When I imagine Tel Aviv, I imagine the modern buildings, nice beaches, and happy people. However, when I first laid my eyes upon Neve Shanan , I was greeted with something completely different. The menorah shaped village is located in southern Tel Aviv houses people from all over the world. Elliot Glassenberg (our tour guide) even described the village to be “a microcosm of the Israel conflict”.
The word ‘Tel’ in ‘Tel-Aviv’ means layers. And Neve Shanan definitely lives up to this title as every ten years groups of people come and go, dramatically changing the population. The village was originally built as a suburban moshav in 1920s. People started to leave Jaffa as tensions rose, resulting in a diverse crowd moving into Neve Shanan. A new layer was introduced to Neve Shanan after World War II when Germans flocked to Southern Tel-Aviv and bau houses started being built. When Israel was created, Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners also started moving in. In 1963, work on Tel Aviv’s bus station began in the small suburb. The construction made it less pleasant to live in the village, and people started moving out. Work on the bus station took 30 years, and once the station was built, people settled back in. Africans and other non-Jews immigrated to Neve Shanan and the economy grew.
The small village is very inclusive, and accepts just about everyone. In fact, today refugees come to the village and sleep in the park. These “asylum seekers” are helped by residents, as they are aided towards getting a visa.
While looking at the different buildings in Neve Shanan, We were immersed in the not so beautiful parts of Israel. The people, dynamics, and history of Neve Shanan truly make it a complex, layered settlement.