I TRAVEL 1 For as little as S20/day (plus airfare) on an El Al Milk & Honey Vacation, we'll provide you with a really great hotel. We'll provide you with free Israeli breakfasts. We'll provide you with a free car rental.* With an escorted package, we'll provide you with a guided tour of Jerusalem. We'll provide you with a guided tour of Galilee. We'll provide you with a guided tour of Masada. We'll provide you with baggage handling at the airport. We'll provide you with baggage handling at the hotel. There are, however, some things you will have to provide for yourself ELI% Mideast Travel Comes At Last JOSEPH COHEN Special to The Jewish News A ///1 The Airline of Israel. DIRECT FLIGHTS BETWEEN CHICAGO AND TEL AVIV EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY. DAILY NONSTOPS BETWEEN NEW YORK AND TEL AVIV (EXCEPT FOR THE SABBATH). To find out more about our exclusive Milk & Honey Vacations, call your local travel agent or 1-800-EL AL SUN. Or for a free brochure, write: El Al Milk & Honey Vacations, 120 W. 45th St., New York, NY 10036 '820/day avail. until 2/28/93 except 12/16/92 • 1/15/93. Hotel and car rental good for 5 nights/6 days. Based on per person, double occupancy. 21 day adv. purch. req. Car rental. Does not include gas, mileage and insurance. Other restrictions may apply. Star of Elegance Airport Transportation FREE Municipal Bonds Listing FREQUENT TRAVELERS CARD 313-559-7723 Luxury Sedan $29.50 Receive Weekly Report AG Edwards &Sons, Inc MES7iiesTS SAVE /887 MEMBER 51PC AN-BM-8-EDA 2 FREE trips to the Airport Book a round trip to the airport and your trip TO the airport is FREE! When you or someone you recommend uses our service three (3) times round trip, you will receive ANOTHER FREE TRIP (one way) to the airport. RELIABLE? OF COURSE! IT'S A MUST FOR US TO BE ON TIME. WE DON'T SHOW UP (within 15 minutes of designated time), WE PAY YOU! $29.50 or $49.50 Stretch Limo $49.50 SAME PRICE FOR ONE OR THE WHOLE FAMILY! LAS VEGAS DEPART — THURS. & SUN. A.M. Departures AIR ONLY $19990 FR. Complete packages from $299.90 Morning/Evening Departures ATLANTIC crry DEPART 8:30 am RETURN 12 mid. EVERYDAY NON-STOP FLIGHTS CAESARS From $9990 Receive $75 Bonus Pack Parucipa:it Contract Required From Per Person $ 49 9 0 CALL YOUR TRAVEL AGENT OR HAMILTON, MILLER, HUDSON & FAYNE BOB MORLAN (313) 336-9200 1-800-365.-9200 CASH FOR LIKE-NEW WOMEN'S a CHILDREN'S DESIGNER fashions & accessories t' CONSIGNMENT CLOTHIERS Call today for a FREE housecall appt. or in-store appt. 347-4570 43041 W. 7 Mile • Northville Michigan's MarketMakers in Gold - Silver - Platinum Coins and Bars "Sell Where the Dealers Sell" B‘RN- TT RARITIES C O R P O R A T I O N 189 MERRILL ST. BIRM., MI 48009 P*oimr (313) 644-1124 Since 1971 i, of his life my father dreamed of going to Eretz Yisrael, of settl- ing in Palestine before it became Israel, of playing his own small role in the new na- tion after the War for In- dependence, of praying at the Western Wall — oh, how he wanted to pray at the Wall — of living out his years in the land of his forefathers, and, at the end of his days, now long since passed, of being buried in its sacred earth. He never made it. There were many times in my own life when I didn't think I'd make it either. For too long the Promised Land was only that, a promise, not a viable reality. In a time when American Jews travel to Israel frequently and even forget how many times they've been there over the years, I couldn't go. As it was for my father, so Israel has always been impor- tant to me, but for different reasons. Where his link was ancient, traditional and religious, my attraction has been modern, political and cultural: I need to identify with the aspirations and the hopes of our people, long persecuted but now free and vibrant, building a new coun- try, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the Holocaust, and, additionally, I need to ex- perience and savor its unique culture, particularly, through its literature. For me it has never been enough to acknowledge and exult over the miracle of the creation of the modern State of Israel, or, as most Jews do, to take pride in its achievements and agonize over its problems. I have to go a step further and be involv- ed with the ebb and flow of its personal interiorized life (as opposed to its exteriorized public life) through the pulse- takings of its serious writers. That's all well and good if one is fluent in Hebrew. All I remember from my bar mitz- vah in 1939 is a few prayers. Daddy didn't make it. I couldn't go. I can't read Hebrew. What would you do in a jam like that? Write a book about a country you've Joseph Cohen is emeritus professor of English at Tulane University and the founding director of its Jewish Studies Program. never even set foot in, about its poets and novelists who are experts in the most masterful subtleties of a language you don't even know? Well, why not? You talk about chutzpah! Alan Dershowitz, move over. Chutzpah or not, I wrote the book. As director of the Jewish Studies Program at Tulane University, I had the opportunity to invite Israelis to come to the campus to lec- ture. In a space of five years I brought seventeen of them to New Orleans, including the poets Yehuda Amichai and T. Carmi, and the novelists A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld and Amos Oz. (There were a couple of other Israelis almost as important as these writers. What's that fellow's name, the one with the Oxford ac- cent who is as articulate as Winston Churchill was ar- Writing the book only whetted my appetite more. ticulate? Abba somebody, I think. He came, too.) The poems and novels of the above-named Israeli writers were all accessible, translated into English; and with their- congenial authors' will- ingness to be interviewed I soon had enough material to write Voices of Israel, publish- ed by the State University Press of New York in 1990. For a university press book, it has done all right if you don't ask about royalties. The paperback is already into a second printing, and the folks at Haifa University have told me it's on the required reading lists there. But what to do about going to Israel? Writing the book only whetted my appetite more. When my second wife, Ruth Samuels, and I were married in the summer of 1987, some of our friends, knowing we already had two full households of furniture, silver, china, linens, books, pictures, tsatskes and a dog and a cat, decided we didn't need another pitcher or toaster and instead put together an Israel travel fund as a wedding gift, the trip was practically jump-started into reality. Better late than never! It took a while to put the rest of the pieces into place, but the reality is that we touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport late on the afternoon