Several thousand people crowded into Central Park’s Naumburg Band Shell Sunday to celebrate Tel Aviv’s 100th birthday on a makeshift beach, dancing to Israeli reggae music and enjoying the four hours of sunshine that managed to brighten an otherwise rainy day.
While DJ Hadar Marks hosted performances by Israeli groups Hatikvah Six and FLOW, children shoveled sand with their parents as bikini-clad women played volleyball with shirtless young men.
“Today we gave to the city that has it all the one thing it doesn’t have — an authentic, sweaty afternoon on Frishman Beach,” said Eytan Schwartz, spokesman for the Tel Aviv-Jaffa centennial celebrations and also winner of a 2004 Israeli reality show.“
Since placing the Statue of Liberty in Ellis
Island, New York has not experienced such an engineering undertaking as building the Tel Aviv beach,” he added, laughing.
Outside the celebration, however, Palestinian supporters yelled in protest and distributed mock brochures with their own messages, and some even managed to sneak onto the Tel Aviv beach by dressing up in bikinis.
But guests from all over the world went on dancing, enjoying free ice cream and relishing their momentary respite from weeks of heavy rain.
“It was inspiring to see people together from so many different backgrounds and ethnicities. We saw African-Americans next to observant Jews and Asians and Israelis dancing together to the music,” said David Saranga, a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate who organized the event. “Central Park yesterday was a multicultural, cosmopolitan place to be — just like Tel Aviv. ”
Print this Page