A National Jewish Book Award–winning biography: A look at the early years of Israel’s statehood, experienced through the life of a pioneering nurse. During her extraordinary career, nurse Raquela Prywes was a witness to history. She delivered babies in a Holocaust refugee camp and on the Israeli frontier. She crossed minefields to aid injured soldiers in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and organized hospitals to save the lives of those fighting the 1967 Six-Day War. Along the way, her own life was a series of triumphs and tragedies mirroring those of the newly formed Jewish state. Raquela is a moving tribute to a remarkable woman, and an unforgettable chronicle of the birth of Israel through the eyes of those who lived it.
New York Times bestseller Now with a new Epilogue, containing letters of response from Palestinian readers. "A profound and original book, the work of a gifted thinker."--Daphne Merkin, The Wall Street Journal Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes. I call you "neighbor" because I don’t know your name, or anything personal about you. Given our circumstances, "neighbor" might be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dream, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors? Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of "the enemy." In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland, which he is committed to see succeed as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East. This is the first attempt by an Israeli author to directly address his Palestinian neighbors and describe how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes. Halevi untangles the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. In lyrical, evocative language, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel, using history and personal experience as his guide. Halevi’s letters speak not only to his Palestinian neighbor, but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region.
Letters to Talia describes the rich cultural worlds of a yeshiva student and a kibbutz girl who succeed in creating a dialogue of understanding and compassion. Their distant outlooks meet in a meaningful and touching dialogue that reveals how much common ground they share despite their divergent worldviews. Letters to Talia is an exceptional, engaging book that brings hope to those seeking a serious dialogue and real understanding between the religious and secular in Israeli society today.
Palestinian Amal Rifa'i and Israeli Odelia Ainbinder are two teenage girls who live in the same city, yet worlds apart. They met on a student exchange program to Switzerland. Weeks after they returned, the latest, violent Intifada broke out in the fall of 2000. But two years later, Middle East correspondent Sylke Tempel encouraged Amal and Odelia to develop their friendship by facilitating an exchange of their deepest feelings through letters. In their letters, Amal and Odelia discuss the Intifada, their families, traditions, suicide bombers, and military service. They write frankly of their anger, frustrations, and fear, but also of their hopes and dreams for a brighter future. Together, Amal and Odelia give us a renewed sense of hope for peace in the Middle East, in We Just Want To Live Here.
Many books have dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Israeli perspective. However, few reflect the Palestinian point of view. Letters from Palestine offers an American audience a rare opportunity to listen to actual Palestinian people as they describe what it is like to live in the occupied territories of the West Bank or Gaza, or to grow up as a Palestinian in the U.S. Their accounts are lively, poignant, searing, and tragic, yet often laced with touches of surreal humor. By showing Palestinians in all their humanity, Letters from Palestine enables American readers to see beyond the usual stereotypes. About the Authors Kenneth Ring, PhD, is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut. He has published five other books. Letters from Palestine is his first book on Palestinian issues, though he has written articles about contemporary events in Palestine. Ghassan Abdullah studied mathematics and computing in England and lived in Syria, Lebanon, Italy, and Jordan before moving to Palestine in 1994. He worked at Birzeit University for nearly a decade. Ghassan is currently active in several Palestinian civil society NGOs concerned with heritage, human rights, development, and the arts. Endorsements "The letters in this book will break your heart and they will make you laugh. I am excited to invite others to learn from them as I have. It is my hope that these Palestinian voices will inspire you, as they have inspired me, to believe that a peaceful and just future in Palestine is not only essential, but indeed possible." --Anna Baltzer, author of Witness in Palestine "[A] powerful testimony to collective heartbreak and pain, but also a story of continued Palestinian determination and the endurance of their quest for justice." --Kathy Christison, author of Palestine in Pieces "Letters from Palestine is searching and powerful, remarkable and daring. It's a serious attempt at understanding what the media has missed, deliberately or otherwise, for many years. It must be read and recounted for years to come." --Ramzy Baroud, author of My Father Was a Freedom Fighter
For more than eighty years the Jewish Daily Forward's legendary advice column, "A Bintel Brief" ("a bundle of letters") dispensed shrewd, practical, and fair-minded advice to its readers. Created in 1906 to help bewildered Eastern European immigrants learn about their new country, the column also gave them a forum for seeking advice and support in the face of problems ranging from wrenching spiritual dilemmas to petty family squabbles to the sometimes hilarious predicaments that result when Old World meets New. Isaac Metzker's beloved selection of these letters and responses has become for today's readers a remarkable oral record not only of the varied problems of Jewish immigrant life in America but also of the catastrophic events of the first half of our century. Foreword and Notes by Harry Golden
A controversial, award-winning story about the passionate but untenable affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from one of Israel’s most acclaimed novelists When Liat meets Hilmi on a blustery autumn afternoon in Greenwich Village, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer. Despite knowing that their love can be only temporary, that it can exist only away from their conflicted homeland, Liat lets herself be enraptured by Hilmi: by his lively imagination, by his beautiful hands and wise eyes, by his sweetness and devotion. Together they explore the city, sharing laughs and fantasies and pangs of homesickness. But the unfettered joy they awaken in each other cannot overcome the guilt Liat feels for hiding him from her family in Israel and her Jewish friends in New York. As her departure date looms and her love for Hilmi deepens, Liat must decide whether she is willing to risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man. Banned from classrooms by Israel’s Ministry of Education, Dorit Rabinyan’s remarkable novel contains multitudes. A bold portrayal of the strains—and delights—of a forbidden relationship, All the Rivers (published in Israel as Borderlife) is a love story and a war story, a New York story and a Middle East story, an unflinching foray into the forces that bind us and divide us. “The land is the same land,” Hilmi reminds Liat. “In the end all the rivers flow into the same sea.” Praise for All the Rivers “Rabinyan’s book is a sort of Romeo and Juliet, a forbidden love affair between a Jewish girl from Tel Aviv and a Palestinian boy from Hebron. . . . [A] beautiful novel.”—The Guardian “A fine, subtle, and disturbing study of the ways in which public events encroach upon the private lives of those who attempt to live and love in peace with each other, and, impossibly, with a riven and irreconcilable world.”—John Banville, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea “I’m with Dorit Rabinyan. Love, not hate, will save us. Hatred sows hatred, but love can break down barriers.”—Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature “Astonishing . . . [a] precise and elegant love story, drawn with the finest of lines.”—Amos Oz “Rabinyan’s writing reflects the honesty and modesty of a true artisan.”—Haaretz “Because the novel strikes the right balance between the personal and the political, and because of her ability to tell a suspenseful and satisfying story, we decided to award Dorit Rabinyan’s [All the Rivers] the 2015 Bernstein Prize.”—From the 2015 Bernstein Prize judges’ decision “[All the Rivers] ought to be read like J. M. Coetzee or Toni Morrison—from a distance in order to get close.”—Walla! “Beautiful and sensitive . . . a human tale of rapprochement and separation . . . a noteworthy human and literary achievement.”—Makor Rishon “A captivating (and heartbreaking) gem, written in a spectacular style, with a rich, flowing, colorful and addictive language.”—Motke “A great novel of love and peace.”—La Stampa “A novel that truly speaks to the heart.”—Corriere della Sera
What if there was another Moses, very different from the one we know? According to tradition, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. He is depicted there in a surprising way: with and against God; with and against his people; bringer of the Tablets of the Law, which he breaks; a stuttering prophet, guide to a Promised Land entry to which remains forbidden to him, and dead in an unknown tomb... Highly confusing for those who imagine a Moses carved out of a single block. By way a series of possible portraits - including one of a female Moses - Jean-Christophe Attias follows the metamorphoses of the Hebrew liberator through ages and cultures. Drawing on rabbinical sources as well as the Bible itself, he examines the words of the texts and especially their silences. He discovers here a fragile prophet, teacher of a Judaism of the spirit, of wandering, and of incompleteness. Receive and transmit. Listen, even when the message is confusing. Insistently question, especially when there is no answer. And always, remain free. This seems to be the Judaism of Moses. A Judaism that speaks to believers and others - to Jews, of course, but also far beyond them, inviting its hearers to have done with tribal pride, the violence of weapons, and the tyranny of a special place.
Yehuda Amichai is one of the twentieth century’s (and Israel’s) leading poets. In this remarkable book, Nili Scharf Gold offers a profound reinterpretation of Amichai’s early works and reconstructs his poetic biography. Her close reading of his oeuvre, untapped notebooks, and a cache of unpublished letters to a woman identified as Ruth Z. that Gold discovered convincingly demonstrates how the poet’s German past infused his work, despite his attempts to conceal it as he adopted an Israeli identity.
This is a comprehensive overview of discrimination in a state dominated by a patriarchal religious order, and brings fresh insights to the efficacy of the law in improving the status of women.
