009 Fifty Shades of White

Apr 24

Every year, Tel Aviv's streets transform into a celebration of human sportsmanship and city pride as tens of thousands of runners participate in the Tel Aviv Marathon. Well, some of the locals view this event as conformist, and yet the 2025 edition saw over 45,000 participants, so there’s got to be something to it. Creating a moving rainbow of athletic wear against the backdrop of Tel Aviv's distinctive urban skyline and sparkling Mediterranean coast, participants flooded the city streets in the early morning hours of the last day of February. The mayor gave a brief speech and then officially launched the Tel Aviv Marathon with a gun being fired. The palm trees along the promenade, if only they could speak, would probably be baffled with the wave of people running by.

Picture this: Ben Gurion Boulevard at the city centre, blocked for through traffic. The roads fill with runners attempting their personal best. Nearby coffee places start to fill up with Tel Avivians - those who prefer to take things more slowly, so it seems. Professional athletes, mostly from Africa, have already passed by, as the local running clubs and first-time marathoners steadily continue their run. It’s an interesting mix of leisure and sports happening and not happening at the same place at the same time.

The first Tel Aviv Marathon in 1934 featured just seven runners departing from Bialik Street near the original city hall, with the first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, serving as the official starter. Back then, the route took participants through agricultural fields in what has since become the southern suburbs of today’s Greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Runners sustained themselves with sugar cubes, biscuits and juice, while friends followed on bicycles offering encouragement.

The city saw several more marathons along the years, but none matured into a yearly event. The city marathon in its current form started in 2009 - Tel Aviv’s centennial year - and the event takes place every year since then, on the last Friday of February, when temperatures are ideal for a long run. Today's marathon has become a world-class event attracting participants from all around the globe. Its route showcases the city's most iconic sites, such as the Tel Aviv Port, the seaside promenade, Dizengoff Street, Ben-Gurion Boulevard leading to Rabin Square and Rothschild Boulevard stretching from HaBima Square.

What was unique in the 2025 edition of the Tel Aviv Marathon is that along with the usual marathon and half-marathon, there was a special Triumph of the Spirit race, dedicated for the men and women who served and who are serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. Some of the runners were injured on duty, went through a prolonged period of recovery and came back in full force to run in an inspiring display of human resilience.

I was thinking about this as I noticed city officials taking off the posters along Rothschild Boulevard, the posters which notified drivers not to park there the night before the marathon. Now that the event was over, I guess the eager to park drivers sighed with relief. In comparison to the sheer grit that the Triumph of the Spirit race runners possess, pushing your foot against a pedal to make a car move seemed to me as such a mild effort, milder than ever.

My name is Tomer Chelouche and I've been guiding tours in Tel Aviv since 2008. I started out of fascination with my family history - the Chelouche family was one of the founding families of Tel Aviv. My ancestors built this city - and I'm telling its story.

The best way to get to know Tel Aviv better is by purchasing one of my audio tours. Here's one way to do just that -

The newly opened Hotel Gymnasia offers the perfect starting point for exploring the origins of Tel Aviv. Located in the heart of the city on Montefiore Street near Shalom Tower, the hotel's name itself connects to Tel Aviv's history - it is named after the historic “Gymnasia” - the first school in the city, which stood right across the street, before it was regrettably demolished. After enjoying a gourmet à la carte breakfast at Chef Sharon Cohen's acclaimed Shila restaurant in the hotel's ground floor, you're perfectly positioned to make your way to the starting point of my "Trail of Independence" audio tour.

Starting at Gutman's mosaic fountain at 3 Rothschild Boulevard, this audio tour guides you through key sites in Tel Aviv's origin story. It’s a few minutes walk away from Hotel Gymnasia. This one includes fascinating stories about how Tel Aviv was born out of the sea, who was the sheriff of Tel Aviv, why the first school of Tel Aviv was demolished, what life was like in the early years, and where the story of Israel and the story of Tel Aviv come together. The last one is actually the reason for the title “Trail of Independence” - here, where Tel Aviv started, David Ben Gurion proclaimed Israeli Independence and went on to become Israel’s first Prime Minister.

You can make sure you've downloaded my Trail of Independence audio tour before you head out, or you can download it on the go if you're set with a data package allowing for uninterrupted internet access. There's a link in the show notes to purchase my audio tour -

The Trail of Independence: Tracing the origins of modern Tel Aviv

If you have any questions - you’ll find all the ways to contact me on telaviv.tours (telaviv as one word, no space, no hyphen) and there’s a link in the show notes for your digital convenience.

For visitors inspired by both the marathon's spirit of endurance and Tel Aviv's innovative energy, it's worth noting that the city's entrepreneurial character dates back to its very founding. In fact, Tel Aviv itself was essentially a startup, with its first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, serving as its visionary CEO, sort of.

Born in Tsarist Russia in 1861, Dizengoff embodied the pioneering spirit that still defines Tel Aviv today. After being imprisoned for plotting against the Russian Tzar, upon his release he travelled to Paris where he studied chemistry. Eventually, he came to the Land of Israel and attempted to establish a glass bottle factory - a venture aimed at serving the Jewish wine industry's need for bottles. Like many entrepreneurs, Dizengoff's first business failed miserably. But as any Tel Aviv startup founder will tell you today, failure is often the first step toward success.

After relocating to Jaffa, Dizengoff joined the founders of what would become Tel Aviv, the first Jewish city in modern times. Elected first as head of the Tel Aviv committee and later as mayor, he guided the city's development for nearly twenty years. He commissioned city planner Sir Patrick Geddes to design the urban layout, developed essential infrastructure, established the local economy, and planted the seeds of Tel Aviv's education system. Some more of his achievements include developing the promenade along the beach and establishing the Tel Aviv Port, while he and his wife Zina began an art collection that would form the foundation of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art – initially housed in their own living room on Rothschild Boulevard.

True to the characteristic Israeli chutzpah that defines today's entrepreneurs, Dizengoff wasn't shy about ensuring his legacy – he named a major street in the city center after himself and personally cut the ribbon at its dedication in the 1930’s. Today, it's virtually impossible to visit Tel Aviv without encountering Dizengoff's name… or at least walking down the famous street named after him.

This entrepreneurial foundation has evolved into what we now call the "Startup City". With the highest concentration of startups per capita in the world after Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv has earned its place on the global tech map. Walk into any coffee place on Dizengoff Street, and you're likely to overhear conversations about seed rounds, co-founder matchmaking and scaling strategies. The city hosts over 2,000 startups, numerous accelerators and innovation hubs, many of them clustered along Rothschild Boulevard - the same street where Dizengoff once lived.

This vibrant ecosystem hasn't gone unnoticed by tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, all of which have established R&D centers here, attracted by the local talent and entrepreneurial spirit that can be traced back to Dizengoff's time. Multinational companies have also acquired numerous Israeli tech companies, with deals in recent years reaching billions of dollars. What makes Tel Aviv unique isn't just the number of startups but the innovative culture that permeates the city. From fintech to foodtech, cybersecurity to artificial intelligence, Tel Aviv's entrepreneurs tackle global challenges with the same determined spirit that drove founders of the city itself, and… the Triumph of the Spirit runners I mentioned earlier.

Much like the marathon participants who push through to reach new personal records, Tel Aviv's tech community embodies persistence and determination. The city's entrepreneurs, investors and tech workers understand that innovation isn't a sprint but a marathon, requiring sustained effort and resilience – qualities that would have made Meir Dizengoff proud. The same determined spirit that drove those seven pioneering marathon runners in 1934 and inspired Dizengoff to build a city from sand dunes now propels a new generation of Tel Aviv based innovators.

Thanks for listening and you’ll hear from me again when the next episode comes out next week. Until then - I am Tel Aviv tour guide Tomer Chelouche, signing off and hoping to see you soon in Tel Aviv.