Tel Aviv Stories by Ashley Rindsberg; Midnight Oil Publishing, 2010; ISBN 978-0-615-42243-5; 159 pages, $14.95.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – This is a surprising book. It begins with six sketches of down-and-outers, people living on the margins of Tel Aviv society, but finishes with a longer story, a near novella, following the complex interrelationships of financially pampered twin girls and a neighbor boy as they grow to adulthood.
I imagine that it was difficult to decide which stories to place in the slim volume first – the longer, richer, more complex story about the twins, or the shorter, at times depressing stories about poor people. Although Rindberg’s writing in all cases is superb, the hardship stories may make a reader feel sufficiently gloomy to put the book down, and never return to find the later work. On the other hand, if it had begun with the longer work, would the short sketches then have been anti-climactic, and a psychological let down?
Those who stick with the book will be struck by the rich story lode that the author mines from poverty by drawing tales from the people who all too many of us feign not to see. In “Spinoza Street,” we meet a man, whom we assume is delusional, who tells of putting his wife into an insane asylum. An escaped patient’s mental role reversal? In “White Hair Woman,” we dig into the tragedy of a once famous actress who now can be found muttering to herself at the library. “Mother, Father, Child,” is a slice of life in a café, when a mother tries to placate the screaming child who has contributed to her nightmare marriage. “On Allenby Street” is a delightful tale of two beggars who try to one-up each other by appearing more frum. “Night of Grief” introduces us to an unlikely assortment of characters including a one-legged beggar, some street musicians and a backward-walking rabbi.
The major work, “Rivkah and Rebecca,” tells of two twins who seemingly are so alike that their parents give them the same name—only one is the Hebrew version, the other English. A neighbor boy, whose family is impressed by the twins’ prosperous father, watches them grow up, and eventually marries one of them. He feels that the sisters’ special relationship was impervious to influence from outsiders, including his own, but learned that he was quite mistaken.
With an economy of words, Rindsberg provides us seven thought-provoking stories. Well worth the price, I’d say.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
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