This is an editorial from the March 14, 1935 edition of The Sentinel, a newspaper serving the Jewish community of Chicago. The author, Julian Melzer, describes Purim celebrations in Tel Aviv, calling it the “Capital of Purim”:
"If all else about Tel Aviv will have been forgotten in two thousand years to come, it will undoubtedly be remembered as the place where Purim was celebrated."
He describes the unique changes taking place in the city to celebrate Purim: traffic regulations are suspended, the street names are changed to names from the Book of Esther, thousands of Jews crowd into the city, there are parades, fireworks, plays, costumes, and Megillah (The Book of Esther) readings in the synagogues. The article mentions that thousands of people had flown in from abroad and that the hotels were full. A photograph depicting the Purim parade, known as the Adloyada, appears at the bottom of the article and the caption calls the festival, “the mardi gras of Tel Aviv.”
The article refers to the fact that these festivities were taking place at a time (1935) when Germany was ruled by the anti-Semitic Nazi regime:
"For in the miles long carnival procession that wends its way through the congested streets of Tel Aviv there is sorrow as well gaiety…Haman, that ill-fated Persian vizier who harried the Jews has his modern counterpart in Hitler and his cohorts."
The author expresses the hope that the Nazis will come to a similar end as Pharoah and Torquemada, who led the Spanish Inquisition.
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Purim - Purim is celebrated on the 14 Adar as the day the Jewish people were saved from destruction during the fourth century BCE. The heroine of the Purim story, Queen Esther, worked together with her uncle, Mordechai, to reverse the decree of genocide issued against the Jewish people by Haman, the vizier of Persia. It is the tradition on Purim to dress up in costumes, distribute small food packages known as mishloach manot, give charity, and listen to the reading of the Megilla – the Book of Esther.
Tel Aviv-Jaffa – Founded in 1909 by a small group of Jews on the outskirts of old Jaffa, Tel Aviv is now Israel’s second largest city and the cultural, financial, and technological centre of the country. It is located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the heart of the Gush Dan Metropolitan area. The original founders of Tel Aviv were looking for a healthier environment outside of the crowded city of Jaffa. With the help of the Jewish National Fund, they purchased 12 acres of sand dunes and called their new city Tel Aviv (spring hill). “Tel Aviv” was the name given by Nahum Sokolow to his Hebrew translation of Theodor Herzl’s classic, Altneuland. Meir Dizengoff was the first mayor of Tel Aviv and served for 25 years. In 1917, the Ottoman rulers expelled most of the Jewish community from Tel Aviv. With the end of World War I and the start of British rule the following year, the Jews were invited back to Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is sometimes called the “White City” due to the 4000 or more buildings built in the Bauhaus style. The mostly white Bauhaus buildings were built in the 1930s by German Jewish architects who immigrated to pre-state Israel during the British Mandate after the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Tel Aviv has the largest number of Bauhaus buildings of any city in the world. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was declared in the art museum that was located in Dizengoff House. By 1950, the city of Tel Aviv had grown and expanded, and it was renamed Tel Aviv-Jaffa to reflect the unified city and to preserve the historical name of Jaffa. Tel Aviv is the home of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the financial capital of Israel. It is also the centre of high-tech and start-up companies and a major centre of culture and entertainment, known for its active nightlife and the variety and quality of its restaurants.
The Chicago Sentinel - The Chicago Sentinel, a weekly newspaper for the Chicago Jewish community, was one of the longest continuously published Jewish weeklies in the United States. The first issue of the Sentinel was published on February 4, 1911. The newspaper focused on cultural events and included many eye-catching illustrations and photographs. It also published short stories and reports about events in the various Jewish communities. The Sentinel differed from many other English-language, often highbrow, Jewish weeklies, because it reached out to the Zionist immigrants who preferred to read in English and not Yiddish. The Sentinel is a treasure trove for social, cultural, and religious historians who are interested in American Jewish life outside of New York during the twentieth century.
