Christmas in south Tel Aviv

Tens of thousands of Christian foreigners from the Philippines and Africa have developed a religious subculture in southern Tel Aviv, what founders called the first Hebrew city. The city's Mesila foreigner aid organization helps them celebrate by throwing an annual Christmas-Hannukah party to help bridge between the migrants' backgrounds and the Jewish culture their children learn in Israeli schools.

The founders of Neve Shaanan, a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, planned their streets in the shape of a seven-branched candelabra — a symbol of their Jewish faith. Ninety years later, the streets are full of Christmas decorations, reflecting a flowering of Christianity in Israel's economic and cultural capital.

Tens of thousands of Christian foreigners, most of them laborers from the Philippines and African asylum seekers, have poured into the neighborhood in recent years. They pray year-round in more than 30 churches hidden in grimy apartment buildings. But in late December, their Christian subculture emerges in full force in the southern streets of Tel Aviv."

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