The following stories and articles ran in my Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv column in the old Jerusalem Post from August 1986 to February 1991. My mandate was to write a personal column that would put Tel Aviv on the map in the Jerusalem Post and The Jerusalem Post on the map in Tel Aviv. I was not allowed to use the first person (unless quoting someone.).

I occasionally add a piece, when current events seem to me at least to be reflected in what I wrote a decade ago. These are light and heavy pieces, politial and narrative -- but all try to evoke what it's like in this city: then, and to a large extent, now.

Also here, you'll find a link to a chronological set of columns that appeared between the Yom Kippur before the Intifada, when Israelis would have done well to do some penance for what we wrought to the Palestinians, and Israeli Independence Day 1988, by which time everyone knew the word Intifada. That collection is called An Arithmetic of the Soul in an Uncivil War: From Yom Kippur to Independence Day, through the Initifada

• Recipe for a Friday Night Party This is what you need for a Friday night party in one of the wealthy eastern suburbs of the city.
• Working girls on the road to Tel Baruch Midweek, two hours before a late summer dawn that rises nowadays around five, the sidewalk cocktail party is over in most of Tel Aviv.
• Streetside cocktails to beat the heat On hot August nights, when the air has no room to move in cramped Tel Aviv apartments, the only thing to do after the fifth cold shower of the day is to join the sidewalk cocktail party.
• Making seder for Pessah In Jerusalem, the old neighbours who had been in the city at least 20 years would say every year that the time to take out the summer clothes and put away the winter clothes never comes until Independence Day. In Tel Aviv things are easier because you put away your winter clothes and take out your summer clothes at the exact same time you deal with the whole business called making seder, which is not the same thing as the family experience tomorrow night which is making a seder. Two different things...
• History's Timetable There have been so many buses that became symbols: The coastal road bus, the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus, the Ashkelon bus. The Ismailia bus. The Hadera bus, the Afula bus, the Number Eighteens in Jerusalem
• Days of Secular Rites Families walk together to the polls; neighbours -- even those with whom you haven't spoken since the first day you moved in, even those who regard you as an interloper in the neighbourhood -- nod in recognition of the moral imperative of the religious duty to vote. Maybe in Bnei Brak or Mea Shearim, maybe in Shfar'am or Taibe, there is a sense of urgency and tension and violence. In Tel Aviv -- at least within the boundaries of the sea and the Haifa Road, the Yarkon and Mograbi -- there is an almost spiritual air of the commonweal; a secular serenity of sorts.
• When history is being made it can rush past and forget you or it can sweep you up, make you want to grab hold of its wings and rush ahead into the future.
• Nightowls at Work: The two junkies were gigglers, outsiders wishing they could take part.
• Watch, Look, See The sunset is about where we are on the planet
• A fashionable cafe for fashionable ladies Cafe society is Tel Aviv society
• Is Tel Aviv beautiful? A question that deserves an answer
• Here's to Mali, Tali and Gali Waitresses in search of their future.
• Imagine: Maybe one day the rabbis will stake out positions on environmental issues
• The Search for Shade Summer's heat teaches lessons about where to go in the city. Remember-stick to the shade.
• Fishermen and Rockers : This piece originally appeared in the old Jerusalem Post on August 26 1986. Nine years later, it still stands, I think (though I changed the headline), especially because of the last graf.
• Simha, Mazal, and Odetta Three shoppers for bargains and nostalgia
• Ideologies can become as debased as any coin inflated A post-zionist view from the city.
  

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