On November 24. 1973, one month after the end of the Yom Kippur War, in a discussion organized by four major European newspapers, Libya’s Colonel Kadhafi generously suggested to Jews from Arab countries that they could help solve the Middle Eastern conflict if they would “go back home”; that is, return to their countries of origin. One of the participants in that discussion (who declined the Colonel’s offer) is the author of this book. He hits hard at a variety of myths that have obscured the relations of Jews and Arabs, of which Kadhafi’s suggestion is one expression.
Albert Memmi is an Arab Jew and a left‐wing Zionist, a supporter of Arab nationalism and of democratic socialism. His restatement of the Zionist case represents no reconciliation of conflicting commitments but rather the author’s belief in their fundamental consistency. Here Memmi focuses the insights of his earlier “The Colonizer and the Colonized,” “Portrait of a Jew,” and “Dominated Man” in a fresh interpretation of the dispute between two oppressed peoples.
In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language, by Joel M. Hoffman.
From the book jacket…
In the Beginning follows and decodes the adventure that is the history of Hebrew, illuminating how the written record has survived, explaining the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient translations, and trying to determine how the ancient language actually sounded. Hoffman places 3,000 years of developments into a historical context, and shows their continuing impact on the modern world and on writing today.
This sweeping history traces Hebrew’s development as one of the first languages to make use of vowels and also covers the dramatic story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern, spoken language.
Easy to read and packed with scholarly insights, In the Beginning is essential reading for anyone interested in Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible, or languages and writing in general.
The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky, by Susie Linfield.
From the publisher…
In this lively intellectual history of the political Left, cultural critic Susie Linfield investigates how eight prominent twentieth-century intellectuals struggled with the philosophy of Zionism, and then with Israel and its conflicts with the Arab world. Constructed as a series of interrelated portraits that combine the personal and the political, the book includes philosophers, historians, journalists, and activists such as Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, I. F. Stone, and Noam Chomsky. In their engagement with Zionism, these influential thinkers also wrestled with the twentieth century’s most crucial political dilemmas: socialism, nationalism, democracy, colonialism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism. In other words, in probing Zionism, they confronted the very nature of modernity and the often catastrophic histories of our time. By examining these leftist intellectuals, Linfield also seeks to understand how the contemporary Left has become focused on anti-Zionism and how Israel itself has moved rightward.
Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused and Conflicted, by Daniel Sokatch. Illustrated by Christopher Noxon.
From the book jacket…
“Can’t you just explain the Israel situation to me? In, like, ten minutes or less?” Daniel Sokatch is used to answering this question on an almost daily basis as the head of the New Israel Fund, an organization dedicated to equality and democracy for all Israelis, not just Jews.
Can We Talk About Israel? is the story of th Israeli-Palestinian conflict, grappling with a century-long struggle between two peoples who both perceive themselves as (and indeed are) victims. And it’s an attempt to explain why Israel (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) inspires such extreme feelings — why it seems like Israel is the answer to “what is wrong with the world” for half the people in it, and “what is right with the world” for the other half. As Sokatch asks, is there any other topic about which so many intelligent, educated, and sophisticated people express such strongly and passionately held convictions, and about which they actually know so little?
Complete with engaging illustrations by Christopher Noxon, Can We Talk About Israel? is an easy-to-read yet penetrating and original look at the history and basic contours of one of the most complicated conflicts in the world.
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, by Dara Horn.
From the book jacket…
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture — and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks — Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names wre changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster travelling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.
Horn also draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life — trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study — to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of “Never forget,” is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past — making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.
