Poor Tel Aviv neighborhood mourns soccer defeat
Impoverished south Tel Aviv residents felt like there had been a death in the family the day after the Bnei Yehuda soccer team suffered a defeat that relegated it to Israel’s second-tier National League.
On May 9, the night before a decisive soccer match, Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood was consumed with paralyzing tension. It was a Friday night, so prayers for victory were offered at the local synagogue for Bnei Yehudua Tel Aviv F.C., so the team could remain in the Premier League. It's almost certain that if life had been any different in this part of southern Tel Aviv, the local soccer team would not have become the center of life for so many thousands of residents, most of them Yemeni Jews.
Hatikva has always been the poorest, most derelict neighborhood of the bustling metropolis. Just a few minutes’ drive separates it from Tel Aviv’s thriving downtown area, but too often it seems, the rapid development of the rest of the city skips over this area, ignoring its very existence, as if it were a sad mirage.
