Since the mid-19th century, expositions and fairs have generated trade and relations between nations and, as early as 1898, an “International Scientific, Industrial and Philanthropic Fair” was planned as part of the celebration of the German Kaiser’s visit to Ottoman Empire-era Jerusalem. While that fair never took place, agricultural exhibitions in the Yishuv were held on a regional basis and, after World War I, regional fairs were held throughout the Near East under the British Mandate.
In the early 1920s, there were several small local fairs, usually in Haifa, devoted solely to the agricultural products of Eretz Yisrael and selling some manufactured goods to local buyers. Initially, the Palestinian Levant Fairs were known as the “Near East Fairs”; the four that were held from 1925 – 1929 were distinguished from the earlier fairs in that they were general exhibitions for industrial and commercial, as well as agricultural, products.
The “Levant Fair” (Yerid Hamizrach) began when a group of Tel Aviv entrepreneurs organized a small trade exhibition at a girls’ school in Neve-Tzedek (1924). Its purpose was to showcase the industrial and commercial activity of the Yishuv, which then consisted primarily of its main export industries of wine, soap, and sesame; boost the developing industry and trade of the Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael, then under the British Mandate and increase capital investment in Jewish projects there; encourage aliya; and display the friendly relationship between the Jewish settlements and the Arab countries surrounding it and encourage them to establish commercial ties with the Jews of Eretz Yisrael. The Fair, which took place on different dates and at various places until it was transformed into one of the most famous trade fairs in the world, was held every year or two until it was disabled by Arab pogroms in 1936, when the Arabs proceeded to murder Jews – so much for the “friendly relationship” the Fair sought to promote.
One impetus for the Fair was the Fifth Aliyah, when many Jewish immigrants, who came with financial capital and business experience, contributed profoundly to the industrial growth of the community; during the late 1920s to early 1930s, more than 500 new factories were built in Eretz Yisrael, and some British commissioners expressed their willingness to assist the struggling Jewish settlements, including particularly Arthur Wauchope, who served as High Commissioner of Eretz Yisrael from 1931 – 1938.
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The 1926 Near East Exhibition, which opened in September, was arranged by the Judea Industrial Corporation, an American Jewish company, with assistance of the Tel Aviv municipality and the Zionist Executive in Eretz Yisrael. An important feature of the Exhibition, which emphasized the products and industries in Eretz Yisrael, was an “Ideal Home Exhibition,” which included exhibits of town planning and architecture in the land and contained models of rural and urban ideal homes, building materials, building machinery, builders’ requisites, building implements and fittings, interior decorations, including radio sets and electric appliances, and home gardening.
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By 1929, the Near East Exhibition, with virtually every branch of industry and agriculture being represented, had become a benchmark for the Yishuv’s economic advancement and a strategic element in the bid for Jewish nationhood in Eretz Yisrael. Central to the 1929 Near East Fair was a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv; in opening the exhibition on April 8, 1929, Mayor Meir Dizengoff proclaimed that “Tel Aviv is showing what the Jews in Palestine have achieved in the fields of industry, agriculture and education during such a short period.” A larger celebration for the city was held on May 2nd which featured, among other events, a parade of native-born children of the city and, following the parade, Dizengoff presented the first child to be born in the city with a special certificate.
In this January 6, 1929, correspondence on Palestine & Near East Exhibition & Fair letterhead and signed by Dizengoff, the organizers of the 1929 Exhibition write (only the second page of the document is exhibited and translated here):
The Exhibition is arranged to celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the establishment of Tel Aviv and it therefore symbolizes in the most appropriate way possible this celebration of the first Jewish city, that despite all the obstacles that stood in the way of its establishment, has managed to establish a series of important economic positions and to fill an important role in the history of the Jewish settlement after the War.
The Exhibition will summarize the past and will predict the path of progress in the future. Due to the importance of this endeavor, and recognizing that its success depends firstly on the active participants of all the Hebrew factions in Israel, the undersigned Mr. Dizengoff [and named others] take upon themselves the initiative to invite the representatives of the public institutions to a meeting at which will be discussed the requirements for support which is appropriate for this Exhibition. At the meeting, there will be chosen a Special Committee which will help to organize the task and its management from the public aspect [management of the endeavor from its economic aspect will remain in the hands of “Mischar V’Taasiah” (business and industry)].
The meeting of the representatives of the organizations will take place on January 10, 1929 at 7:00 in the evening at the headquarters of the Tel Aviv municipality. The initiating group [founders] hopes that, considering your appreciation of the importance of this matter, you will participate in this meeting and assist in resolving the issues before us.
Dizengoff, best known as the founder of Tel Aviv, was also one of the founders of the Achuzat Bayit Company establishing a modern Jewish quarter near Yaffo; this quarter, the precursor to Tel Aviv, was founded in 1909. Dizengoff was elected head of the local council and later, when Tel Aviv became a city (1921), he was elected its first mayor, a capacity in which he served for most his life.
Following the 1929 Fair, the Chief Rabbis of Tel Aviv censured the municipality and demanded that they be extended authority to supervise the restaurants and cafes for kashrut (the fare at one of the eateries included ham and eggs).
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Exhibited here is an invitation to the 1932 Levant Fair:
The Committee for the 1932 Levant Fair is hereby honored to invite you to the Opening Ceremony by His Honor the High Commissioner of Eretz Yisrael [Arthur Wauchope] on Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nisan 1932, April 7, at exactly 2:30.
By 1932 the Fair expanded from simply heralding Jewish economic growth to promoting national and international ambitions to serve as a center linking eastern and western markets. The Fair, with 285,000 attendees, including Wauchope and the Arab mayors of Jaffa and Jerusalem, proved to be a great success and, by popular demand, the closing date was extended to early May. The Fair was the first to include official government representation from foreign countries, and there were 831 foreign exhibitors, including international pavilions representing Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Great Britain, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Turkey, and the USSR.
A notable event took place at this Fair on April 7, 1932, when the first radio station in Eretz Yisrael, which came to be known as “Radio Tel-Aviv,” went on-air under a special license issued by the British Mandatory Government. In its first broadcast, “Mayor Meir” (i.e., Dizengoff) expressed hope that the station would expand someday to reach a worldwide Jewish audience.
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High Commissioner Wauchope, a very keen proponent of public works and civil engineering projects, allocated an official area for building a permanent structure for the Fair, north of Dizengoff Street on the bank of the Yarkon river and, on August 15, 1933, a formal cornerstone dedication ceremony was held there attended by Wauchope, Dizengoff, and other notables. The 1934 Fair opened on April 26, 1934 and, at the same time, the British began construction of an airport to serve visitors, which became Lod. At the inauguration ceremony, a play about the birth of the city was performed, which had been written especially for the occasion by writer and poet Emanuel Harusi, and attendees were required to wear dress jackets and to otherwise follow the official dress code. Interestingly, Colonel Percy Cox, the British High Commissioner in Amman, mocked the Jews for insisting on a dress code inappropriate to the torrid climate of Eretz Yisrael, and he refused to attend.
The 1934 Fair, a celebration on a grand scale, included concerts, dance performances, plays, silent films, games, competitions, raffles, a “Flying Camel Ball,” an amusement park, and a Ferris wheel. Undoubtedly the grandest and most successful of them all, it included about thirty stands, sculptures, and billboards, most of them portraying Zionist themes. It ran for six weeks, and a high point of the Fair was a Jubilee celebration for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv. With 600,000 people from thirty countries participating in the Fair during its six-week run, it became the fourth largest of its kind in the world – at a time when the entire population of the Jewish settlement was only about 200,000 people.
(L) Press card (R ) General admission.
The Fair was also of great importance for the local architecture and design of Tel Aviv, with pavilions being built by prominent Jewish architects of the time, including Richard Kauffmann, who designed the urban masterplan for the site, and Aryeh Elhanani, who led the effort to design the buildings and outdoor sculptures. In previous Fairs, small pavilions had been placed within a green and rural atmosphere, but the layout for the 1934 exhibition was an urban design featuring wide avenues, a central square with streets and landscaped squares, and the Fair’s designers placed great emphasis on design elements, such as the flagpoles that filled the Fair’s roads and lampposts headed by a round plate and placed under incandescent bulbs.
The 1934 Fair represented the largest and most prestigious concentration of buildings executed in the International Style up to the time; it made a crucial contribution to a local evolution of modern form and details, and it formed the basis for the definition of the content of situated modernism and its promotion in Eretz Yisrael. It presented to the world in a dramatic visual way the Zionist idea of the Yishuv as a strong, advanced western society, and a glass model of the spectacular 1934 fairgrounds was displayed in the Land of Israel Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
The Fair marked the introduction of the “flying camel” logo (see exhibit), the inspiration for which was an Arab mayor who, mocking the Fair’s organizers and their chances for success, is reputed to have said, “You’ll have your Fair when a camel will grow wings!” As discussed above, the spring 1926 Near East Fair had adopted a gazelle leaping over a 19th century ship to represent trade as a logo, which was flanked by wings on top, symbolizing speed and commerce, and an anchor at the bottom.
The “flying camel” was designed by El-Hanani, who also designed several special sculptures for the Fair, among them the sculpture of the Hebrew Laborer, which still stands today. Kauffmann designed the central pavilion of the Fair, the famous Produce of the Land stand in the shape of a ship. They worked with a group of Jewish architects, mostly from Germany, who were influenced by the modern styles of designing, and they had a great impact on the architectural style in building and designing in Tel-Aviv.
Many people do not know about the Arab Fair that took place in Jerusalem in 1933 and in 1934, the origins of which arise from the rivalry between Arab and Jewish national representations in international trade fairs. Arab producers originally participated in Zionist-organized exhibitions and fairs in the 1920s – including Lebanon, which built an independent pavilion at the fair’s center with a facade that was adorned by a colorful bas-relief of antiquities from Baalbek. However, notwithstanding the Yishuv’s best intentions, the fairs highlighted the great disparities between the Jewish and Arab economies in Eretz Yisrael. Characterizing the fairs as “Jewish-British exhibitions” that represented “all of Palestine except the Arabs,” the Arabs boycotted subsequent Levant Fairs in response to a December 1931 call from the General Islamic Conference and in reaction to threats from Arab leaders regarding the adverse repercussions of Arab participation, a decision which – no surprise here – resonated with the world press as “honorable.” These Arab Fairs were the last attempt at such an exhibition because they proved to be such flops, as they failed to generate international recognition and attendance was sparse. The Arabs blamed the British “and other colonial governments” for failing to endorse their Fair and – again, no surprise here – “the Zionists and the Jews.”
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Exhibited here is a photograph of notables on the platform in the amphitheater before the opening of the Colonization Pavilion of the Zionist Institution at the 1936 Levant Fair. From left to right: Mr. Leo Herrmann, a representative of the Youth Immigration from Sheich Abnek, I. Baratz, David Ben Gurion, Menachem Ussushkin, Mr. Meirowitz (Rishon le Zion), and Meir Dizengoff.
According to the May 1936 Levant News pamphlet exhibited here, “the coming exhibition will be larger and more interesting than all the previous exhibitions.” Sadly, it did not turn out that way and the 1936 edition proved to be a smaller and less successful final Levant Fair. Because of the Arab riots of 1936 – 1939 that began two weeks prior to the opening of the Fair that shut down the port of Jaffa, events were cancelled and many exhibitors cancelled their participation in the exhibition. Nonetheless, the famous first concert of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which was conducted by Arturo Toscanini, was held at the Italian Pavilion on the fairgrounds and, although the Fair was closed six weeks after its opening and the organizers sustained great financial loss, 30 countries participated and 600,000 visitors attended.
According to our exhibit, features of the Fair included:
- The Israel National Section of the Exhibition will increase six-fold over previous Exhibitions.
- Visitors from the Middle East.
- The Exhibition of Settlements and Agriculture.
- Awards for Excellent Farmers.
- The Competition between Eretz Yisrael Architects.
- The Chanukah Plays at the Exhibition Amphitheatre.
- The Participation of the Various Counties.
- The Tel Aviv is the Fourth Most Important in the World.
- The Levant Fair Contributes to the Economic Prosperity of the Yishuv.
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After 1936, and for the duration of World War II, the Levant Fair ceased operation, its fairgrounds were converted into an alternative fairgrounds complex, and urban development of the peninsula at the mouth of the Yarkon River led to further expansion of Tel Aviv. Some development continued north, beyond the Yarkon, including the establishment of the Port of Tel Aviv (1936), which was used to store temporary Levant Fair items; later the street leading to the harbor was named “Zion’s Gate.” Other developments included the Sde Dov Airport (1936), the Reading Opower Station (1938), and the Maccabiah Stadium (1938); the Philharmonic Orchestra Hall was built within the area of the former fairgrounds. During World War II, the fairgrounds were taken over by the British Army and used for their military training, and during Israel’s War of Independence, the fairground structures were used for IDF storage.
On June 7, 1962, tens of thousands of Israelis and visitors attended the opening ceremony of the 1962 Levant Fair, which was officially opened by President Yitzchak Ben-Zvi while the well-known “flying camel” flew from the mastheads and flagpoles fronting the pavilions, which included exhibits by 36 countries. The United States presented a large exhibit, and great crowds flocked to its pavilion; other impressive exhibits were arranged by other countries; and still other nations, who feared an Arab boycott and avoided establishing their own pavilions, nonetheless were represented through goods displayed at the Fair by their Israeli agents. However, the Fair could not compare to the previous fairs because it was opened in an American style and without the Zionist or Israeli traditions that had made it unique.
