The Colony

Throughout history this land has attracted it's fair share of religious nutters of various color, creed and religious tendency, all eager to do whatever it takes to guarentee their place in heaven and buy their one way ticket to eternal life - a noble cause indeed. Well yesterday I discovered that i didn't need to stray far from home in order to find evidence of the lengths these fanatics would go to in order to realise their holy cause.

There's a plaque at the southern end of the Tel-Aviv promenade which marks the spot where a group of American Christians from the "Church of the Messiah" landed in September 1866, boats laden with the wood and plaster from which they would build their new homes in the Holy Land. Having come across this plaque some time ago, I had tried and failed to locate the "American Colony" in Jaffa and started to doubt whether it was still in existence. Yesterday I gave it another shot, this time approaching from the direction of Florentin rather than the Jaffa side, and in doing so, stumbled upon another little historical treasure of Tel Aviv-Yafo.

George Adams was the spiritual leader of this rabble of bible-bashing yankees, who made it their mission to prepare the Holy Land for the return of the Jews and the second coming of Jesus - well they would have been well pleased with my arrival three years ago. Unfortunately for them their mission failed within a year, George being exposed as some sort of fraud apparently, and their homes were bought out by another wave of Messianic nut-jobs called the Templars, this time from Germany - I don't know which is worse! Their cause was somewhat less ambitious: just to prepare the land for the return of Jesus, but not to encourage the return of the Jews - that's probably why their mission was somewhat longer lasting. Thus the "American Colony" became the "German Colony"; a familiar story throughout the land in fact.

One of the Templars purchases was "Beit Emmanuel" an impressive looking building which became Templar headquarters. Throughout its history Beit Emmanual functioned in many capacities (mostly Christianity related of course) including as a hotel, hospital, girls' school, British army HQ, police HQ and now as a guest house. Interestingly, one of its most famous owners (1878) was a Russian named Baron Plato Von Ustinov, who is in fact that grandfather of the late hollywood actor Peter Ustinov (of Hercule Poirot fame). It was Ustinov's rennovations which gave the building it's current palacial design and in its heyday, this building was the focal point of the whole city of Jaffa, with exotic gardens visited specially from far and wide. Today, the colony has inspired the current development of "The Village", a complex of restaurants and bars and no doubt the next hot nightspot in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Well then, we can soon say that the Christian colony will finally have served it's true purpose; for the Jews to get pissed and have fun, right? Good tactic, as maybe it'll encourage more of us to come here.

Like many, I can't really relate to the fanciful ideas of these religious fanatics, but they certainly added and still add a little extra spice to this multicultural, multiethnic mix we call Israel, Palestine or the Holy Land. And let's face it: without such loonies, who would we have to take the piss out of? Go check it out!