WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: This is “Jewish Book Month,” but, by me, not what Jewish Book Month should be all about. Come see.
This Month: “Jewish Book Month,” But Is It Really?
Ok, so November is “Jewish Book Month.” The title of a Tablet article this month (“This Month, Read a Jewish Book; It’s Jewish Book Month, a tradition begun in 1925 that today is run by the Jewish Book Council”) sums up what it’s about. The Jewish Book Council in New York, at which I had the privilege to appear twice for the two books that I wrote – Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine, and Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z – brings together authors of new works on all manner of Jewish subjects and representatives of Jewish book clubs and other Jewish book-interested groups all over America. Each author aims his brief pitch to garner invitations to speak at these groups. I got to speak at a JCC north of New York, two authors on the program that night, me on We-Jews-Never-Left and Fox News’ Jennifer Griffen et Vir on their years in Jerusalem. For me, quite a night!
But for all that, that – authors speaking on all manner of “Jewish” new fiction and non-fiction books – isn’t what I’d have a “Jewish Book Month” be about. By me, Jewish Book Month ought to be about enticing American Jews to relate to the monumental Jewish events of their time. By me, born in America in 1940, these are the Holocaust and its aftermath and the long struggle for our Jewish homeland’s sovereign rebirth, highlighted by the Zionist movement, the ingathering of the exiles and the wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973.
I say this not because I see American Jews as by and large indifferent to these events, which they’re decidedly not, but because I differ so much from most American Jews’ perspective on them. And even more so, what seems to me the misleading manner in which they present their perspective. It’s one thing to advocate “two states along the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps” as a negotiating concession of parts of the land of Israel to which Jews have legitimate rights. It’s another for Jews to call Judea-Samaria a “West Bank” to which a Jewish claim would be “annexation” of land beyond 1949 ceasefire lines misdescribed as Israel’s “1967 borders” to which “a two-state solution’s’” borders, save for mutually agreed land swaps, should “precisely hew.” Yet that is exactly how America’s Reform and Conservative religious movements, along with other major American Jewish organizations and institutions, phrased their open letter last year to President Trump. I couldn’t disagree more, with either what they said or how they said it.
It seems to me inconceivable that American Jews who’ve read truly gripping contemporary accounts of the unrelenting incredible courage it took to achieve Israel’s independence, bring in the persecuted exiles from west and east, and defend that independence in recurring wars could advocate reversing the Six Day War, as demanded by the UN and America’s European allies who’d E-U Israel out of Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem.
The indispensable attribute of a homeland Jewish history book that an American Jew should read during a Jewish Book Month is that such a book be grippingly readable. It needs to tell an important story by or through the eyes of participants. As Steven Pressfield put it in his foreword to The Lion’s Gate on the Six Day War, he wanted to be “in the cockpit, inside the tank, under the helmet.” If the book has first-person flashbacks to events building to the key event that it tells, so much the better.
I have, some of you know, a personal collection of several hundred Jewish homeland history books (after giving several hundred Jewish history books away). I haven’t, of course, read most, but quite a few I’ve read more than once (a privilege of octagenarianism, each time you remember a little bit less). So here are a few I commend to those of you who are less intensely opposed than me to “the two-state solution.” (It’s ours, the land of Israel, including Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem. Palestinian Arabs have 78% of the Palestine Mandate in Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan. UNSC 2334, whose instigators it seems are back in charge of America, would leave Israel militarily indefensible and Jewishly meaningless.)
*** Exodus: Yoram Kaniuk, Commander of the Exodus: Deeply moving account of Yosi Harel’s commanding of Exodus 1947 and other large ships of the Aliyah Bet that sailed Holocaust survivors into the teeth of the British blockade. Much on passengers’ pre-voyage experiences, British moves and significance of the rescue effort. Almost as gripping reading on the Exodus: Ruth Gruber, Destination Palestine and Gordon Thomas’ Operation Exodus. On the ship’s whole President Warfield through Exodus history, David Holly’s Exodus. On the relentless movement of the Holocaust’s survivors to leave Europe, I. F. Stone’s Underground to Palestine, and Howard Blum’s The Brigade: An Epic Story of Vengeance, Salvation and WWII.
*** Other Ships of the Aliyah Bet: Arie Eliav, Voyage of the Ulua, and Rudy Patzert, Running the Palestine Blockade: Stirring accounts by the ships’ captains of confronting the British on Palestine’s coast and on the way. Both gripping reads.
*** Israel’s Wars: Exodus, O Jerusalem (except re Deir Yassin) and Genesis 1948 are well-known, not short, good read accounts of the 1948 era and war, but if you can lay your hands on Jeffrey and Craig Weiss’ far less known I Am My Brother’s Keeper (Amazon) on Americans’ involvement in the ’48 war and make it a Hanukkah gift to one of your “two-states” believer friends, it’ll be worth the investment. On the 1967 war, I found Steven Pressfield’s first-person accounts The Lion’s Gate, which has flashbacks to earlier battles, the most grippingly readable. On the ’73 war, Herzog’s The War of Atonement.
*** Mizrahi Jews: Ruth Gruber’s Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. The first chapters on the harrowing escape of the early pathfinders will leave you breathless.
By Me, Top Three: Kaniuk’s Commander of the Exodus, Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate, and Eliav’s Voyage of the Ulua.
What “Jewish Book Month” should be all about: Homeless Jews have been kicked around Christendom and the realm of Islam for two thousand years. Historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria [“West Bank” isn’t a synonym for Judea-Samaria; it’s an antonym] are inseparable key parts of the Jewish homeland of Israel. By history and international treaty they’re ours. We never abandoned them, including through physical presence. Fulfillment of the Dream of Generations for the Jewish homeland’s sovereign redemption is a seminal Jewish history event taking place still in our lifetime. American Jews intent on undoing the Six Day War ought to read good books about it.