Café Kassit
café in Tel Aviv, Israel
Café Kassit (Hebrew: כסית) was a café located in Tel Aviv from 1935 to 2014, initially on 59 Ben Yehuda Street. After a few years, it moved to 117 Dizengoff Street.
History
The cafe was established in 1935 by Yechezkel Weinstein (Known afterwards as Hezkl Ish Kasit, "Hezkl, Kassit man"). Among its notabble customers was the painter Isaac Frenkel Frenel, the architect Yaakov Rechter, the poets Natan Alterman, Avraham Shlonsky, Leah Goldberg, Alexander Penn; the actress Hanna Rovina; the musicians Arik Einstein and Uri Zohar and more. In the 1950s, Gabriel Moked recounted that there was a special section reserved in the cafe for the "Kassit parliament".
The cafe's peak in importance was during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s of the 20th century. In the 1970s and 80s, its influence waned with the emergence of competing cafes such as "California" as well as the aging of the founders' of Kassit. In 1970, with the passing of Nathan Alterman, the coffeehouse closed its doors for two hours during his funeral. In 1979, Hatzkel died, and his widow Leah, along with her children Moshe Ish-Kasit and Tzvia Litman, continued to run the establishment. After her children died, Leah's son-in-law, Zev Litman, joined in the management of the cafe.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Café Kassit” is café in Tel Aviv, Israel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Café, Kassit and café, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12408523. VIAF identifies the subject as 154148207. Authority coordinates are 32.081, 34.774. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2014, 1970 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Café Kassit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.