Book Reviews
Called the best book about Israelis in decades, THE ISRAELIS has more than 100 excellent international reviews across the religious and political spectrums: from the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, to The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, to The Japan Times and Die Zeit and Die Welt.
Los Angeles Times:
THE ISRAELIS: Ordinary People in An Extraordinary Land
Free Press/Simon & Schuster 466 pp.
The most upbeat of recent books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Donna Rosenthal's The Israelis, mostly because it is not political at all. Rosenthal, a journalist, has given us a panorama of Israeli diversity -- Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Orthodox and secular, Russians and Ethiopians, Arabs and Christians, even adulterers and gays.
Although other books tell us that Israel's blinders limit its perception of its neighbors, this one heartens us with the prospect that ultimately an idea might prevail that permits Israeli society and the Arabs to live in peace. Given the horrific news we read every day in the newspapers, that's easy to forget. Thanks, Ms. Rosenthal!
The Jerusalem Post:
The subtitle of this informative, well-researched book says it all. But it could also have been subtitled: "Everything you always wanted to know about Israel and the Israelis but were afraid to ask."
Donna Rosenthal has taken almost every aspect of life in Israel - religion, army, social mores, ethnic groups, and many others - and explained them objectively, in each case through the eyes of the "ordinary Israeli" of the subtitle and not, refreshingly, from the viewpoint of politicians or sociologists. Her training and skill as a journalist are put to excellent use as she asks the questions which let her interviewees give revealing answers. Rosenthal has succeeded in presenting an accurate picture of daily life in Israel for its variety of citizens.
Having been one for little more than a year, I found I had much to learn from this book. One what? An Israeli, an ordinary person living in an extraordinary land.
Haaretz:
Unlike the myriad of other books on this tiny nation, The Israelis illuminates the daily lives and backgrounds of Israelis unknown to many in the world, highlighting their diverse lifestyles, and their varied beliefs and attitudes toward the State of Israel.
The strength of this book is its focus on various Israelis and their individual stories,put together to provide a comprehensive and diverse picture of each group. It's the story of Israel's version of Bill Gates, high-tech pioneer Gil Shwed, and the hundreds of others who have transformed Israel into one of the most productive technology centers in the world. Or the story of Meir Bouskila, a Moroccan immigrant who has coached youth soccer for 20 years in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Be'er Sheva, keeping thousands of Mizrahi youth off the streets. Or the story of Dr. Yasser Mansour, an Arab Israeli Muslim doctor working in the diverse city of Haifa, saving both Muslims and Jews, while feeling the pull of both Israeli and Arab identities.
The Israelis is an illuminating work for anyone looking for an in-depth and accurate portrait of the diversity of Israeli society today, and is a book that can be appreciated by Israelis and non-Israelis alike.
Washington Post:
In The Israelis, journalist Donna Rosenthal, who worked in Israeli radio and TV, gives us a broad, well-informed picture of its citizenry. She methodically limns the various ethnic and religious subcultures, Jewish and non-Jewish, that constitute the vibrant and fragile mosaic of Israeli society.
Her language is breezy and her technique anecdotal, blending first-person narratives with facts and figures, historical background, and various piquant asides ... Travelers to Israel, armchair and otherwise, will find The Israelis quite useful.
Publishers Weekly:
Free Press/Simon & Schuster (466 p)
"Today’s headlines leave the impression there’s little to know about Israel outside of its conflict with the Palestinians. Using Hedrick Smith’s landmark The Russians as a model, journalist Rosenthal, with years of experience in and knowledge of the Middle East, defies that notion, giving an in-depth look at the rich variety of people in the Jewish state. Relying on dozens of interviews, she gives a lively, variegated portrait of all facets of Israeli life. Terrorism and relations with the Palestinians are covered, but so are secular-religious tensions, Ashkenazi-Sephardi divisions, Israeli Arabs and Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia.
Throughout, Rosenthal stresses the contradictions in Israel: a country steeped in historical and religious tradition that is trying to develop a high-tech economic future; a democracy that many see as favoring its Jewish citizens about its Arab ones; a country ruled in some ways by a rigid religious establishment that also maintains thriving gay and lesbian communities.
Rosenthal displays prodigious reporting and allows the people themselves —whether Jewish or Arab, men or women, religious or secular- to speak, and their voices are alternately despairing and hopeful, defiant and conciliatory.
As a result, she captures an entire country, one full of flux and drama, in as vivid and nuanced a way as possible; a former male model turns Orthodox; an Ethiopian who "had never used electricity …until he was twelve" now designs computers. With the huge interest in Israel among the reading public, this is likely to find a sizable audience."
Kirkus Reviews:"An amiable portrait of the 6.7 million people --a population about the size of Baghdad's -- who live in a country smaller than New Jersey but that "captures the lion's share of the world's headlines."Chalk it up to the Bible and news formulas, perhaps, but many American readers might find it odd to imagine that for many an Israeli, there's nothing quite so wonderful as a trip to a Tel Aviv shopping mall, a slice of pizza, and the new Eminem CD. Such people populate the pages of former Jerusalem Post reporter and Israeli TV producer Rosenthal's lively take, which centers on ordinary citizens in what Rosenthal trusts are "abnormal times."
Many of these ordinary Israelis, Rosenthal writes, love to argue in cafes, offer unsolicited advice to strangers, participate in all-night raves on the Red Sea, hang out in Katmandu, and smoke a little weed or indulge in stronger pleasures; many others wrestle to preserve traditional practices in the face of the globalizing pressures that are changing the world. Consider headgear as a tribal badge, Rosenthal suggests: "Israelis wear army helmets, kippot (yarmulkes), kaffiyehs (Arabic headdresses), wigs, and veils. They also wear baseball caps backwards and earphones connected to MP3 players." Some, despite the presence of Orthodox " modesty patrols," are gay (though, says one such person, "In our world, being gay is like eating pork on Yom Kippur"; some, despite injunctions against it, live with members of the opposite sex outside marriage; some, quite apart form the Palestinian population, are not Jewish.
By Rosenthal's account, Israeli society adds up to "a large extended, sometimes dysfunctional, family," made perhaps a little more dysfunctional by the constant threat of war and terrorism, which even peace activists seem to accept as an unhappy face of life. Which, she quotes former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek as saying, explains why Israelis are such bad drivers: "When you have to fight a war every few years, safe driving becomes the farthest thing from your mind."
A lively, cliché-popping account, sure to irritate fundamentalists and the humorless, but a treat for everyone else."
Praise for THE ISRAELIS
"A wonderful book: well researched, balanced, and a joy to read. It brings you a picture of Israel that only a superb journalist such as the author can expose. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time."
--Amir D. Aczel, author of Entanglement, Fermant's Last Theorem, and The Riddle of the
Compass" The Israelis depicts an up-to-date, comprehensive portrayal of Israeli society. Donna Rosenthal captures both its rich variety and its many internal contradictions through personal vignettes whose characters are moving and endearing. Her style is more journalistic than academic, which makes the book more human, relevant, and easy to read for anyone who seeks to gain a thorough understanding of Israel's complex social fabric and of the intense daily lives of its inhabitants. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it."
-- Eric Benhamou, Chairman and CEO of 3Com and Palm
" Intimate and vibrant. The only book I have ever seen that reveals the full human spectrum of Israel today."
-- Prof. Daniel Matt, author of God and the Big Bang and The Essential Kaballah
" The Israelis is thoroughly absorbing, and also deeply instructive, even for readers who may be familiar with the country. It provides a vivid mosaic of anecdotal portraits that span all the variegated sectors of Israel's population and all the problems with which contemporary Israelis struggle."
-- Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of California Berkeley and author of The Art of Biblical Narrative
" You must read Donna Rosenthal's comprehensive work. It is refreshing to read a book about ordinary people. Religious and secular, Jews and Arabs, settlers and suicide bombers - they are all here and in their own words."
-- David Lennon, former Financial Times Bureau Chief in Israel" A colorful, and compelling portrait of young Israelis nobody knows. We hear the personal stories of the crazy mix of people who live in this well known, but little understood land. Anyone who wants to go far beyond the headlines will be wiser for having read this insightful book."
-- Professor David Biale, Cultures of the Jews
" Thoroughly current. Abundant anecdotes giftedly crafted and frequently poignant, tell the story of the many tribes of modern Israel. For anyone who wants to learn more about contemporary Israel away from the headlines."
-- John Schlegel, S.J., President Creighton University, former President USF
"Donna Rosenthal's sharp journalistic eye gives readers a rare book -- an objective and even-handed account of life in Israel today."
-- Martin Halstuk, Professor of Journalism, Penn State University and former reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
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