Obama's Trip to Jerusalem, Israel, & Grossman's To the End of the Land

From yesterday's New York Times article "Arriving in Israel, Obama Seeks to Offer Reassurance:"

It took four years and a second term, but President Obama traveled to Israel on Wednesday for a richly symbolic state visit, bearing a message of solidarity to a wary Israeli public and a promise to defend Israel from threats near and far. “Shalom,” Mr. Obama said after embracing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, who waited for him on a red carpet under the shadow of Air Force One at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport. “I see this visit as an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds between our nations,” he said. At a news conference later, Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu labored to project a unified front on issues that have often divided them, from how best to confront Iran’s nuclear program to how doggedly to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

For a novel about 21st century Israel, try To the End of the Land by David Grossman:

Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer’s release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, she sets out for a hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the “notifiers” who might darken her door with the worst possible news. Recently estranged from her husband, Ilan, she drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, once a brilliant artistic spirit. Avram served in the army alongside Ilan when they were young, but their lives were forever changed one weekend when the two jokingly had Ora draw lots to see which of them would get the few days’ leave being offered by their commander—a chance act that sent Avram into Egpyt and the Yom Kippur War, where he was brutally tortured as POW. In the aftermath, a virtual hermit, he refused to keep in touch with the family and has never met the boy. Now, as Ora and Avram sleep out in the hills, ford rivers, and cross valleys, avoiding all news from the front, she gives him the gift of Ofer, word by word; she supplies the whole story of her motherhood, a retelling that keeps Ofer very much alive for Ora and for the reader, and opens Avram to human bonds undreamed of in his broken world. Their walk has a “war and peace” rhythm, as their conversation places the most hideous trials of war next to the joys and anguish of raising children. Never have we seen so clearly the reality and surreality of daily life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, and the burdens that fall on each generation anew.

It seems that Obama has also read the book.

UPDATE:  here's a review of To the End of the Land over at the Of Books and Reading blog.

Spain: Jews Wanted (a.k.a. The Inquisition & Gordon's The Last Jew)

From today’s BBC article “Sephardic Jews invited back to Spain after 500 years:”

More than 500 years ago, tens of thousands of Jews fled Spain because of persecution. Now their descendants are being invited to return. Before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, some 300,000 Jews lived in Spain. It was one of the largest communities of Jews in the world. Today, there are about 40,000 or 50,000 - but that number could be about to swell dramatically. In November, Spain's justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon announced a plan to give descendants of Spain's original Jewish community - known as Sephardic Jews - a fast-track to a Spanish passport and Spanish citizenship.

What was it like to be Jewish during the Spanish Inquisition? To place yourself in the moment, read Noah Gordon’s novel The Last Jew:

In the year 1492, the Inquisition has all of Spain in its grip. After centuries of pogrom-like riots encouraged by the Church, the Jews - who have been an important part of Spanish life since the days of the Romans - are expelled from the country by royal edict...some perish even before they can escape from Spain. Yonah Toledano, the 15-year-old son of a celebrated Spanish silversmith, has seen his father and brother die during these terrible days...  Yonah begins a meandering journey, a young fugitive zigzagging across the vastness of Spain...in a time and land where danger from the Inquisition is everywhere...

If the Inquisition interests you, you might also like:

• By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan (“Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition…[b]ut he is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target…”) and 

• Incantation by Alice Hoffman (“Growing up in Spain around 1500 in the village where her family has lived for 500 years, Estrella, 16, knows that there are secrets in her home. As books are burned in the streets, and Jews from the nearby ghetto are murdered, she confronts the reality that she is a Marrano, part of a community of underground Jews…”).

*Note:  some people find the term "Jew" pejorative (as opposed to, say, "Jewish person").  I just want to make it clear that I don't use the term pejoratively and don't intend for it to be misinterpreted that way.