Between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, 1870–1930

A Memoir

Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche, Michelle U. Campos, Or Aleksandrowicz

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781684582556
• Print ISBN:
  9781684582563
  9781684583010
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration and Citation
• Editors’ Introduction
• Preface
• I
• II
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Family Tree of Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche
• Bibliography
• Index