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17a - All about Israel
BOOKS about Israel cover many different subject areas and some of these have already been discussed in Chapters 9a (Biblical Geography), 14a (Biblical History) and 15a (Biblical Archaeology). Inevitably some of these categories overlap, and one book may cover several interests, or one author may write about many different subjects. For example, Sir Martin Gilbert (whose family name was first Fichtencwajg, and then Goldberg) has written extensively about Jewish matters, and has produced some very usable atlases. Samples of the atlases can be viewed here, together with details of his 79 books (which cover very diverse topics). His books on Israel and Jerusalem are very helpful, and he has written ten of those books about the Holocaust.
Source material
If you want to track back to the birth of Zionism and read the original documentation that got the whole movement going, under the hand of God, you can still buy Theodor Herzl’s ground-breaking publication The Jewish State (1896) and his novel Altneuland (1902). This has been reprinted in many different editions over the years, including an illustrated one, using photographs of how things worked out, rather differently from how Herzl imagined in the novel. Jews love tracing their ancestry, and writing about it, so there is a vast choice of available material. You can download The Jewish State from several sites: try this one.
One of the driving forces of anti-Semitism over the years has been the scurrilous World Conquest through World Government, sub-titled The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This forgery alleged that the Jews had a plot to achieve world domination. If you want to see the sort of propaganda that was being used to foster the hatred of the Jews, that can still be purchased or it can be downloaded here.
This sort of material, which is now recognised as a forgery, serves as a warning that whilst the internet is a ready source of material, there are a lot of people who run websites for ulterior motives, political and otherwise. For basic information about Israel, her history and her people, try safe sites like the Israel Tourist Board; Zionism and Israel; or The Ministry of Foreign Affairs site. The latter produces an informative yearbook Facts about Israel which can also be viewed online at that site: as well as a lot of factual detail, there are also some downloadable maps (click on them to get higher resolution) which could enhance a visual presentation.
To make sure about the transformation that has taken place, the desert having begun to blossom as the rose, there are plenty of books written in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries that describe the conditions that then existed. Mention has already been made (in Chapter 16a) of Alexander Keith’s Evidence of Prophecy (1837) in which the desolation of the land was seen as one fulfilment of Bible prophecy. In 1912, Sir Frederick Twelves described his tour of Palestine, as it then was, in a book entitled The Land that is Desolate. W. H. Bartlett wrote Jerusalem Revisited in 1867, and illustrated his account with sketches. There are lots of books like that, if you look out for them, and sometimes these travelogues have been reprinted, like Baedeker’s Jerusalem and Surroundings, which was reproduced by Carta publishers in 1973.
People
Another way into the subject is to read biographies or autobiographies, in which the unfolding story of Israel’s rebirth and resettlement is told through the experiences of those who were involved. Several books have been written about Theodor Herzl, like that by Josef Fraenkel (1946) or Herzl by Desmond Stewart (1974). Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, wrote his own account Trial and Error (1949) and so did David Ben-Gurion: Israel – a Personal History (1971). That account is 862 pages long, so you might prefer his shorter Recollections (1970). Abba Eban also wrote an autobiography, called rather unimaginatively Abba Eban: An Autobiography (1977), and he also wrote My Country: The Story of Modern Israel (1972). Golda Meir wrote My Life in 1975 and if you want to read what life was like across the Egyptian border, Anwar Saddat wrote In Search of Identity in 1978.
This list only scratches the surface, as many Israelis and others have written up their life experiences. Pick your politician or public figure and you can be sure that if they didn’t write their story, somebody else wrote it for them. For example, Leah Rabin wrote about her husband: Our Life, His Legacy (1997) and Yael Dayan wrote of her father, Moshe Dayan: My Father, His Daughter (1985).
The emergence of Modern Hebrew as the national language of Israel makes for a fascinating story. Robert St John has written Tongue of the Prophets (1952) to give a biographical account of the life and work of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and that is a most encouraging read.
Pictures
Most of these biographical accounts are illustrated with black and white photographs, but there are also picture albums and illustrative accounts available. Among Sir Martin Gilbert’s 79 books is The Jews in the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated History (2001) which provides an excellent photographic record, with a detailed commentary. By contrast, The Jewish Family Album (1974), edited by M. & L. Kochan, is just a collection of old photographs with captions. Both these volumes and many like them, aid ones understanding considerably.
Yigal Lossin wrote Pillar of Fire in 1983 in which he provides a visual history of the rebirth of Israel and here the pictures lead the way, with a substantial amount of accompanying commentary. By contrast, David Ben-Gurion edited The Jews in their Land (1966) and, in view of the length of his autobiography, it should come as no surprise to know that it is mainly textual, although there are some interesting accompanying photographs: all of them black and white.
If you want colour photographs, covering later events, try the Encyclopedia of Jewish History (1986), edited by Shamir and Shavit, one of the Facts on File publications.
Holocaust
Many books have been written about the horrors of Nazi Germany and Hitler’s attempt at the final solution, which resulted in the extermination of some six million Jews. Sir Martin’s Gilbert’s book The Holocaust (1986) details those events in 956 pages, and he has produced an accompanying atlas. Many books record the sufferings of Jews in ghettoes (like Chaim Kaplan’s Scroll of Agony, which is about the Warsaw Ghetto); or The Diary of Anne Frank (1968). If you could bear, or need, a photographic record then The Yellow Star, by Gerhard Schoenberner (1960) provides a pictorial testimony of the Jews in Europe 1933-1945.
Fight for survival
There are many facets to Israeli life and experience and one of them has been their many wars, from 1948 onwards. These too have been chronicled and analysed in detail. A lively account about the 1948 war for the survival of the infant nation is O Jerusalem! (1972) written by two journalists L. Collins and D. Lapierre. Jewish accounts, written by insiders, can be found in Road to Jerusalem by Barnet Litvinoff (1965) and Three Days by Zeev Sharef (1962), the days in question being the last three days of the British Mandate.
These wars fall into another widely-read category, especially by people who work or worked in the armed forces, so it should be no surprise to know that Israel’s military might has been carefully studied and recorded. Books like Ian Hogg’s Israeli War Machine (1983) analyse the men, machines and tactics. A more long-term look is provided by Duncan and Opatowski’s War in the Holy Land (1998), which traces military engagements from Megiddo to the West Bank, with accompanying diagrams showing tactical manoeuvres. Some of the wars were recorded photographically, notably the so-called Holy War June 67, an album of photographs published by the Sunday Times in 1967. And many of them have been studied in detail in books like Chaim Herzog’s The Arab-Israeli Wars (1982), or Randolph and Winston S. Churchill’s The Six Day War (1967).
If conspiracy theories appeal to you, or you want a different perspective on what has really been going on, try Hoag Levins’ Arab Reach (1983), which details the way in which Arab power and influence has grown, or Foxbats over Dimona (2007) by Ginor and Remez, which is about “the Soviet’s Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War”.
As you can see, reading about modern Israel can take up a lot of time, and the books a lot of shelf space, but we cannot underestimate the importance of what is happening there as a witness to God’s work in the world, and a preamble to the great events which are about to happen.
Novels
If you want some light reading, which will provide a flavour of what it has been like in Israel over the years, try Leon Uris’ Exodus; Herman Wouk’s two books The Hope and The Glory; or Kay Arthur’s Israel My Beloved.
