By Robert Rosenberg

If not for the life and death issues at stake, the celebrations of Jerusalem's 3,000 birthday would seem farcical.

The boosterism around the possession of the city has been practically fetishist since 1967, with undying claims to the eternity of Jerusalem as the Jewish capital more often than not meaning to the exclusion of others. Presumably, the very idea of Jerusalem justifying a mythification of its unique role for the three monotheistic faiths, is all about the communality of all people under one God.

There's a lot less hypocrisy in Tel Aviv, where people at least know that they are responsible for their lives, and while they'll take a risk on the highway, they don't routinely tell each other that everything's in God's hands, as goes the bracha in the shuk on all sides of the walls around the Old City, as well as inside it.

Yes, Jerusalem has meaning to the religious. But Tel Aviv is the spiritual center of the State of Israel, a country where the worst curse is being described as "not serious" but during an election campaign rabbis routinely give blessings to superstitious voters as electoral bribes.

Theodore Herzl wrote a great futuristic novel called Altneuland, in which the true Torah from Zion would be the spread of education and culture, not Jewish Supremacism, which in its local manifestation even has its own versions of skinheads, albeit with kippot. It's Theodore Herzl's profile on the Knesset wall, not "the Greater Land of Israel" as the Arabs used to say and most now know better, but some Jews seem to have forgotten.

And after living nearly 10 years in Jerusalem, and almost 15 in Tel Aviv, my bet is that Herzl would move to Tel Aviv, if the Lubavitcher does get up one year bringing all the dead with him.

A Joke From Jerusalem: One day, rumors sweep town the messiah's shown up. CNN is on the story, the world is a bustle. In Mea Shearim, the council quickly convenes. What's the problem? What if he's not our messiah? Worse, what if he is, and we thought he wasn't?

Three days and three nights the oldest rabbi in town fasted. The third night was Friday. Just before sunset, the old man called in his brightest youngest student and said, "here's what you do: Go to the press conference, and ask politely, 'Is this your first visit to Jerusalem?'"

For years, tourists on "If-it's-Tuesday-this-must-be-Massada" trips skipped Tel Aviv, or used it as either the first or last day in the country. A little stroll on Dizengoff Boulevard looking for a felafel (and buying it at the wrong joints down near the Agam birthday cake over old Zina Dizengoff's Circle, which once was a little roundabout with a simple silly fountain) and then back to the hotel to pack for a pre-dawn security check in at Lod. (In the late 70s, Nahum Goldman's Diaspora Museum became a stop on the itinerary, but with Washington's Holocaust Memorial packing 'em in nowadays, I suspect most American Jews -- at least the Ashkenazi among them -- go looking for their roots closer to home.)

Tacky, was the general complaint about Tel Aviv. Smelly, said many. Ugly, the blunt pointed out. All true.

Luckily, Tel Aviv is human, and while Jerusalem is certainly thousands of years old it's mostly been occupied during all those years, while Tel Aviv is only 90 years old, only now, with some prosperity in the pocket and peace taking shape, is the city able to look around and notice where it's at.

Tel Aviv is much closer to LA than it is to Jerusalem, sharing the same immutable sunset over a watery horizon to the far west. Perhaps one of our advantages is that while the Californians look across a vast ocean to Asia, for us, Europe & Africa both are within our Mediterranean ken (originally a Hebrew word meaning nest). And our dawn rises out of Asia, just over the new opening borders between Israel and the Arab world.

Jerusalem, it is true, is for Jews -- and Christians and Moslems -- but Tel Aviv is for Israelis. We are not the most serene people in the world -- our prime minister has had the job twice, served several critical years in America as ambassador to Washington and still doesn't know when to stand up or sit down at an official ceremony. But if Jerusalem is where look for the serenity of the spiritual, for a view of the spirit of the State of Israel, Tel Aviv is the place to go.

Unlike Jerusalem, you don't even have to search for a secret, it's right out in the open for all to see: Tel Aviv is still the only City with a capital C in Israel, a place that prefers capitalization to charity, and is where people strive to create a future instead of relive the past.

The heart of Tel Aviv is barely a mile and a half long, a half an hour's walk along the boardwalk beside the beach, or down Dizengoff all the way to Habimah and from there up Rothshcild past Shenkin to Allenby. This is the beating muscle of Israel grown up, no longer struggling with the definition of what it means to be Israeli, but concentrating instead on creating Israel.

Some would prefer to think of us as poor and vulnerable, others think that if the struggle for survival is over, there's nothing left to do.

Neither realize that for us, in this metaphorical Tel Aviv on the coastal plain, we are indeed resurrecting the ancient ideal of Solomon, in which Israel is a bridge to all continents, open to all people for trade and commerce and cultural influence and scientific exchange.

Those who celebrate 3,000 years of Jerualem at most are reveling in the illusion of anything human being eternal.

As for me, in Tel Aviv, I celebrate the creativity of high tech and a new popular culture, the spirit of free enterprise and freedom of experession, and most of all, the birth of the new nation the original Zionists dreamt of -- inventive and productive, scientific and artistic, aware of their very lives as an historical endeavor aimed at creating something new.

NOTE: This article appeared in slightly abridged form in the Dec 1995 issue of Moment Magazine. If you are interested in Tel Aviv, try Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv