ABSTRACT
In 1965, Conard Hilton opened the 17-story-high Tel-Aviv Hilton beside the Mediterranean shore. Three years later, the General Organization of Workers (Histadrut) pension fund inaugurated the Mivtachim Convalescent Home in Zichron Ya’akov that featured a horizontal undulating building on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. Both were designed by Ya’akov Rechter, but each accommodated leisure under the opposite political economies of the Cold War. The Hilton epitomized the capitalist “First World” that turned leisure into a commodity by subjecting personal rejuvenation to the revenues of the tourist industry. Mivtachim was a typical socialist institution of the “Second World” that held the state responsible for the well-being of its citizens-workers by regulating and supervising their leisure. The opening of the first Hilton shortly before the last Histadrut’s convalescent home provides an architectural prism for analyzing the transition from socialism to capitalism in Israel during a period of political instability.
