Sy Fishbein
Tel Aviv

I go when I can, which is not often, to the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, to a café hung on a stony ledge, amid an amalgam of tourist catnip and the lineaments of ancient Jaffa port—already old when, it is written, Jonah sallied forth to his nightmare sojourn in the belly of a whale. North along the curving shore rises Tel Aviv, a brash upstart born upon the dunes little more than a hundred years ago, swiftly grown into Israel’s high-energy metropolis. The long view did not bring me here; Tel Aviv’s architectural charms, such as they are, need a closer look.

If I have timed my visit right, before the foam is off the first draught the sun has taken its quotidian dip into the sea. Twilight blends surf and beach and promenaders. Soon lights blink on in the cluster of shoreside hotels and office towers; headlights stream along the Ha-Yarkon. Against nightfall, I see in the electrified skyline a city throbbing with life, the resurgent pulse of a people who in this savage century beheld the abyss of eternal darkness.

Sy Fishbein is a former NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC writer-editor.