reviews - Jewish Book Council

REVIEWS
Israel Studies
JERUSALEM: CITY
OF LONGING
Simon Goldhill
Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2008. 356 pp. $27.95
ISBN: 978-0-674-02866-1
Jerusalem holds a special place in the hearts
of Christians and Muslims as well as Jews.
Simon Goldhill, a professor of Greek at Cambridge,
offers an interesting guide to the city
using buildings to recount a history that often
has many versions. Beginning with a walk
along the wall of the Old City, Goldhill takes
readers to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a
destination for Christians, noting that a Muslim
family holds the keys to the building. He
then visits the kotel and Haram al-
Sharif/Dome of the Rock, explaining the significance
of each site. He also visits other
shrines in the city and comments on the many,
often disputed, archaeological discoveries and
the contributions of the Romans, the British,
and the Americans to Jerusalem’s history.
Goldhill depicts a beloved city that has survived
and transcended violence and controversy
to become the home of a diverse population.
He explains how faith brought so many layers
of different civilizations to this place and provides
a guide for the thinking visitor. BMB
LONE SOLDIERS:
ISRAEL’S DEFENDERS
FROM AROUND
THE WORLD
HerbKeinon
Devora Publishing, 2009. 160 pp. $27.95
ISBN: 978-1-934440-60-5
Lone Soldiers: Israel’s Defenders From
Around the World explores the phenomenon
of non-Israelis who come to Israel for the
express purpose of enlisting in the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF). The book profiles 14
such soldiers as well as Tzvika Levy, the
retired IDF officer who looks after these
“lone soldiers.” Lone soldiers is the term used
to describe soldiers who have no family or
56 Jewish Book World Spring 5770/2010
friends in Israel to support them during their
IDF service. The lack of any kind of local
support system makes the military experience
that much more difficult.
The book is geared more to a younger
audience, which is unsurprising given that its
focus is on the lives of soldiers who are themselves
teenagers. The motivation of these soldiers
and the unique challenges faced by foreign
citizens joining what is essentially a
foreign army occupies most of the book. The
motivation ranged from a teenage desire for
adventure to repaying an unstated ancestral
The book is geared more to a younger
audience, which is unsurprising given
that its focus is on the lives of soldiers
who are themselves teenagers.
debt. Some of the volunteers were grandchildren
of Holocaust survivors and although no
one in their families suggested that these
teens enlist in the IDF, the teens felt compelled
to do something to balance their ancestors’
helplessness in the face of the Holocaust.
All four grandparents of one of the Lone Soldiers,
Ariel Lindenfeld, suffered through the
Holocaust. Two were in concentration camps
and two spent the war in hiding. He stated,
“The Holocaust is one of the biggest things
for me, thinking about what would have been
had the army, the state, been around then.
How impossible it would have been for all
that to happen. And now that we can defend
ourselves, I want to be a part of doing that.”
There are certain minor historical errors.
For example, the author described the height
of the second intifada as occurring in 2004.
The height was in 2002. But for any non-
Israeli teenager interested in learning what it
would be like to join the IDF, the book is
worthwhile. GE
David Cesarani
Da Capo Press, 2009. 320 pp. $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-306-81845-5
MAJOR FARRAN’S
HAT: THE UNTOLD
STORY OF THE
STRUGGLE TO
ESTABLISH THE
JEWISH STATE
Aplaque on Ussishkin Street in Jerusalem,
a short walk from where I live, marks
the spot where a sixteen-year-old boy named
Alexander Rubowitz was abducted by British
police and murdered on May 6, 1947. He
had been distributing news posters for the
underground group LEHI, also known as the
Stern Gang.
At that time the British colonial administration
was battling terrorist acts by LEHI as
well as the Irgun Zvai Leumi, two dissident
Jewish military groups separate from the Jewish
Agency’s official Hagana army. The War
Office appointed a war hero named Roy Farran
to head a counterterrorist group to smash
the Jewish guerilla units. He confessed to
murdering the Jewish boy, but his written
confession was judged inadmissible at his
court-martial and he was acquitted.
British historian David Cesarani, whose
Becoming Eichmann won a National Jewish
Book Award, recounts this scandal of coverup,
conspiracy, and diplomacy in the context
of the last years of the British Mandate in
Palestine. Major Farran’s Hat is a history of
those years that closely scrutinizes the personalities
of the leadership and the decisions they
made as Britain’s hold on its empire was
becoming increasingly tenuous and desperate.
It is also a gripping, suspenseful account
of a government’s intentional perversion of
justice. Treating the Rubowitz case as a
microcosm of the struggle for a Jewish state
sheds new light on these world-historical
events as well as on the case itself. Index,
notes, sources. BG
START-UP NATION:
THE STORY OF
ISRAEL’S ECONOMIC
MIRACLE
Dan Senor and Saul Singer
Twelve, 2009. 304 pp. $26.99
ISBN: 978-0-446-54146-6
Israel, a country the size of New Jersey and
surrounded on all sides by hostile nations,
has more companies listed on the NASDAQ
stock exchange than the next five foreign
countries combined. In this book, Dan Senor
and Saul Singer, two Middle East experts,
explain how Israel’s unique history and challenges
have created such a favorable environment
for high tech entrepreneurs.
In short, the authors credit a combination
www.jewishbookcouncil.org