Neve Tzedek

This guide to Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv opens with a brokenhearted young writer named Shmuel Czaczkes, who rented an attic here in 1909 after a jeweler refused to let him marry his daughter, and how the rejection turned into a pen name and a career. It sets that story against the neighborhood itself, the first Jewish quarter built outside the crowded walls of old Jaffa by families wanting more room, and follows what happened to these close, leaning lanes as the city grew north and left them behind. By the 1960s the plaster was peeling and bulldozers were being scheduled. Look at how tightly the houses still stand shoulder to shoulder along the lane.