IrHanoar
The Youth City and Adolescence
An iconic Israeli youth festival (Ir HaNoar) that took place annually for two decades, leaving its mark on Israeli culture.
In 1963, the nature of Israeli youth's entertainment underwent a revolution.
In August of that year, the first Youth City (also known as Ir-Hnoar in Hebrew) was established, heralding to city dwellers from Tel Aviv and its surroundings that it was time to leave home and enjoy themselves. Pure entertainment - free of Zionism and values, without parents or teachers, without instructors, just them in their own company.
The City operated for more than two decades, for a limited period during the summer months, until it withered and sank into the depths of historical archives, without receiving the recognition it deserved.
Millions of young people visited it over the years. It's amazing to see how this massive recurring event managed to slip away from the hall of Israeli nostalgia and was pushed aside into just a few lines and mentions, with few pictures and no serious discussion about its formative place in Israeli culture.
So what's the story of the City and Youth (Ir-Haniar)?
Youth City was an ongoing event for young people and teenagers from the central region.
It took place every year, in Tel Aviv, from the 60s to the 80s, during summer nights. Night after night, tens of thousands flocked to the "Exhibition Grounds" complex beyond the Yarkon River. They filled the pavilions, the competitions, the shows, the Luna Park (amusement park) rides, the restaurants and stalls scattered everywhere.
The event lasted two or three weeks, and sometimes more.
It attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, at a time when Israel's population was only half of its current size. In its peak years, Youth City attracted about 600,000 visitors in one summer.
It was a once-a-year event.
When the long summer vacation arrived, in July and August, the opening of Youth City was announced. The Tel Aviv Municipality launched the initiative with a serious and festive ceremony.
The actual Mayor of Tel Aviv "handed over the keys to the City" to a young person, aged 17 or 18, a student from one of the high schools in the central region. The young and symbolic Mayor was elected to his position by the student council, as were the young council members around him. Under the watchful eye of the producers, they managed the largest mass happening that Israeli youth had known in those years, and probably ever since.
The symbolic ceremony interested the Municipality, the producers, and perhaps also the journalists who added a respectable media dimension to the ceremony, reporting anew each year on what was going to happen and then on what was happening.
The young people and teenagers just waited for the gates to open, and they could flock in droves, into the Exhibition Grounds complex.
They arrived by buses on special lines organized by the Dan company, from all over Gush Dan - every bus full and packed with sweat and hormones, in shorts and jeans, in sandals and high heels, in mini and maxi skirts, with breath seasoned with the scents of gel and perfumes from boys and girls, high school students and soldiers.
They came alone or in groups, without their parents.
They came from the central region - from Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, from Petah Tikva and Netanya, from Ashdod and Rehovot, and also from all over the country.
They came to...
actually, they didn't even know exactly why.
They came because it was happening. They came because of the pavilions that provided some content that might interest them. Because of the sports competitions they wanted to participate in. They came because of the singers who performed there. Because of the Luna Park. They came to meet friends, to make new ones, to see and be seen.
They came because there was no entrance fee (except for a symbolic payment in the first three years).
It's true that the hot dogs at the stalls cost many liras, as did the ice creams and popsicles, and carbonated drinks. Spending was not part of their daily routine then, as many of them were middle-class and below, and whoever had pocket money saved it for the adjacent Luna Park rides which were an integral part of the attraction. For a cable car ride, sitting on a Ferris wheel, and a "ghost train," and all the amusement rides that were open to the general and very young public. Then - they were young in high school, soldiers in the army.
Today - they are sixty, seventy and eighty years old, they are parents and grandparents.
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren who hear grandpa tell about his youth, will not understand the magnitude and power of the event, and how so many young people once gathered under the open sky, night after night, in an ongoing youth festival.
There are no such things today.
A mass gathering of tens of thousands of young people in an ongoing event – could have occurred then, in the days before television, the internet, and smartphones. In the era of tight-knit neighborhoods and close circles of friends. In the years when culture was an important commodity that needed to be provided to youth.
In those years, the municipality allocated budgets for cultural events without counting the cost.
It was an honor to host the young people and provide them with an attractive place of entertainment, and every year they racked their brains anew on how to fill the large space with content and entertainment - science enthusiasts received a corner next to chess enthusiasts. Artists made their first appearance there. Athletes trained for the competitions that took place. Even the kibbutzim came to settle in the vibrant city and offered their pioneering wares.
But like all good things, this too ended.
Why?
Some will tell you that television killed the entertainment venues and then the internet delivered the final blow.
Some will tell you that it's all because of the municipality, which is more interested in planning property tax collection and parking tickets than in planning cultural events.
Some will tell you that unruly youth ruined the business, that "Arsiada" (a derogatory term for uncouth behavior) took over the Exhibition Grounds and the minimal discipline of the youth disappeared. (Then, in those days, the troublemakers were called: hooligans or "pushtakim").
It's all true.
Including the fact that in the end, they started charging admission fees. In 1982, the municipality decided it was no longer going to be taken advantage of by the youth, and whoever wanted to enjoy themselves should pay money. They handed the business over to a production company that sold tickets - and that was it. The end of adolescence was covered in VAT and profit and loss statements, young people went to clubs, flew abroad with their parents, went to hotels with their families, and said that if it's already about money – then why Youth City specifically? And perhaps it's worth more to spend time in alternative entertainment venues that filled the whole country.
Another summer arrived, 1983, and they tried again, but this was the last in the ongoing series of youth events, with a very surprising ending that stunned the 150,000 participants who came to the T-Slam band concert.
A few more years passed without it.
Then impresarios came and tried to revive the place privately, and then again tried a comeback in 1987 and 1995, but it was no longer the same. The attempt to restore it to its former glory didn't take off, and whoever organized "Youth City" in Tel Aviv or Haifa, for one night or three nights, could not replicate the scale of the original City.
Forty years have passed, and all that remains are nostalgic memories of an event that left its mark on an entire generation of young people, millions of Israelis who came, went, and participated in it throughout its existence.
Anyone Browse through the history pages of the bustling "City" will find some milestones, not overly dramatic, but certainly headline-worthy:
David Ben-Gurion, "The Old Man," came there to speak with the youth, as did Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir.
The career of Roni Milo, who served as the mayor of the Youth City and later became the actual mayor of Tel Aviv, began there.
The Tel Aviv residents who lived nearby complained about the unbearable noise and the traffic jams on the adjacent roads.
In 1979, an explosive device detonated there, injuring three people. In 1980, NASA contributed a real moon rock brought by astronauts for a special exhibit.
In Youth City, the love between Rita and Rami Kleinstein blossomed.
There, Ofra Haza's fans threw what they threw at Yardena Arazi. The singer Avner Gadassi emerged there, and with him, what would later become "Mediterranean music" loudly burst forth.
But more than anything – Youth City was part of the youth culture of Israeli youngsters, especially those who lived in the center of the country and also some from its peripheries.
How did it start?
How did it end?
What did they do there in Youth City?
What attracted hundreds of thousands of young people to it?
Why were T-Slam fans surprised?
Who were the Mayors?
And what tragedy is hidden in the list?
Here, with a click, is the full story about the Tel Aviv Youth City, which was an integral part of what happened here between the sixties and the eighties.
Click for the next chapters:
Research, Writing, and Editing: Shlomi Rosenfeld
