On the Bookshelf

What’s on your Israel education bookshelf? Recommended books, DVDs, CDs, exhibits, curricula etc.

SUMMER READING LIST - Going on a long plane ride to Israel?? Or maybe you have a week at the beach planned?? Or perhaps just some lazy days lounging in the back yard.? For all of these, we have suggestions for a great read to keep you entertained and engaged.

THE ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 by Gershom Gorenberg.

This account of the ten year period after the Six Day War received rave reviews for its clarity and insight into how Israel ended up in the situation of occupying the West Bank and Gaza. A well-respected journalist, Gorenberg, an American-Israeli who frequently writes for The New Republic and is an associate editor of the Jerusalem Report, has produced a 400+ page book that is remarkably lucid and even-handed. It has been called "a melancholy story of inadvertent colonialism. It's a groundbreaking revision that deserves to reframe the entire debate" according to the New York Times Book Review. The Times has high praise for this complex saga of how Israel found itself holding onto land that Prime Minister Levi Eshkol knew represented danger, even in the early heady days following the Six Day War. Summing up, the review says, "The book soars."

Gorenberg details a series of efforts, sometimes encouraged by the government, other times not, that resulted in the 2005 chapter of this story and how the Sharon-led government came to the conclusion that it need to withdraw from Gaza. "..this is a timely, vital, and even riveting analysis of how the current territorial and ethnic Gordian knot developed," says Jay Freeman, in his review for Booklist. Gorenberg's newest book is an essential guide to understanding Israel's new reality of how to deal with creating safe borders while ceding much of the West Bank to the nascent Palestinian state.

THE NIMROD FLIPOUT by Etgar Keret translated by Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston.

This newest collection of 30 stories has been called "a comic Twilight Zone, with each episode lasting just a few minutes" by Thomas Beller of the New York Times Book Review. Keret, a young and well-known short story writer with an edge, represents life in Israel through the life of characters (mostly men) that are bedeviled by the high dramas of routine life and relationships. Beller points out that "the imagery and atmosphere of terrorism is pervasive in Keret's work, but--except for a story like 'Surprise Egg,'--it remains beneath the narrative surface." The characters are like real Israelis, they live with the fact of terrorism but it doesn't invade their every waking moment; it lurks somewhere slightly out of consciousness. Another reviewer advises that if you love the "Shouts and Murmurs" section in the New Yorker, you will love this new collection. Etgar does shtick really well and although some of the pieces seem sophomoric, others will make you laugh out loud.

One should expect to read about the things that young slacker men obsess about (sex, women, body-parts, sex) which might make some readers think this is nothing but a collection of vulgar stand-up comedy. On the other hand, it could be an offbeat Israeli sitcom, but it would be broadcast late-night, best watched with a beer.

BETHLEHEM ROAD MURDER: A MICHAEL OHAYON MYSTERY by Batya Gur, translated by Vivian Eden.

Batya Gur lives in Jerusalem, where she is a literary critic for Ha'aretz. She earned her M.A. in Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and taught literature for nearly twenty years. She is the author of four other Michael Ohayon mysteries: Murder Duet, The Saturday Morning Murder, Literary Murder, and Murder on a Kibbutz. Bethlehem Road Murder is her fifth novel in a series of popular, intellectually challenging mysteries set in a politically charged neighborhood south of West Jerusalem.

Gur is known for her psychologically astute mysteries, and for the brooding and attractive Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon they feature. This fifth novel will not disappoint---there is a complex and fascinating murder investigation set in Baka, a Jerusalem neighborhood that encapsulates the entire Israeli experience in miniature. Chief Superintendent Ohayon's
criminal investigation is conducted against the backdrop of tensions between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, hostility between Jews and Arabs, the affair of the kidnapped Yemenite children, and the al Aqsa Intifada. During the course of the investigation Ohayon uncovers what is concealed beneath the surface reality, and in so doing, powerfully reveals the subtext of Israeli society today.

Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times Book Review writes: "As always, Gur takes infinite care with the exacting studies of the characters who give her stories their extraordinary vitality. Showing true feeling for the crowded humanity of Baka -- an immigrant brew of Arabs, Moroccans, Russians, Romanians and European Jews -- she pays as much sensitive attention to a little girl who mutely worshiped the glamorous victim as she does to that enigmatic woman herself."

We also recommend being on the lookout for articles of particular interest to educators in the monthly issues of the award winning Hadassah Magazine and the bi-weekly magazine, the Jerusalem Report.

Many of these resources are available at the Battat Resource Center and the Peninsula Resource Center.

In San Francisco contact Michael Lederman at mlederman@bjesf.org.

On the Peninsula, contact Shlomit Blum at sblum@bjesf.org.

If you have a recommendation, please email us: israeleducation@sfjcf.org