Customer Reviews

To Jerusalem and Back (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

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How can one describe this classic book on Israel? At one level it is a personal account of one American writer's journey to Israel and England and back but scratch beneath the surface and you see the incredible panoply of faces and voices that is Israel. Here is A.B. Yehoshoua who writes "that because our spiritual life ... cannot revolve around anything but [political questions], you cannot spare yourself, spiritually, for other things." Here is a bomb going off in London just as it recently did in Israel. And here is Saul Bellow mourning the "six young [British] people" who were murdered while simultaneously noting that "the difference is that when a bomb goes off in a West End restaurant the fundamental right of England to exist is not in dispute."

Here is Abu Zuluf, editor of El Kuds whose automobile terrorists have blown up because he is trying to follow what Saul Bellow feels is a "line of conciliation and peace."

Here is the Greek quarter in Jerusalem covered in grapevine; there is the Jewish quarter where the principal relic is the ben-Zakkai synagogue, blown up by the Jordanians when they took over in 1948 and as Saul Bellow walks toward it he hears, somewhere, as Arab boys are racing their donkeys down a hill.

Here is a Yemenite synagogue; there a Souk, the public market. And everywhere there is a profusion of communities: Arabs, Jews from Arab lands, Asian lands, Europe, Africa, Christians, Kurds, Hindus.... Everywhere a cacophony of voices; everywhere people mingling, arguing, making peace, making war, while philosophers philosophize and writers write.

And he sits down to dinner with families who have lost children and as he passes dishes (Sephardic dishes, Indian dishes, Arab dishes, European dishes all mixed together) "on the Jaffa Road, because of another bomb, six adolescents-two on a break from school-stopping at a coffee shop to eat buns, have just died."

"This is how we live, mister," a cabby tells Bellow (in what language: Ladino, Hebrew, Arabic?), "his voice cracking. "Okay? We live this way."

Bellow came to Jerusalem as celebrated novelist . Every door was open to him , and he met with Israelis from all walks of life. He writes an essentially sympathetic and understanding account of Israel and its special situation. He knows the score in terms of the Jewish past, the great sufferings many of the survivors living in Israel have gone through. He understands the constant threat from their Arab neighbors under which Israel lives. But he tries to see the situation too with sympathy for the Arab side. His basic line politically is of the left, and he clearly favors political compromise.
The book does provide a pretty fair picture of Israeli society. But it is possible to quarrel with Bellow's basic orientation which is that of a Diaspora Jew who does not feel any call to Aliyah to Israel, and does not have much understanding or sympathy for a good share of its population, the religious.
All in all though this is an insightful look into Israeli society by a commentator of great intelligence and literary skill.

To Jerusalem and Back chronicles Saul Bellow's trip to Israel in the mid-70s. As such, it is a time capsule of that time and place. Palestinian groups are still Marxist-Leninist. There is almost no stirring of the Islamic revolution to come. Rabin is the Prime Minister during his first term; Egypt and Israel have just reached the interim agreement that would later become the Camp David accords. The tone of this work is dark, pessimistic. Bellow believed the conflict would go on as it was for generations. In a sense he was right, but in another quite wrong. For this book also shows the progress that has been made since the mid-70s. Israel has signed peace agreements with both Egypt and Jordan. It is an economic powerhouse with a stable economy,high tech jobs, universal health care. Israel still fears for its existence, but it is a more illusory fear than at the time of this book. It is less existential and fundamental. It is more about style than outcome. So in this very narrow sense, To Jerusalem and Back is an interesting work to read in light of later developments.

Well known , Nobel prize winning author , put his pen to the service of recording his 1975 visit to the Land of Israel and his thoughts on the dillemas faced by Israel at the time , and on world politics at large in the mid 1970's.
The author puts down his observations , from his thoughts about Hassidim on a plane from Heathrow to Ben Gurion airport to a secular kibbutz near Ceasarea, and his meetings with leaders and thinkers in Israel such as former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban , Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolleck , poet and journalist Chaim Gouri and professor Yehoshafat Harkabi as well as Arab figures like Mahmoud Abu Zuluf , editor of the al Kuds , at the time the largest Arab language newspaper in Jerusalem , who'se life , and the life of his children , the author reports where threatened for his relatively 'moderate and conciliatory' line.

Although Abu Zuluf later became a stooge of Arafat and the PLO.
Bellow observes the Israeli people as lacking in rancour or bitterness against the Arabs , despite being constantly under the threat of anihilation and targeted by terrorism.
The threat of anihilation , of a second holocaust , looms permanently in the Israeli mind , leading one of Bellow's aquaintances to observe that it would be a horrible irony if the Jews being gathered in one place enabled a second holocaust to become a reality.
since before the State of Israel was established the Jews of Israel have had to live with terror , an example in this book being a homicide attack ""on the Jaffa Road, because of another bomb, six adolescents-two on a break from school-stopping at a coffee shop to eat buns, have just died."

It is because of his relatively sympathetic portrait of the Israeli people in this volume , that Bellow came under attack from anti-Israel high priest of the ultra-left , Noam Chomsky.
Bellow muses on the attempts made by Jean Paul Sartre to balance his understanding of Israel, with his sympathy of the Arabs and his anti-American stance.

This book was written in the embryonic stages of anti-Israel hatemongering from leftwing academics in the West , alhtough it must be noted that all their propaganda was created in the old Soviet Union , where the 'Zionism is racism' canard was created .
In a heartfelt plea the author writes: 'I sometimes wonder why it is impossible for Western intellectuals...to say to the Arabs " We have to demmand also more from you. You too-the Marxists among you in particular- must try to do something for brotherhood and make peace with the Jews , for they have suffered monstrously in Christian Europe and under Islam. Israel occupies under one sixth of one percent of the lands you call Arab. Isn't it possible to adjust the traditions of Islam , to reinterpret , to change , to change emphasis , so as to accept the trifling occupancy? A great civilization should be capable of humane and generous flexibility. The destruction of Israel will do you no good, let the Jews live in their small state".
In reporting on a converstaion with Professor Jacob Leib Talmon , Bellow reports Talmon's warnings that 'the fate of Jewry in Israel and the Diaspora , is so closely linked he says , that the destruction of Israel would bring with it 'the destruction of corporate Jewish existance all over the world , and a catastrophy that might overtake US Jewry"
Alas , in the 30 years since this was written , leftwing academics (and the media) around the world have been the main force in hardening Arab attitudes , by taking up anti-Israel hatred to Nazi-like levels.

While the author has an overall understanding attitude of the Israeli people , he is rather less so of the Jewish residents of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, not quite seeming to understand the depth of the Jewish right to and connection with this part of the Land of Israel.

This book is less about the Jerusalem that Bellow visited and more about himself. Indeed, his presence is so pronounced that he appears more fascinated with his own perceptions than he is with what he is witnessing, or so it seemed to me. While the writing is clear and vivid, I can now recall virtually nothing of what he describes, except for himself and his personal reactions - it is he who sees things more clearly than his hosts, etc etc. After 100 pages, this is boring. Alas, I got nothing out of this and it is also badly dated.

Not recommended.