Tel Aviv City Museum/Leo Tana
When Bialik described how the street hummed when Yossi played on the violin, Psi on the drum and Moshe on the trumpet, he wrote about a wedding. Now the celebration returns to the street, and even very close to the home of the national poet, with the relaunch of Bialik Square, and with it the cultural centers that stand opposite each other in one of the nicest corners of Tel Aviv.
The beautiful square, which is hidden behind the hustle and bustle of King George Street on one side and the light rail works on Allenby Street on the other, seeks to be an urban cultural center, bringing together music, literature, art, architecture and history. In the days when Israel is once again immersed in blood and fire and endless noise, the buildings that stand around the fountain offer an alternative: it could be different here. We deserve it to be different here as well.
There are five stations around the square: the Beit Ha'ir Museum, which seeks to present the story of Tel Aviv through the eyes of its residents; the literary center and museum in Beit Bialik, which preserves the poet's house; the Felicia Blumenthal Center, which includes the largest music library in Israel; Beit Reuven, which presents the best works of the painter Reuven Rubin; and Liebling House, the center of the White City, a center of art, architecture and urbanism. Now, the Tel Aviv municipality is trying to connect them together under one department, under the management of the dance woman Michal Linenberg, in order to create a multidisciplinary and communal cultural space, and to unite the forces and treasures inherent in the square into one urban monster.
The timing is appropriate, since these days the street is celebrating one hundred years since it was named after Bialik. In 1924, the poet and his wife Mania immigrated to the Land of Israel, and a short time later a ceremony was held in which the street was named after the poet. About a year and a half later, the couple moved into their new home on the spot, and to this day you can find Bialik's magnificent library there, wander among his tools and belongings, and even in his archive which was opened to the general public for the first time.
In those years, a hotel was built right next door - which was not actually used as a hotel - which would become Tel Aviv City Hall for about 40 years, until the city offices moved to their current location in what is now called Rabin Square. Since the 1970s, several attempts have been made to establish a museum of the first Hebrew in the building that remains. The spectacular center managed by Michal Beharev-Ozard and officially opened to the public this very month, is built as a center of urban stories that are concentrated in a horizontal manner, embracing all the things that make Tel Aviv-Yafo what it is, past and present - from activism to clubs, from the markets to the sea, from the Tikva neighborhood to Kaplan .
A younger building is the Felicia Blumenthal Center for Music, established in 1951, and its library includes hundreds of thousands of titles alongside archives of renowned composers and musicians. There is also a concert hall on the premises, but this impressive institution is still closed to the public, and it is expected to open, at least everyone hopes, in the coming weeks. Fans of the plastic arts will find what they are looking for in the historic Bauhaus building of Beit Liebling, and in Beit Reuven, where the painter Reuven Rubin worked for about 30 years.
All the institutions - each in their own way - strive to make art and culture accessible to the general public, in the educational frameworks for children and youth as well as for adults through a variety of events and programs. The first stop: the festive launch of the square, planned for this Thursday, the evening of April 18. As part of the event, which is open to the public with free pre-registration, the people of "Mystery Theater" will put on shows with the participation of the audience in each of the five houses, which will include actors, dancers and circus artists - as well as a festive opera performance in the square itself. And again, as in Bialik's song that generations of children grew up on, chants and applause will fill the street.