I grew up in Israel but left it as a young man to study abroad, where I have lived ever since. I took up graduate studies in modern Hebrew literature because I wanted to stay connected, intellectually and emotionally, to the place of my birth, while living far away from it. I ended up liking the greater angle that distance gave me and I tried to use the more remote perspective I gained in all of my work on Israel over the years.
I loved it because of how it immediately pulled me into the story of Israel’s creation through the eyes of a confused and vulnerable child, who is the author of the book, Amos Oz.
It’s a very personal and emotional story about a very personal and emotional history, which is not easy to pull off. All these great and remote historical events suddenly come to life in the book. It was very moving.
Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this bestselling and critically acclaimed work is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the…
I loved it because of the quirky way it talks about the Arab Israeli conflict. I wouldn’t have picked it up if it were not for the comics and the irreverent way they deal with an issue that is often too difficult to handle.
I loved the funky blend of Indiana Jones, gay Romeo and Juliet and the Monty Python version of politics it serves up.
A race for the Ark of the Covenant finds an exploration into the ethics and world of the international antiquities trade. When a great antiquities collector is forced to donate his entire collection to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nili Broshi sees her last chance to finish an archeological expedition begun decades earlier a dig that could possibly yield the most important religious artifact in the Middle East. Motivated by the desire to reinstate her father s legacy as a great archeologist after he was marginalized by his rival, Nili enlists a ragtag crew a religious nationalist and his band…
I liked the way the book explains the passion about Zionism, how it’s so personal for so many people, both for and against, and how these emotions are driven by hope, fear, pride, and longing.
I liked how the book breaks down different types of Zionism and rethinks its ties to colonialism. It explains Jewish identity in a personal and human way that left a strong impression on me.
Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state.
Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling…
I loved how the book looks at Zionism from a totally different angle, not just as history or ideology, but as a bold and thoughtful belief in human action. By going back to European ideas and exploring key Jewish and Hebrew thinkers from the 19th and 20th centuries, I gained a fresh way of understanding the roots of Zionism.
It also helped me see current Israeli politics in a new light. Instead of the usual political analysis, it made me think more deeply about the ideas and values that still shape things today.
Zionism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in response to a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and to the crisis of modern Jewish identity. This novel, national revolution aimed to unite a scattered community, defined mainly by shared texts and literary tradition, into a vibrant political entity destined for the Holy Land. However, Zionism was about much more than a national political ideology and practice. By tracing its origins in the context of a European history of ideas and by considering the writings of key Jewish and Hebrew writers and thinkers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the…
I loved it because it was new and exciting for me to read stories by Arab authors who write about Jerusalem and, indirectly, also about Israel.
It’s not easy to have unmediated access to what people think of Israel and Palestine, from both Arabs and Jews, and I liked how this book uses literary imagination to do so, to speak about the paradoxes of time and space of these places.
In East Jerusalem Noir―published simultaneously with West Jerusalem Noir―the Akashic Noir Series turns its gaze to one of the world's most fascinating locales, in this volume from the perspective of Palestinian writers; translated from Arabic
"East Jerusalem's thorny politics run through each of the thirteen stories comprising this sturdy entry in Akashic's long-running regional noir series, which is being published simultaneously with West Jerusalem Noir . . . Written with passion and empathy, the volume's strength lies in giving voice to the varied experiences of Palestinians who live, work, and write in one of the world's most complicated cities. It's…
The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on a very old story: so old that it became a myth. And since the distance between the Jewish present and the Jewish past was vast, the wish to make Palestine a home for a modern Jewish nation called for creating that nation anew. It was an immense claim that required an immense innovation.
Zionist ideology took it upon itself to do that, to recreate Jews as a modern nation by canceling the culture of the Jewish Diaspora and at the same time preserving parts of it in the spirit of New Hebraism. This book explains why and how this daring experiment came about through language, literature, architecture, art, music, and body culture that transformed modern Jewish culture.
