Between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, 1870-1930

The literary memoir of a founder of Tel Aviv, now available for the first time in an annotated English translation.

Born in Jaffa in 1870, Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche grew up within a notable Sephardi family in the local Jewish community. He went on to become a prominent entrepreneur; a founder of Tel Aviv; and a fierce critic of the Ashkenazi Zionist leadership, Arab nationalism, and British colonial sectarianism; before emerging, in the last decade of his life, as an anguished public figure struggling to repair Arab-Jewish relations.

His memoir paints an intimate portrait of life in Palestine at the turn of the twentieth century, told from the perspective of a Middle Eastern Jew deeply embedded in local society. By centering on the world and experiences of a native Jew who was an eyewitness to and participant in the unfolding conflict in Palestine, this book shows how the course of Zionist politics and Jewish-Arab relations in pre-state Palestine might have taken alternative pathways. A comprehensive introduction sets the scene in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jaffa and thoughtful annotations contextualize Chelouche’s story within the modern history of Palestine and Israel. Between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, 1870–1930 tells the fascinating story of a civic leader—and offers a complex view of the various cultural, social, and political forces that forged multilayered Jewish identities in the Middle East. The book includes a family tree and is illustrated with photographs of the family and scenes of Jaffa and early Tel Aviv.

Author Biography

Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche (1870–1934) was a prominent builder, entrepreneur, public figure, and founder of Tel Aviv. Michelle U. Campos is associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University. A historian of late Ottoman Palestine, she is the author of Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Or Aleksandrowicz is assistant professor in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He is an architectural and urban historian and serves as the chief editor of the Architectures book series at Babel Publishers. Aleksandrowicz is also a descendant of Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche.