WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: I have, says my database, 988 (ok mostly “used”) books about Israel, ancient and modern and one (ok I wrote it myself) in between. On occasion, I’ve suggested in these weekly emails that we ardent Zionists place the most grippingly readable of these books into the hands of Jews less inspired than us by the seminal Jewish history event taking place, after eighteen hundred years, in our time – sovereign rebirth of our people’s homeland of Israel.
Don’t delude yourself that this is not present tense. Efforts are still underway today in 2023 to return Israel to the perilous historic Jerusalem-less, indefensible incomplete ceasefire lines of 1949.
From time to time, even we ardent believers in our Jewish homeland’s historical and legal right to the entirety of the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, need a B-12 or two shot in the arm. And we can dig into these inspiring Israel books perhaps a bit deeper than less-ardent-than-us American Jews. So here are my recommendations for us.
Suggested Inspiring Israel Books for Us Already Zionist Jews
What’s There To Be Seen Today of Our Homeland’s Jewish and Christian Heritage: My first choice for you to imbibe isn’t even a book, but a movie playing right now, this week only, in theaters. If you could pick two honorable, US government action-important Americans, deeply knowledgeable and devoted Christian and Jew, to accompany you on a land of Israel historical heritage sites tour, elucidating these sites’ meaning to Christians and Jews, you could do worse than pick former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. So thought TBC, producer of Route 60: The Biblical Highway, playing right now in a thousand American theaters, through this weekend only, indeed extended from Monday-Tuesday-Only, given that “it sold more tickets on its first two nights than any other American film.” Jerusalem Post, Thursday, 9/21, Route 60: Biblical Highway Breaks Box Office Expectations. Go see it, a Christian friend and I did and both came out inspired.
Ok, a real book (it comes in two versions) I’d have you read on what’s still there to be seen there today is about the Temple Mount, of which the Western Wall is but a small piece of the Jewish-built structure still standing there after two thousand years. Dutch archeological architect Leen Ritmeyer’s two versions are Secrets of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (short) and The Quest: Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (long). What he set out to do, and Biblical Archeology Review’s Hershel Shanks said he makes “quite a good case,” is mind-boggling. The Western Wall is but a small section of the long still-standing western retaining wall of Herod’s Temple Mount. Not only that, but the seven huge Herodian ashlar courses at the bottom of the visible Western Wall that you see sit on top of nineteen more such ashlar courses today below ground that go down to bedrock. A today illuminated surviving Warren shaft shows a glimpse of them. And interior Herodian remains (e.g., insides of the Double Gate and of Barclay’s Gate) still remain. Ritmeyer convincingly shows that the lines of the First Temple’s smaller 500 sq. cubit Mount can still be traced, as can the location of the Temples themselves, which embraced Mount Moriah’s summit as the floor of their Holy of Holies. On that summit-floor, today the Dome of the Rock’s Rock, can still be seen the Solomon-carved slot – talk about still-visible heritage – on which stood in First Temple times the Ark of the Covenant!
Reading even Ritmeyer’s short version is likely beyond the interest of most American Jews, but not beyond the interest and must-reading of us.
During the Period Between Our “Exile and Return”: President Carter was not unique in writing in the Historical Chronology preface to his Palestine Peace Not Apartheid: “135 CE: Romans suppress a Jewish revolt, killing or forcing almost all Jews of Judaea into exile.” It isn’t true. As historian Parkes wrote in Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine, not only did the Romans not exile the Bar Kochba Revolt’s surviving Jews, but they stayed for some time the majority in the land, and then remained through long dark centuries of exclusively (and mostly non-Arab) foreign empire rule a tenaciously clinging homeland-claiming organized minority, “in spite of every discouragement” including repeated massacres, writing today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.”
So taken was I with this that when the chance came I wrote a non-vanity book, setting the opening scene in the Second Temple’s smoking ruins, tracing that post-biblical Jewish presence. When the publisher fired back, “But what about King David and all of that stuff,” chapter 1 became chapter 4, but I’d have you read that we can connect continuous homeland Jewish presence dots between Hadrian and Herzl, and that they do write Israelis’ real title deeds. Verlin, Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine. (There’s still a fair number of copies on Amazon’s used book market. Go there and click on “used” copies. BTW, the ones that I signed go for less than the ones that I didn’t).
The Zionist Movement: Out of curiosity, at least, of how it came to launch a thousand ships (most of them British destroyers), every Jew, at least every Zionist, at some point in his lifetime should read it least the first part of Herzl’s Jewish State. I would suggest the Scopus Publishing Company edition of 1943 (there was as yet no State of Israel) with Chaim Weizmann’s enlightening historical perspective Foreword, or the American Zionist Emergency Council edition of 1946 (still no Israel) with Louis Lipsky’s Introduction and Alex Bein’s brief biography of Herzl. And, for its content and out of respect to that leader, I’d have you read Dr. Weizmann’s autobiography, Trial and Error. (A parenthetical comment: Many of the “used” books I’ve picked up that date from that pre-State Zionist era uniquely bear on their inside cover a pen-and-ink private “library of” inscription of a member of our parents’ generation. Says something.)
Aliyah Bet: By me, if you’re looking for inspiration from the courage and determination of pre-State Palestinian Jews, American WW II vet volunteers and Holocaust survivors and partisans themselves, read about these exploits of assembling these self-driven survivors on Europe’s shores, overloading them on rickety ships the British went to great lengths to prevent, and sailing them into the teeth of the before-during-and-after-the Holocaust anti-Jewish British Palestine blockade. Most famous, of course, on the Exodus, are Ruth Gruber’s Destination Palestine (rev. ed. Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation with a moving chapter on European not-exactly “Displaced Persons” camps) and David Holly’s Exodus 1947, but most moving, I’ve found, are acclaimed Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk’s bio of Yossi Harel, Commander of the Exodus, Gordon Thomas’ Operation Exodus and Nissan Degani’s Exodus Calling.
Murray Greenfield’s The Jews’ Secret Fleet movingly recaptures the involvement of mostly Jewish American crew volunteers (including himself) on America-originated Aliyah Bet ships. Arie Eliav’s Voyage of the Ulua and Rudolph Patzert’s Running the Palestine Blockade are gripping accounts of other Aliyah Bet ships. There are a number of valuable books on the survivors’ travails and indomitable efforts to escape Europe by facilitators of those efforts and others – e.g., Herbert Agar, Ehud Avriel, Yehuda Bauer, Leo Schwartz – but they are not easy reading. I found I.F. Stone’s Underground to Palestine, recounting this American journalist’s accompaniment of survivors, and Howard Blum’s The Brigade, which includes much on the British Jewish Brigade’s post-war aid to Jewish escapees from Europe, quite moving.
The Struggles Against the British and Arabs: Required reading by us is Begin’s The Revolt, on the Irgun. The definitive account of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence is Netanel Lorch’s The Edge of the Sword, but it’s a long read. Uri Dan’s To the Promised Land quite movingly recounts this period. A quite lively account of the efforts in America to supply arms to Israel (oops, “farm machinery to Palestine”) in the face of the seriously-enforced U.S. embargo is Leonard Slater’s The Pledge. A surprisingly moving account of American Jews’ participation in the 1948 war is Jeffrey Weiss’ I Am My Brother’s Keeper. On the diplomatic side are moving works by, e.g., Richard Crossman, Bartley Crum, Jorge Garcia-Granados, James McDonald and others.
The Six Day War: What’s most inspiring to me is not “history” per se, but first-person accounts by soldiers and caught-up civilians. Hence, I’ve read and again Steven Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate, in which he successfully strove to be “in the cockpit, inside the tank, under the helmet.” Ruth Bondy et al’s Mission Survival is a compendium of military and civilian Israelis’ experiences, and military leaders’ analyses, many of them quite moving. Yael Dayan’s Israel Journal vividly captures her time with Sharon’s Ugda before the outbreak of fighting, during its battles and after. I’m quite a fan of journalist Abraham Rabinovich’s books, not least The Battle for Jerusalem. Eric Hammel’s Six Days in June well covers not just those six days but how Israel’s IDF got there, and why (unlike me in late May and early June 1967) it had no doubt of the outcome.
The Yom Kippur War: For a long time I did not want to read about it – how Israel was near-fatally taken by surprise while inadequately prepared, partly from lingering intoxication from its lightning Six Day War victory. Among the things that changed my mind were the opening pages of Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears (before the fictional story begins) recounting the heroism of the hopelessly outnumbered Israeli soldiers at the outbreak of the Syrian attack on the heights. The Yom Kippur War was, as Chaim Herzog aptly titled his quite good account of it, Israel’s War of Atonement. Rabinovich’s The Yom Kippur War is quite moving, as is Asher & Hamel’s Duel For the Golan. Avigdor Kahalani’s The Heights of Courage: A Tank Leader’s War on the Golan is an Israeli hero’s (and that’s saying something) account of what happened in the Valley of Tears. After seeing Golda (if it’s still around, go see it), I read her autobiography, My Life. I’m not a big fan of bio’s, but this was quite readable, giving valuable insights on the course of the war from her non-military prime minister’s perspective.
Summing Up: It’s sobering to reflect on us non-Two-State Solution believers being a minority of American Jews. I’ve long believed that if we could get across to more American Jews, through the most grippingly readable Israelis’ and Americans’ accounts of the magnitude and critical significance of the Jewish history event going on in our time, we could bring more of us to believe that our people’s reborn homeland inherently historically and legally inalienably includes Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem. But from time to time we need this reinvigoration ourselves. And we can go a bit deeper into this treasure trove of inspiration than will our less inspired-on-Israel fellows. So keeper that I am at the moment of 988 “used” books on Israel, such are my recommendations.