Israel Books

NORMAN Finkelstein (another reviewer dubbed him "Howard') displays what makes him far and away the foremost scholar actually engaging in a critical analysis of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Dr. Finkelstein has meticulously researched the conflict, and it shows in the detail that he goes into during his speech - but "expose'" (sorry, an accent is needed on the final "e") may better describe it: as Dr. Finkelstein himself notes, very simple, self-evident truths are distorted and made nebulous by the thick ideological fog that shrouds the entire conflict (presented, of course, through the filter of the media). Even on Amazon.com, when Jimmy Carter's book came out, it was prominantly paraded as being lambasted by critics even though it received many very favorable reviews. Dr. Finkelstein also does something that his detractors (Alan Dershowitz) find extremely irritating - he laboriously backs up every observation or comment with documented facts. But these facts, combined with a razor sharp eye for detail, only provide "what was" and "what it"; it is his moral position (that even allows him to lament the apparent lack of moral consistancy in THE leading moral philosopher of the first half of the 20th century - Bertrand Russell) that forces the listener to cast off the excuses and rationalizations that are forced down our throats by the morally-bankrupt apologists and pundits on CNN, Fox News etc. He forces us, by sheer force of argument and morality, to reconsider what we have been told, and to question why, if this information is available, it is NOT in the media, and NOT present to an overwhelming degree in academic circles. An answer to this is postulated near the end of the cd.
The speech itself is very clear, and provides not only a good introduction to the issue, but delves into it sufficiently to explain why things are as they are. What I especially appreciated was the emphasis on cause and effect: Dr. Finkelstein doesn't just state facts, but provides history and context, so as to paint a much clearer picture of why - for instance - Israel was forced to change tactics when confronted with the PLO's "peace offensive". So, if you are reading this, you probably have an interest in the topic, and if so, I urge you to purchase this CD, of at least check out [..] and inform yourself. Please.

Finkelstein is a powerfully clear speaker whose arguments must be dealt with by all supporters of Isreali policy.

Levine does an excellent job in portraying Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period. More than that, he gives the reader a feel for what life was like in the city during that time.

The book is well-written and packed with information. While it is not an exciting read, the 416 pages of text move along at a good pace. The author discusses issues over which scholars disagree, but he never allows his summary of the debates to become bogged down in needless detail.

As a Christian, I found his description of Jerusalem in the first century A.D. to be particularly valuable. The book provided small but valuable insights into the life of the first Christians in Jerusalem.

For background information about the Old Testament post-exilic period and the New Testament era, this book is a gem.

I can't recommend this highly enough to readers interested in the in-depth results of scholarly work on Jerusalem that the average person can understand. Rarely am I so impressed with a book. It is logical, easy to follow and isn't wordy.

It is organized first by date -
Part I is 536 BC to 63 BC (Chapters The Persian Era, the Hellenistic Era, the Hasmonean Era, )

Part II is the Herodian era (to 6 AD, Chapters The Historical Dimension, The Urban Landscape, the Temple and Temple Mount, Jerusalem in the Greco-Roman Orbit: The Extent and Limitations of Cultural Fusion)

Part III is the first century through the Jewish Revolt in AD 70 (Chapters The Historical Dimension, Urban Configuration, Social stratification, Religious Ambience and the Destruction of Jerusalem.

IF YOU ARE PLANNING A TRIP TO ISRAEL OR JUST WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT IT THIS BOOK IS A MUST. IT IS EXTREMELY WELL WRITTEN WITH MANY ANECDOTES, FOLK TALES, AND LEGENDS. YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE WALKING THE LANES AND ROADS THAT ARE DESCRIBED. THE AUTHOR TAKES YOU INTO THE JEWISH QUARTER'S SYNAGOGUES. SHE ALSO COVERS FAMILY OUTINGS TO PARKS, GARDENS, MUSEUMS, AND THE JERUSALEM ZOO. THE BOOK HAS OVER A DOZEN EASY TO USE MAPS. IT LISTS THE WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE SITES AND RESTROOM LOCATIONS. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT FEATURE FOR A TRAVEL RELATED BOOK. IT WOULD MAKE AN EXCELLENT GIFT FOR ANYONE YOU KNOW THAT IS INTERESTED IN ISRAEL.

This book is an excellent guide to walks in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is a city of such intricacy and layers of meaning that it can only be appreciated on foot, but it is so complex that you could walk around on your own forever wihtout really seeing it . Rosovsky takes you by the hand and shows you the courtyards, the buildings made out of pieces of other buildings, the ordinary-looking spots where history happened. Of course, Jerusalem is a prosperous city and the constant construction sometimes throws a wall across your path. Don't let that stop you, just circumvent the obstacle and pick up the tour at the next point of interest.

Jerusalem Walks is a fantastic book for those who are traveling to Jerusalem. Having lived and studied in Jerusalem myself, I am confident in saying that you will have a hard time finding a book that has this much information in a guide book format. The 6 walking tours offer something for everybody, and I can think of no more enjoyable way to get to know the city. The focus of the walks is of course the Old City, but she also offers a couple of walks in Western Jerusalem. I have taken tours all over Israel and Jerusalem, but I have not seen another source offer such a variety and depth of historical and fun information about the turbulent history of Jerusalem. From the Patriarchs to the Romans to the founding of Israel, if it happened in Jerusalem, it is probably in this book.

The city of Jerusalem means so much to so many people. "Jerusalem: A Neighborhood Street Guide" is a closely personal look at the city in its modern state, studying its rich history street by street. The 2,500 streets of the city are listed in alphabetical order; none are left out, and at the end is a full color road map of the city. "Jerusalem: A Neighborhood Street Guide" is highly recommended for community library travel collections and to anyone wishing to visit the holy city.

This is a work of art and love--the author has walked every street in Jerusalem and describes the neighborhoods in detail with maps and photos-
a must for every tourist and resident who wants to tour Jerusalem in depth--the book is now out in English and hopefully will be available on Amazon in paperback--I have a copy--

ps the author is my cousin--American born but emigrated to Jerusalem. Our family was born in Mea Shearim
Jerusalem is a unique historic city--a mix of the old and new--every time I travel there my skin tingles.

The "Kirkus Review" description (quoted as part of the Amazon listing) seems to miss the point. Although historians of both Alchemy and Judaism have been in agreement that the Jewish role in the development and spread of alchemy was either non-existent or tiny, the alchemical texts themselves insist otherwise. The main lines of development have been traced from Hellenistic Egypt, through the Islamic world, and into Christian Europe, with little or no need for Jewish sources or transmitters, and most Jewish historians have been satisfied (or delighted) to agree.

Indeed, in influential writings on the psychological meanings of alchemical symbolism, C. G. Jung went so far as to reclassify the several Jewish alchemists cited and quoted in Alexandrian Greek documents as really Jewish Christians. (He had a theory that transmutation was a material metaphor for transubstantiation, which required a Christian origin before alchemy reached Islam.)

The late Raphael Patai amassed a huge amount of information, including alchemical manuscripts in Hebrew (translated with commentaries herein), and set about to consider the cases of supposed alchemists described as Jewish, and real alchemists supposed by someone to be Jewish, in detail. While many particular instances are unconvincing, the interplay he demonstrates between medicine and alchemy on the one hand, and alchemical and mystical circles on the other, does suggest that at least a minor theme in Jewish intellectual life has been ignored by modern scholarship.

The main problem with the book is that it really requires backgrounds in both Jewish and alchemical studies to follow and judge Patai's arguments. However, to be fair, it does not offer itself as a primer in either subject. You will have to look elsewhere, and there is ample bibliographic information.

A few examples of what it offers:

Harry Potter fans will here encounter the real Nicholas Flamel of Paris (a real man, if not necessarily really an alchemist), and his supposed Jewish source-book for the philosopher's stone. Patai does not seem to me to advance the argument much, but he does demonstrate that the legend is part of a larger body of material about Jewish books falling into Christian hands. He also has some useful comments on the obliviousness of English and European scholars to each other's writings on Flamel, and some deeply embedded errors of translation in English-language treatments.

Patai's argument for a genuine Hebrew original of the "autobiography" of the magician and alchemist "Abramelin" is interesting, but he manages to misrepresent Gershom Scholem's changes of mind on the subject. Scholem, in a note in "On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead" (German edition 1962, English translation 1991; pages 314-315, note 24 to "Tselem: The Concept of the Astral Body"), which Patai does not cite, explains that since first treating it as Jewish in 1925 he had found Renaissance Christian sources for the book's Jewish concepts and post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. However, it is worthwhile to have Patai's citations of the German version, in addition to that translated from French into English by MacGregor Mathers in 1898 (reprinted some years ago by Dover). (Also, some of A.E. Waite's reasons for rejecting the Jewish origin of the text, in his "Ceremonial Magic," such as the paternal blessing of children and the concept of guardian angels, are actually minor evidences for it!)

There is an interesting, and to my mind inconclusive, reconsideration of some the works formerly attributed to the Christian mystic Ramon Lull (various spellings), and their possible Jewish background.

Working notes of actual alchemists, including a multi-lingual dictionary of instruments and materials which is valuable evidence of cross-cultural influences in several directions.

All in all, a useful book for anyone already familiar with basic works on the history of alchemy, or with an interest in Jewish studies, and a good addition to a library with at least basic collections in both these subjects.

I was very pleased to find that, like Patai's HEBREW GODDESS, this book combines thorough and excellent scholarship with translations of rare sources that are otherwise impossible to find. Patai does not claim the Jewish Patriarchs were alchemists, but in his broad chronological exploration of the topic begins with the historical development of later attributions of the Alexandrian alchemist Miriam by Arabic and other alchemists to one of the biblical Miriams of the New Testament or to Miriam, wife of Moses. The Alexandrian alchemist Mirian, like Cleopatra, was considered by Zosimos and others to be one of the great founders. As one would expect, her identity was eventually attributed to legendary times by medieval practitioners. Her Jewish name implies to Patai and other scholars that the earliest historical Jewish practice of alchemy developed in the heterodox Hermetic and Gnostic schools of Alexandria during the second to fourth centuries of the Common Era. Patai's voluminous research thoroughly explores the Jewish-Islamic stream of alchemy through early and late medieval periods. It provides, for the first time, a basis for students of the Western mystery tradition to understand the Jewish-Egyptian-Spanish esoteric stream that derived from the Pythagorean and Gnostic school of Akhmim near Nag Hammadi and Thebes in Upper Egypt, which indirectly produced such mysterious literary figures as "Abramelim the Mage." A good supplement for Patai's absolutely essential work would be Peter Kingsley's research on the survival of Neo-Pythagroean and Hermetic tradition in Akhmim, from which the Arabic Hermetic scientists, philosophers, and alchemists derived their knowledge.

I have read and know this book since it's publication and in fact know the author well. The history associated with Jews and Carpets is facinating, considering that oriental rugs are usually considered for the most part the domaine and art form of Islam. During the golden age of carpets, Jews and Muslems worked together and advanced the artform in cooperation. This is a must read for any rug collector and in particular a historical guide for Jews interested in the subject. Mr Felton writes with a passion and gift that "weaves" history, culture and give the people involed a voice uniuqe in books about carpets and their origins.

I have been studying the world of rugs and carpets for 2 years. Reading about the tradition and place of rugs & rugweaving in the Islamic world goes a very long way to explain who Muslims are.

I never found an equivalent artform in the Jewish world--until I discovered this book.

The author describes the attributes and history of those rugs known to have been made by Jews & containing in-woven Jewish iconography. He delves into the Israeli Arts & Crafts movement, whose apotheosis was Boris Schatz and the Bezalel (pronounced beit-TSA-lel)factory-school of crafts.

I cannot overemphasize how fascinating the Anton Felton's book is. I have just ordered one of the carpets that he describes in his book--from an EBay dealer.

I have 2 copies of the book--one from Amazon, the other from the Textile museum of Toronto.

It is important for people of all religions and walks of life to read this book. It is well written and will give you great insight.

This book changed my life. Steve Herzig is the best author I have ever read. I recomend this book to anybody...ever.

This book is a collection of essays in which the phenomenom of Jewish self- hatred most particularly in the form of hatred of the Jewish state is analyzed and to a degree explained. It deals with many of the most well- known haters, including Chomsky, Tanya Reinhart, Norman Finkelstein, Israel Shahak, Daniel Boyarin , Jacqueline Rose, Joel Beinin, Michael Neumann(Canada), and others.
In the opening essay Alvin Rosenfeld considers how important a part 'shame' plays in these intellectuals life, how many of them feel the need to 'apologize' for imaginary crimes of the state of Israel. The book goes on to chronicle some of the most amazing and remarkable actions of hypocrisy, and moral idiocy of the modern era. Imagine the kind of prevarications which a Jew must go through to defend as many of these haters do, Palestinian Arab suicide bombers who deliberately kill women and children, just because they are Jewish.
This book exposes a great deal of biased and inaccurate thought about Israel and its history. However it also signals a very worrisome phenomenom and trend which must be contended with as openly and vociferously as possible, especially on the university campus where many of these 'Jewish Anti- Semites' have prestige and power.
This book is recommended highly to all those who care about Israel and the Jewish people.
It also provides a great deal of information which I believe would be excellent material for psychologists interesting in understanding the form of self- hatred , which focuses not upon oneself as individual but upon the collective, religious , national, ethnic to which one ostensibly belongs.

There's already an excellent review of this fine book on this site (by Shalom Freedman). But I'd still like to add a few words of my own.

There are more than a few Jews who attack Israel. Are they "self-hating Jews?" Are they traitors? Well, some folks who oppose Israel, Jewish or not, are clearly under no obligation to defend it. If they side with those who would destroy it, they are not traitors, just enemies of Israel. In many cases, I would not bother to regard them as Jews. It is true that some of them are clearly embarrassed by the existence of Israel, but even that does not get me to think of them as Jews unless they show some genuine support for the human rights of Jews. Of course, what I think about this doesn't make much difference. The Jews are the ones who need to decide who they think are Jews, and they are the ones who need to decide what to think of the fact that many anti-Zionists boast about those who advertise themselves as Jews who oppose Israel.

Some actual patriots sincerely recommend surrender to one's enemies, on the grounds that fighting will likely result in obliteration while surrender gives a much greater chance for survival. In World War Two, Jews who tried this generally got killed, and for this reason, this idea has merited less respect since then. But if Jews sincerely recommended this strategy, I'd still think of them as Jews (I think I'd regard them as Jewish even if they made the absurd and immoral recommendation to, um, get rid of all Jews, on the grounds that this would end actual oppression of Jews once and for all...by the way, some of the Jews mentioned in this book come pretty close to advising this).

How do we tell if one is going over the line and betraying one's people rather than simply being moral? Well, an editor of this book, Edward Alexander has a simple test. Do you demand the same rights for you and your group that you demand for others? If you refuse to do that, you flunk his test and are being counterproductive by giving too much support for your enemies.

Still, according to the editors in the introduction to this book, "'cowardice' is the word that springs to mind most often as the suitable epithet for Israel's Jewish enemies." I agree. These Jewish accusers of Israel are generally taking some easy and immoral shots against truth, justice, human rights, and peace. They're rarely paying much of a price for this. And it is annoying to hear some of them praised for their courage.

After the introduction, there are seventeen superb articles. And they expose some of the hostility towards Israel by some of the anti-Israeli, um, cowards. But that's not the aspect of this book that I find most interesting. I'm not all that interested in tribal wars. But I am interested in truth, justice, and human rights. That's why my focus in reading this book was to witness the extent to which many of the opponents of Israel are amazingly dishonest and arbitrary. For example, Michael Neumann is quoted as saying that if an "effective strategy" means "the destruction of the state of Israel" he doesn't care. And that "to regard the shedding of Jewish blood as a world-shattering calamity...is racism, pure and simple, the valuing of one race's blood over all others." That's an eye-opener. I think those Germans who were put on trial after World War Two would have loved that argument, as it would have given moral justification for the genocide they perpetrated. Later, we see Neumann make the absurd argument that the purpose of Zionism is not to provide a refuge for Jews but simply to wage a race war in order to embark on "genocide" against the Levantine Arabs!

Of course, Neumann's claims are preposterous. But even so, I feel that even his lies do not necessarily support his conclusions. Suppose it really would be better for your enemies if you and your family were to be murdered, robbed, and slandered. Would it be best for you to allow this to happen, and to refuse to fight for your lives, property, and honor? It would depend on the circumstances, but the answer might well be no.

Edward Alexander makes quite a few good points. For example, he suggests that a good response by West Bank settlers to David Grossman would be "my dear fellow, we will imagine ourselves as Arabs if you will imagine yourself as a Jew."

Other articles discuss in detail some counterproductive writings by George Steiner, Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, Tanya Reinhart, Norman G. Finkelstein, Peter Novick, Daniel Boyarin, Marc Ellis, Judith Butler, Martin Jay, Jerome Segal, Thomas Friedman, Seymour Hersh, and Benny Morris. It says on the back flap of this book that these articles "seek to understand and throw back the assault on Israel led by" these folks and that the writers "demonstrate that the foundation of the state of Israel, far from being the primal sin alleged by its accusers, was one of the few redeeming events in a century of blood and shame." I agree. And I very highly recommend this book.

This digest of essays explores the modern fate of the ancient Jewish conception of the Jews as a covenated people, who have a special role to be a 'Light unto the Nations' and play a role in fostering the values of Torah, as well as the truth of the Jews as a nation with the right to self-determination in their ancient homeland.
Alexander explores how this idea has been under assault for over 200 years by the Enlightenment, rationalism, universalism, Marxism and other such ideologies. And yet the Jewish idea and it's eternal and core truth has never been entirely destroyed.
The author deals with the question how despite millenia of persecution the Jewish Nation remains true to their G-D and their destiny. And of course the question must be asked, as the author does, as to why in a world in which 997 of a thousand people are not Jews, is there such intense and fanatical hostility towards the "smallest of peoples".
With a razor sharp analysis the author takes apart the enemies of the Jewish idea, especially the hypocrites of the Left, which include a number of Jew-hating Jews.
He laments the modern disease of the Jewish people, which is the Jewish infatuation with leftist political movements. This is the most permanent form of devastation in modern Jewish life.
However Alexander notes that ' in this connection, it is worth noting that Chomsky became in 1980-1981 one of the most vigorous defenders of Robert Faurisson's inalienable right to propagate, from a university chair the lie that the Holocaust is a Zionist invention. He also wrote a preface to the French addition of this book in which this French professor set out his argument. Apparently since Chomsky takes an "agnostic" view of the question of whether the Jews of Europe really were murdered, he does not fear that his humanity is endangered by neo-Nazism. Either he is a late convert to Millite liberalism, or his zeal for free speech swells in proportion to the anti-Zionism of the speaker'.
The Enlightenment, so passionately embraced by many of Jewish birth, and a partial result of the universilization and therefore distortion of the Jewish idea, has given birth to the greatest threat to Jewish collective existance and to Jewish national self-determination.
Alexander also has a chapter on the Jewish-born Communist terrorist Denis Goldberg who was released as a result of Israeli pressure on the South African government, and brought to Israel before moving to the United Kingdom.

The saga of Denis Goldberg begs the question as to the tragic mistake of Israel having taken up the cause of Jewish radicals imprisoned by conservative regimes.
Goldberg very soon took up the venomous and vicious refrain of Communist against Israel and Zionism.
In the typical bloodthirsty fashion of Jewish-born radicals Goldberg condoned and advocated PLO murder of the men, women, children and babies of Israel.
He declared that every Israeli killed by a PLO bomb in a supermarket, street, school or nursery deserves his or her fate. He claimed that "terror is not a moral issue" and that "most of the bus passengers and those wounded by explosive devices are not innocent, since they support the opression of the Palestinians".
Today Denis Goldberg is an official in the South African regime, and an advisor to venomous Israel-hater and Hamas sympathizer, South Africa's Stalinist Minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils.

Alexander deals with the theft of the legacy of the Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy, by the Soviets, universalists, radicals and anti-Semites.
This led to the evil and perfidious lie incubated in the Soviet tyranny and taken up by Leftist anti-Semites throughout the world that Israelis are the Nazis and the 'Palestinian' Arabs are now the Jews.
Obscene analogies belie the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis are holocaust survivors and their descendants, whose existance has been threatened for decades by Arab genocidal aims.
The lie that the holocaust pricked Western conscience and that is the only reason for the birth of Israel is belied by the fact that the Jewish communities anihilated by the Nazis were the most Zionistic in the world and could have done far more for Israel as live immigrants than as dead martyrs.
And the particularly evil lie peddled by the lies of Alexander Cockburn and Lenni Brenner that the Nazis actually approved of Zionism is easily disproved by reading Hitler's Meim Kampf where the typical Nazi estimate of Zionism is recorded: While the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds it's satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb "Goyim". It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish State in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for the international world swindle'.

For the Soviets and their leftist succesors the last coherent center of the historic Jewish destroyed by the Nazis is the sole inheritor of Nazism in order to make the public memory of the Holocaust into a potent instrument of the destruction of the Jewiosh people. A diabolical ploy indeed.
This is especially chilling when we read of the catalogue of the PLO murder of Jewish children recorded in the last chapter- "The Distorting Mirror".
The author records that "Althought the cold blooded murder of infants and children figured very prominently in the record of PLO exploits- the Avivim school-bus ambush in 1970, the abbatoir at the Maalot school in 1974, the machine gunning of the babies at Kiryat Shmona, and the smashing of the head of three year old Galit Haran of Nahariya against a rock in 1979."
This book is an important and brilliantly written analysis of the Jewish National mission and the perfidious and evil strategies of it's enemies.
It contains a comforting message too of Jewish immortality. The author reminds us that the first elegist to crow over the demise of Zion was the Egyptian Pharoah Merneptah who announced that "Israel is desolated; it's seed is no more". That was in the year 1215 BCE.

For many years Edward Alexander has written cogently about the Jewish people and their struggles in the modern world. His idea of modern Zionism, and its centrality to the Jewish struggle for survival have informed his work throughout. He understands as well the various forces which have been working to undermine this idea.