Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce S. Feiler  (2)
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Editorial Reviews
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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.
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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Inside This Book Citations: This book cites 8 books | 2 books that cite this book Explore: Citations | Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Key Phrases - SIPs: wild earth Key Phrases - CAPs: West Bank, Tel Aviv, East Jerusalem, New York, Old City (more) Browse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me! |
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Once off the plane Michael hails a taxi to drive us up to Jerusalem. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
wild earth Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Bank, Tel Aviv, East Jerusalem, New York, Old City, Beit Sahur, Ben Yehuda, Middle East, Green Line, Oslo Accords, Har Homa, American Jews, Jerusalem Post, West Jerusalem, Shimon Peres, Abu Ghaneem, Faisal Husseini, King Hussein, Kiryat Arba,
Once off the plane Michael hails a taxi to drive us up to Jerusalem. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
wild earth Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Bank, Tel Aviv, East Jerusalem, New York, Old City, Beit Sahur, Ben Yehuda, Middle East, Green Line, Oslo Accords, Har Homa, American Jews, Jerusalem Post, West Jerusalem, Shimon Peres, Abu Ghaneem, Faisal Husseini, King Hussein, Kiryat Arba,