Between Jaf­fa and Tel Aviv, 1870 – 1930 is the mem­oir of Yosef Eliyahu Che­louche, a promi­nent Sephardic Jew­ish fig­ure and one of the founders of Tel Aviv. After being repub­lished in 2005, the book received sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion in the Hebrew press and is now avail­able in Eng­lish. With an exten­sive edi­to­r­i­al intro­duc­tion by Michelle U. Cam­pos and Or Alek­sandrow­icz, the mem­oir pro­vides an invalu­able first-per­son account of the social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal fab­ric of Pales­tine pri­or to the British Man­date, and sit­u­ates Chelouche’s nar­ra­tive with­in broad­er his­to­ri­o­graph­i­cal debates about Zion­ism, iden­ti­ty, and coexistence.

Che­louche was born to par­ents whose fam­i­lies escaped from North Africa to Jaf­fa in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. He notes that he was named after two uncles who per­ished at sea, under­scor­ing the dan­gers of migra­tion dur­ing this peri­od. Edu­cat­ed in Beirut under Ottoman rule, Che­louche became flu­ent in Hebrew, Ara­bic, and French, reflect­ing the mul­ti­lin­gual and cos­mopoli­tan envi­ron­ment of the region. 

Chelouche’s nar­ra­tive is deeply root­ed in the his­tor­i­cal every­day real­i­ties of Jaf­fa as a port city where Jews, Mus­lims, and Chris­tians not only coex­ist­ed but relied on one anoth­er eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly. Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Che­louche emerges as a ​“jack of all trades,” learn­ing mon­ey-chang­ing and sil­ver­smithing in his father’s busi­ness­es before expand­ing into hard­ware, suit­case man­u­fac­tur­ing, floor tile pro­duc­tion, and even­tu­al­ly archi­tec­ture. His tal­ents were instru­men­tal in the con­struc­tion of new Jew­ish neigh­bor­hoods and in the found­ing of Tel Aviv. He can­did­ly recounts the immense chal­lenges faced by the city’s founders, includ­ing land acqui­si­tion, ris­ing con­struc­tion costs, and polit­i­cal uncertainty.

The mem­oir does not shy away from dark­er episodes. Che­louche describes kid­nap­pings, wrong­ful impris­on­ments, exile, forced labor, and the fear of con­scrip­tion dur­ing World War I amid the shift­ing pow­er strug­gles between the Ottoman, British, and Ger­man forces. Despite his social stand­ing and ties to local offi­cials, he expe­ri­enced finan­cial ruin, food scarci­ty, and repeat­ed dis­place­ment. Yet even in recount­ing riots that result­ed in Jew­ish deaths — events he con­demned through news­pa­per op-eds — Che­louche main­tained faith in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of peace­ful coex­is­tence between Arabs and Jews.

Through­out the mem­oir, Che­louche con­sis­tent­ly refers to the ​“Land of Israel” as an estab­lished real­i­ty, even though the state would not be found­ed until years after his death. His Zion­ism is notable for its non-Euro­pean ori­gin, and it was ground­ed both in reli­gion and dai­ly life rather than in social­ist ide­ol­o­gy. Che­louche was out­spo­ken in crit­i­ciz­ing the pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of Ashke­nazi Jews over Sephardic and Yemenite com­mu­ni­ties, posi­tion­ing him­self as an advo­cate for equal­i­ty with­in the Jew­ish population.

One of the memoir’s great­est strengths is its metic­u­lous detail. Che­louche records names, con­ver­sa­tions, sums of mon­ey exchanged, and the spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als present in key moments. This makes the book an indis­pens­able resource not only for his­to­ri­ans, but also for geneal­o­gists and researchers trac­ing fam­i­ly his­to­ries in the region.

Rich­ly anno­tat­ed with foot­notes, maps, pho­tographs, and cen­sus data, Between Jaf­fa and Tel Aviv is both a com­pelling per­son­al mem­oir and a sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal source. The book is essen­tial read­ing for any­one seek­ing a deep­er, more nuanced under­stand­ing of late Ottoman Pales­tine and the foun­da­tions of mod­ern Israel.