In this centenary year for Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew speaking city, an anthology of English stories captures many facets of the city that many know infinitely less well than they do Jerusalem.  The stories range in quality, and some of it’s a matter of taste, but for an English language window into the world of Tel Aviv that you’ve probably missed thus far, this charming book is a great place to get started.

We didn’t mean to, but we lied to our kids. Almost ten years ago, shortly after we made aliyah, we were sitting with our three young children having dinner. One of the boys, still getting used to the idea that his life was going to be very different in Israel, looked up from his food, and asked out of nowhere, “Is Israel still going to have an army when I’m eighteen?” He was scared. But we knew that he had no reason to be. “Yes, there’ll be an army,” we told him. “But there’s going to be peace by then. By the time you’re eighteen, everything’s going to be different. You’ll see.” I still remember how certain we were, and how relieved he looked. A couple of ...

By pure coincidence, I happened to be in my old Los Angeles neighborhood on Election Day, and like many others, I found the extraordinary power of that day difficult to articulate. At the polling places in which I'd often voted, but had never waited in line, there were lines around the block. Friends who had voted regularly with no more than a mild sense of civic duty now spoke of participating in a moment that - whether they themselves had voted for Obama or McCain - they'd long remember and would tell their grandchildren about. For me, the tears that flowed in Chicago's Grant Park that night were beyond moving. One need neither forgive nor forget Jesse Jackson's abhorrent comments about Jews and Israel to ...