The bookseller of Tel Aviv

As book publishing enters a new chapter, Yosef Halper talks about the changing industry.

By ABRA COHEN
childrens book 521 (photo credit: Tzur Kotzer/Israel Museum)
childrens book 521
(photo credit: Tzur Kotzer/Israel Museum)
Price, convenience and selection have driven book sales from actual bookstores to electronic e-readers over the last few years, but nothing beats the smell and feel of a book in your hand as you lose yourself in the story.
Yosef Halper, a New Jersey native who moved to Israel 30 years ago, knows the book industry well. He’s what you may call the bookseller of Tel Aviv: Hidden in an alley off Allenby Street, Halper runs one of the city’s last used bookstores, which has been in existence since 1991.
Like most print media, the book market is a declining one, but Halper maintains there is a contingency of readers who are willing to seek out paper versions.
“A lot of people still prefer reading from a book. It’s not dead yet,” Halper says. He explains there is something about the smell and the feel of a book in your hand that you just do not get with an electronic version.
Overflowing from floor the ceiling, Halper has his entire shop – nearly 60,000 titles – organized by subject.
Two-thirds of the books are in English; the rest are in Hebrew with a small collection of Yiddish and Ladino. Passing from room to room, you get a sense of nostalgia – the old-book smell, stillness in the cramped space and a random person engrossed in a book nestled next to a stack of classics.
An avid book lover himself, Halper says that he got into the business by spending hours in bookstores both in New York and in Israel after making aliya in 1983. “I didn’t realize it was something a person could do as his livelihood until I saw one for sale,” he says, “It never occurred to me that person could be me.”
While purchasing the bookstore never came to fruition, he began looking for space in Tel Aviv to open his own from scratch.
Halper decided on a small storefront down a small walkway off Allenby Street near Montefiore Street in what used to be the edge of the city. Halper describes the area as being a bit dodgy with prostitution and X-rated movie theatres. He opened his doors with a load of books he brought back with him from a trip to New Jersey.
“This is a place where you can get lost and sit with a book,” Halper says, explaining that some people spend hours reading or sifting through books in his store. “It’s not like you can spend your day in Superpharm or a grocery.”
Even without couches, coffee or a proper lounge area, not much seems to deter people from finding a comfortable corner and kicking back and jumping into a book.
Having tried various jobs after serving in the IDF, Halper says opening the bookstore was his last attempt. “This was the last stand,” he says. “If the business failed, I wouldn’t really have a leg to stand on in Israel.”
Over two decades later, Halper says there have been “big changes” in the book industry, but he is figuring out how to navigate and adjust to the changing market demand. Armed with paper and pen, Halper, who runs his business without the aid of a computer, says that the type of books people are buying has drastically changed: almanacs and encyclopedias are no longer hot items, but fiction, nonfiction, art books and general reference pieces are still in demand.
Drawing different crowds on different days of the week, Halper says that Fridays are often the most packed because Israelis are making the Rothschild/King George/Allenby circuit, while diplomats and foreign workers often frequent the store on Sundays. The store has a wide customer base (the majority are in their mid-40s and older) from the large expat community to students and haredim interested in secular topics like chess, science and history.
The store has been able to serve as a “library” of sorts over the years. Halper credits the size of the country as one of the reasons. “It’s an interesting phenomenon about Israel. A book dealer in New Jersey would never expect to be called by Patricia Nixon or Hillary Clinton to buy Bill [Clinton]’s books – all of those go into a library.”
But in Israel it is a bit different. Over the years Halper has acquired various collections, including a library from a Knesset member and over 1,000 books from the personal library of Ephraim Katzir, president during the Yom Kippur War – many of which had underlining and notes in the margin from Katzir himself.
While the steady stream of patrons continues in waves throughout the day, Halper, who is armed with a good sense of humor, says days at the shop are never the same and often include an eclectic crowd. As he sits on a stool behind the counter while writing out a receipt for a customer, an elderly man walks up and hands him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “Call my wife and tell her I’m on my way home,” he requests of Halper. He nods his head in approval.
Bookstores, especially used ones, may soon be remnants of the past, but for now they are still part of a living history.
What legacy does Halper hope the shop will pass on? “I’d like to know that I came here and somehow improved the intellectual and cultural life of this country in some small way, and that the books bought and sold helped people get through their life happy.”