The Tel Aviv Beach

As the drizzle continues in our home by the bay, our dreams turn to warmer climes. I still smile remembering a special Erev Shabbat, many years ago, watching the fire-dancers on Chinky beach in Tel Aviv.

Time photographer Gillian Laub has been photographing the magnificent Tel Aviv beaches for years. Here's a few samples from Tel Aviv Beach: One Photographer’s Enduring Oasis .

“Every Jew has two requests of God: a place in paradise in the next world, and a place on the Tel Aviv beach in this world,” wrote Sholem Asch, the Polish-born novelist, in 1937. Stretching five kilometers from its southern tip at the old port city of Jaffa to the new cluster of high rise hotels and condos at its northern end, Tel Aviv’s beach (or Tayelet as it’s called in Hebrew) probably looked a little different in Asch’s day. But I think of him as part of a long legacy of both travelers and natives who have sought refuge in those sands from Israel’s political dramas, which can gush like a Texas oil well. At the beach, I discovered Israel in all its vitality, without the conflict.





"The beach, I’ve come to realize, is where the country comes to breathe."
Check out all of Gillians Laub's photos here