A new chapter for Tmol Shilshom, the iconic bookstore turns 20

Tmol Shilshom is more than a quirky, iconic restaurant in a century-and-a-half-old stone building.

By GIL STERN STERN ZOHAR
Café Tmol-Shilshom owners David Ehrlich and Dan Goldberg. ‘One of my ideas is to be a place beyond time. It’s not about fashion,’ says Ehrlich (photo credit: GIL ZOHAR)
Café Tmol-Shilshom owners David Ehrlich and Dan Goldberg. ‘One of my ideas is to be a place beyond time. It’s not about fashion,’ says Ehrlich
(photo credit: GIL ZOHAR)
Twenty years ago, journalist David Ehrlich had the idea of setting up a funky bookstore in a historic courtyard in downtown Jerusalem’s Nahalat Shiva neighborhood.
“I thought perhaps a little corner with coffee. Next thing I know, I had a restaurant with some books,” quips the 55-year-old founder of Tmol Shilshom at a Roaring ’20s-style retro party last month celebrating the café’s two decades of delicious dairy food.
Tmol Shilshom – Hebrew for “only yesterday” or “those were the days” – is more than a quirky, iconic restaurant in a century-and-a-half-old stone building. It’s a Jerusalem literary institution where writers hold book launches, poets read their works, singles meet for blind dates, and lovers rendezvous.
Ehrlich – a novelist and playwright who has also authored three volumes of short stories but who is ever modest about literary pretensions – gives his Haaretz colleague Avi Katzman credit for the café’s name, which refers to both the title of Nobel Prize laureate S.Y. Agnon’s classic 1943 novel and the verse in Genesis 31:2.
Agnon set some of the action for the novel Tmol Shilshom in decrepit Nahalat Shiva, notes Ehrlich.
Though today it is undergoing gentrification, the neighborhood still has homeless people sleeping outside its historic synagogues. Agnon, who died in his beloved but impoverished Jerusalem in 1970, would have appreciated the irony, Ehrlich believes.
Born in Ramat Gan, the writer-restaurateur says that many native-born Jerusalemites don’t appreciate the capital’s unique character.
He recalls that his bookstore-café opened in 1994 with a reading by Jerusalem’s treasured poet Yehuda Amichai, who became a regular until his death in 2000. Other well-known Israeli authors and poets have followed – including Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Batya Gur and David Grossman.
Foreign literary stars have included South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer and the US’s Jonathan Safran- Foer. The café has also hosted English-language writers’ workshops, including a series with Haaretz journalist Ilene Prusher.
No less important, says Ehrlich, is that his clientele includes aspiring writers who nurse a drink for hours while their muse speaks to them.
“Of course people can sit and read,” he continues, noting there are some 4,000 used books, mostly in Hebrew and English, which customers are free to browse and purchase. That ambience has made Tmol Shilshom a popular spot for blind dates and marriage proposals among couples ranging from Orthodox to same-sex. Showing off the Hebrewlanguage volume The Book of Loves of Tmol Shilshom, Ehrlich smiles at the many couples who began their relationship at his café.
Nevertheless, the restaurant business is tough, and the book biz is flat, he continues. Nor is the location ideal; the entrance to 5 Yoel Moshe Salomon Street is up a flight of steps from an unmarked piazza. However charming, it’s out of the way for pedestrian traffic.
“The First Station [shopping area] has taken away customers. There’s no more single place to go anymore,” he contends.
But he is optimistic about his establishment’s future.
“One of my ideas is to be a place beyond time. It’s not about fashion. Therefore, I think Tmol Shilshom will never go out of fashion,” he grins. “I hope to be here in another 20 years, and in 40 years, too.”
The English translation of Ehrlich’s latest work, Who Will Die Last: Stories of Life in Israel, was published in 2013 by the Syracuse University Press. But as a father of twin six-year-old boys who operates a business that’s open from 8:30 a.m. till 1 a.m. (except Shabbat), where does he find the time to write? Ehrlich deflects the question by crediting his long-term business partner and café co-owner Dan Goldberg.
“Today I scribbled three ideas that I’m happy with. I don’t know if I will sit tonight and scramble that omelet, but having ideas gives me great energy,” says Ehrlich. “I recently completed the first draft of a new book set in a café. Most of the events in the book are totally fictitious. I have many stories from real life, but I don’t use them when I sit and write.”