Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey [Hardcover]

Wendy Orange (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2000

In the tradition of Under the Tuscan Sun and Peter Mayle's popular portraits of Provence, an American woman recounts her five-year stay in Israel with candor, wit, and a keen eye for the cultural and political undercurrents of her adopted home.

Wendy Orange and her family settled in Israel in the 1990s, and, despite language barriers, household dramas, homesickness, and a difficult job search, Orange eventually found herself at home. Coming Home to Jerusalem is the story of the world she discovered, the people behind the politics, and the deep-seated ideals obscured behind divisive ideologies.

Her sojourn brings her into contact with famous authors, obscure artists, Evangelical teachers, American-Israeli housewives, and citizens weary of the turbulent life Orange finds so fascinating. As a reporter for an American magazine, she travels to remote parts of Israel and into the Palestinian territories, adventures that give her a broader picture of the age-old conflicts that inform the opinions of peaceniks and young soldiers, downtrodden refugees and elite politicians on both sides of the cultural divide. Her portraits illuminate everyday lives lived in extraordinary circumstances with stunning immediacy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey is an intelligent, entertaining, politically astute memoir by Wendy Orange, who from 1991 to 1997 was the Mideast correspondent for Tikkun, a leading American Jewish magazine. One autumn morning in 1990 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Orange realized that she would never feel at home where she lived--a feeling that she compared to "the claustrophobic awareness that you've just married the wrong person." Several months later, she realized that she was homesick for a place she had never been before: while watching CNN reports from Jerusalem at the outbreak of the Gulf War, she was struck with an awareness that "the Israelis on the streets ... all felt familiar. They looked and dressed like me and my friends, were the same age, had the same verbal intonations as they spoke." Shortly thereafter, she visited Israel for the first time. Not long after her visit, she packed eight cardboard boxes, left her job, and took her young daughter Eliza with her to Jerusalem, for what she imagined would be forever.

The story that follows, Coming Home to Jerusalem, is a tightly plotted play in a "theatre of incongruous, gruff, sexy, close-minded, religious, secular, cruel, funny, and excitable characters." Along the way, Orange offers plenty of insight on the political and religious conflicts that dominated Jerusalem's life during her time there. But the real strength of this book is its sprawling constellation of character studies of Holocaust survivors, famous writers, failed artists, politically elite people, and a cab driver with whom Orange falls in love. Coming Home to Jerusalem is essentially a travelogue, and it does what good travel writing should--it makes you want to go. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly

Jewish baby boomer Orange moved to Israel in the early 1990s with her young daughter as part of a midlife attempt to find herself. (Televised pictures of Israelis wearing gas masks during the 1991 Gulf WarAa compelling vision for someone who grew up obsessed with the HolocaustAspurred her need to be with people) Now, the author chronicles the years she lived as a journalist in the Middle East. Though trained as a psychologist, she became a correspondent for the leftist Jewish magazine Tikkun. But in this book she is more than just an observerAshe leaps into the Israeli world with a vengeance, making both Palestinian and Israeli friends, taking on a lover who is a taxicab driver. She participates in the peace movement as the euphoria of the 1993 Oslo accord gives way to the violence of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the deadly bus bombings against Jews that lead to the 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister. Along the way, Orange describes with intense earnestness the ups and downs that accompany life in the tinderbox of the Middle East. Regarding the Palestinians, whose views she seems to genuinely try to understand, she moves from fear to sympathy to rageAand back again. The reader remains unclear about the reasons for Orange's final departure from the region, but is left with a keen understanding of the grassroots frenzy that accompanies political life there and the author's own intoxication with this frenzy. Agent, Joy Harris. (June) FYI: For another immigrant's look at contemporary life in Israel, see David Horowitz's A Little Too Close to God, Forecasts, Apr. 25.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition. edition (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684869519
• ISBN-13: 978-0684869513
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,664,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #72 in Books > Travel > Middle East > Israel > Jerusalem

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Return of The Great Summer Read!, July 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey (Hardcover)

A friend handed me this book and insisted, "This is the Summer Read that will stay in your head and heart." Looking at the cover, I assumed she had thought of me because, years ago, I worked in the Middle East. I am not Jewish, not Arab, and most importantly, I find politics of any kind to be boring. But Orange manages to make the politics irresistible through the lives of a host of individuals. She tells the story on so many levels, from specific moments already past to global consequences and conundrums which remain in effect. Even better than being the truth, the story is a page-turner. I loved the consciousness that runs throughout. This book delivers in so many categories: it is a woman's journey, a foreign affair, an education in the invisible life of Israel, a portrait of the Palestinians, a story filled with immediacy and charm. I was drawn into the picture and along for the ride. It is not merely a travelogue-- but it is definitely a TRIP. You're a member of the author's family within paragraphs but the writing never sinks to the tedious or home-grown. It is consistently literate, graceful, witty and to the point. Orange puts you on an intimate basis with her subjects immediately, sometimes with a single image or phrase. Highly recommended for anyone who loves to read. The statement that best captures my take on Coming Home To Jerusalem is, "This book gets under your skin and the pleasure is all yours!"

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outsider/Insider, June 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey (Hardcover)

It has often been said that the best perspective for a writer is the stance of the outsider. Ms. Orange succeeds in that rarest of positions, the outsider who guilelessly admits to being a beginner and then in a few thrilling leaps plunges into the fray to become part of the intellignentsia. And there could be no place on earth more challenging than the Middle East. The reader will want to follow Ms. Orange on the journey because her intelligence and unswerving gaze, both outward and inward never falters. This book is rare in its willingness to combine the mundane - everyday parenting dilemmas, friendships, and love - with the big issues - politics in an embattled land. Both are handled with a prose that jumps off the page and carries the reader forward from first to last. An unforgettable book.

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book, November 2, 2000

By 

Patsea (Tuolumne, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey (Hardcover)

(I wrote this review 2 months ago, as the current flare up of conflict in Israel was beginning.) I was so sorry to see this book end. I kept stretching out finishing it because I knew I would miss it once it was over. Wendy Orange writes with so much honesty; she shares so much of herself that I feel I know her quite well. I'm experiencing Israel with her. Her personal style is what drew me into the story and into the politics of Israel. I have been vaguely acquainted with Israeli politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, but I never had a sense of place. This book gave me an entree into this world that I probably could not have gotten without visiting there. I have a vivid picture of the landscape, of the countyside, of Jerusalem and of various Palestinian villages. I also have a sense of the Palestinian culture, something most Americans are ignorant about. Now when I read about Israel in the mainstream and alternative press, I feel a clarity about the struggle there and have some idea about the geography. I'm so sad to read about the war between the Israeli army and the Palestinians. After reading Coming Home to Jerusalem I feel connected to these sad events. I hope the author will return to Jerusalem and write more about this important place. It is crucial that Americans learn about this story. I thank Wendy Orange for this great and timely book.