Jaffa יפו
The country's gate on three occasions: the cedars for both Temples came here, from here Yona fled the word sent to him, and here everyone who sailed to the Land of Israel came ashore.
Jaffa stands in the Tanach three times, and all three times as a gate. Hiram floats the cedars of Lebanon by sea "to Jaffa", whence they are taken up to Jerusalem for Solomon's Temple (Divrei ha-Yamim II 2:15); the same words are repeated at the second building (Ezra 3:7). Between them stands Yona: "and he went down to Jaffa, and found a ship going to Tarshish" (Yona 1:3). The only harbour in the Tanach fit for a large vessel—and therefore the only road away.
Under the Second Temple the town changes hands: a Hellenistic port taken by the Hasmoneans, later Roman Joppa. In the age of the sages it is small but not empty.
Modern times made Jaffa a gate in the literal sense. Every aliyah came ashore at its landing—the first, the second, the third: the shoal kept steamers off the beach and passengers were rowed in. In 5669 sixty-six families drew lots on the sands north of the town and laid out the quarter of Ahuzat Bayit—the future Tel Aviv. In 5677 Jamal Pasha expelled the Jewish population of Jaffa and Tel Aviv northward, and they returned only a year later.
Today Jaffa is the southern part of the city of Tel Aviv–Yafo, and the order of the two names is fixed in it for good.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Yona 1:3 — «and he went down to Jaffa, and found a ship going to Tarshish»
- Divrei ha-Yamim II 2:15; Ezra 3:7 — the cedars to Jaffa—for both Temples
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.