“Tel Aviv Stories” is the name of a book published last February. The book tells the stories of the unnamed, unrecognized and often unseen inhabitants of Tel Aviv, Israel’s city that never stops.
The book was written by Ashley Rindsberg, a native of South Africa who later made aliyah to Israel.
Rindsberg told Arutz Sheva that his connection to Israel “was just always there.”
“I came here after sailing on the Mediterranean on a yacht, as a deck hand, and when it ended I decided to spend a few weeks in Israel,” he recalled. “What happened was that I came and never left. That was seven years ago, and that’s been my life ever since.”
Israel, said Rindsberg, “is made for me. It’s made for the things that I love, it’s made for the things that I don’t like. I feel like it’s a part of me or that I’m a part of it, more accurately. I feel like I’m in a place where history is still happening.”
Explaining his connection to Tel Aviv, a city which may be considered “less observant” or “less Jewish” than Jerusalem, Rindsberg said, “I think that Jewish spirituality is contained within a Jewish person, and I think you can still feel that here. You can still feel the connection. Whether it’s seeing religious people on the street here, or being able to walk with a kippah down the street because it is still Israel.”
Rindsberg’s book, “Tel Aviv Stories”, evolved from his personal experience walking on the streets of Tel Aviv and seeing expressions of Jewish culture.
“There’s something to me about Tel Aviv that’s very representative of the Diaspora and the Diasporic experience,” he said. “In the first six short stories of the book I really feel a sense of exile in Tel Aviv, but it’s a half exile – one foot in the Diaspora and one foot in Eretz Yisrael. In Tel Aviv I really felt that and I used those stories to express that feeling.”
The second half of the book is a novella called “Rivka and Rebecca” which Rindsberg said represents “an Israel that I would like to see that’s more total, more intact, more spiritually whole.”
The novella tells the story of a family with twin daughters who lives a “very Jewish life” and is forced to deal with a tragedy.
Rindsberg said that writing the book has taught him that many of his intuitions about Tel Aviv and its citizens are true.
“When your intuition agrees with the environment around you I think it means that there is a natural fit with the place that you’re in, and I think that’s very important,” he said.