*A Farewell to a House | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | June 26, 2026*
On Sunday this week, we finished packing, and on Monday morning the movers arrived. It took them two hours to load everything, including the things we had never planned to pack. They stuffed clothes in with bookshelves, kitchen utensils with shoes, mixed together things that had no business being together, and drove away. Five years of belongings were squeezed into the back of their small truck.
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Well, at least it was a small truck, I told myself. For two weeks, I had been sorting among our things wondering how we had once again managed to accumulate so much. And for a moment, our lives drove away from us down the road in twenty-two boxes, ten large bags, shelves and beds and books. Everything we owned in household possessions became a small capsule speeding down the highway. The apartment stood empty, just as it had on the day we arrived, and I had one minute to stand there with it.
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I remembered that when I first came to see it, I suddenly realized it was right next to the supermarket where my great-grandmother, Grandma Rosa, used to buy me chocolate. Not just any chocolate. She would buy me an expensive-looking box of chocolate clowns, wrapped in shiny colorful papers and arranged in a circle. It was a kind of bonbonniere, and because I was very young at the time, I still remember it as something grand and luxurious. Anyway, the moment I saw that supermarket, I went inside and looked for them on the shelf. It turns out the clowns are still sold there, for 32 shekels, even though the chain itself has changed several times over the decades. I bought a box and went upstairs to see the apartment.
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The sweet tenant had no idea what had landed on him when I showed up in the middle of the afternoon carrying a box of colorful chocolate clowns. A thousand people had probably viewed the apartment before me. That's how it is with apartments in Tel Aviv. The market is wild and indifferent. Nobody shows up carrying chocolates. And of course I didn't know whether he was nice, whether he liked chocolate, or whether we would even like the apartment. But none of that mattered. I did it for my grandmother. It was a small ritual of remembrance. A way of telling her I still remembered. I may have handed him the funny box of chocolates, but really it was for her and for me.
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Only when I stepped onto the apartment's balcony did I realize I could see the elementary school where I studied in first grade. I hadn't seen it since, and it felt like another sign. And if that wasn't enough, from the kitchen window you could see the street where Grandma Rosa had lived, and a breeze from the sea drifted through it. It was that warm Tel Aviv breeze that sways lightbulbs and blows out the flame beneath the stove. The breeze I grew up with throughout my childhood. And when all these things came together - the chocolate clowns, the elementary school, the sea breeze - I knew this apartment would be our apartment.
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And it truly was good to us. I've lived in more than thirty homes and apartments, and I feel that by now I know enough to say that different homes arrive in your life for different reasons. Some homes push you out very quickly, while others offer stability. Some homes are there to teach you a lesson, while others allow you to rest. This apartment belonged to the kind of homes that wanted to care for me and give me beautiful things.
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Over five years, I published four books there. First came *Copping Mechanisms*, which summed up the years of lockdowns and our return to Israel. Then came *Feminism as I Taught It to My Daughters*, which filled our living room with thousands of copies when it became a bestseller, turning the entire apartment into one giant packing and shipping center. Then came *The Things We Carry*, my translation of poems by Dorianne Laux, a dream many years in the making. And finally came *The Wandering Jewess*, my most recent collection of poems.
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When I list them today, it hardly seems possible, because during those same five years we also lived for almost a year in the United States, October 7 happened, the war broke out, and I traveled among Jewish communities across the United States and Europe. It feels as though decades of living were compressed into five years in a single apartment. And this week, when we stood facing each other - the apartment bare and empty, and me exhausted from packing and a little disoriented - I thanked this lovely apartment.
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Because it brought me back to the neighborhood where my childhood began, and because it became a womb for so many of my creations and projects. True, its floor tiles were forever coming loose. Its shutters were still painted the yellow of the 1970s. The sound of trucks drifted in every morning. At some point, Tel Aviv became part of the war's front line, and dozens of missiles were fired toward it, some striking buildings nearby. But through all of that, this apartment never stopped being a womb for me.
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It is a building with many apartments and many families, and when it was built more than fifty years ago, it was considered a Tel Aviv tower. Far from the luxurious towers of today, of course, but one tradition endured: there have always been guards sitting in the lobby, and they became part of the landscape of our lives. Amir and Marcel watered our plants when we were abroad, brought in packages, mailed books, spoke with delivery drivers, read every book I published, knew the names of all our guests, and even checked in on the girls when they were home alone. This building also brought Varda and Yitzhak into our lives, the perfect religious neighbors who, every Saturday, would gently knock on our door and bring us cholent, salads, and desserts.
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Tel Aviv has these faces too. Neighborhoods that are communities, and buildings that are families. Not long ago, I wrote a column about the neighbors in our shelter. Some of you may remember it. Not long ago, I also tried to explain this to a friend who is considering moving to the city and worries about its alienation. Alienation? What are you talking about? I told her. But only this week, when I saw our apartment empty for the last time, did I finally find words for everything I had been trying, without much success, to explain to her back then.
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On Monday this week, we stood in the doorway. I don't like goodbyes, yet I rose to the occasion. In my heart, I wished that the apartment's next tenants would love it at least as much as we did. I stole one last glance at the light falling softly across the wall. We closed the door and moved on.
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Wishing all of us a peaceful Shabbath, and many good gifts,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*
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