

Nahalat Binyamin Street has a variety of simple old houses, eclectic buildings dominant until the 1920s with a mix of Eastern and Western elements, flashes of Art Deco elements, and modernistic International Style houses from the 1930s, the latter style locally better known as Bauhaus.[1]

Notable buildings

Other attractions

Tuesdays and Fridays, the Nahalat Binyamin Arts & Crafts Fair, the country's largest, attracts with the work of more than 200 artists selected by a public committee.[11]

Nahalat Binyamin and Florentin are the Tel Aviv neighborhoods with the most vivid graffiti art scene, with rich, unusual and thought-provoking murals.[12]

The neighborhood offers easy access to the Carmel food market, to the Kerem HaTeimanim neighbourhood with its simple grilled-meat eateries and established restaurants, and on to Neve Tzedek,[1] [11] a tourist magnet on the way to Jaffa.

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Laufer . Adina . Tel Aviv's hot spot for arts and crafts . 20 June 2011 . Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs . 15 August 2020.
  2. Web site: Tel Aviv - Revisited . 26 August 2010 . isramom.blogspot.com . 15 August 2020.
  3. https://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/en/Pages/ArticlePage.aspx?WebID=9336473c-1537-4ab6-8a69-d299b5db8bcc&ListID=b4eda22c-a69a-4bef-9479-05d5a832ad16&ItemId=113 New Pedestrian Streets
  4. Web site: Living in Benjamin Residential Complex . Peso Gov real estate company . 15 August 2020.
  5. News: Dvir . Noam . Back to the Future / Everything's Up to Date in Tel Aviv. It's 1935 . Haaretz . 13 July 2011 . 22 September 2020.
  6. News: Kamin . Debra . In Tel Aviv, a Futuristic Hotel With a Past . The New York Times . 21 January 2018 . 22 September 2020.
  7. Web site: 10 Nahlat Binyamin, Tel Aviv-Yafo – The Leitz – Soroka House . 2007 . Amnon Bar Or – Tal Gazit Architects Ltd. . 15 August 2020.
  8. https://www.streetsigns.co.il/signDetails.asp?s=1167 Sign: Tel Aviv - Rambam Square
  9. News: Bar-Am . Aviva and Shmuel . On Tel Aviv's Nahalat Binyamin, a wild mix of eclectic architecture . The Times of Israel . 3 October 2015 . 15 August 2020.
  10. Web site: 17 Ahad Ha'am Street corner of Nachlat Binyamin 46-48 . Noga Nagarut Ltd. . 15 August 2020.
  11. News: Steinberg . Jessica . Putting art out on the street . ISRAEL21c . 4 August 2011 . 15 August 2020.
  12. News: GRAFITLV NACHALAT BINYAMIN . ToDoTLV . 15 August 2020.

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