seck-‘4crv‘h.

vim. ire / 1Abortot.

AUTHENTIC SZECHUAN COOKING

• fresh Seafood • cocktails

"I put a lot of my heart and soul
into this book," says Nathan, who
became interested in foods and cook-
ing some 30 years ago while working
as a foreign press assistant to then
Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek.
"I made a particular effort to show
the different kinds of foods from the
almost biblical to as modern as possible.
I also tried to interview the younger
chefs I thought would be interesting."
The latest Nathan project, which
follows seven other cookbooks with
mostly Jewish recipes, is a colorful vol-
ume with all kinds of ethnic fare and
the history behind them. Menu sug-
gestions, a guide to eating in Israel and
even information on Israeli wine
expand the contents.
"Food is a lot more than just a
recipe," says Nathan, who reads a lot
about history and culture and shares
the information with her audiences.
"What people say about food tells a
lot about a place."
Although Nathan is bringing 300
diverse dishes to the public, she also
hopes that the ultimate understanding
is how similar people are when it gets
down to the basics, in this case the
harvest from the land.
"I often go to coffee shops to write so
the phones won't [interrupt] me," Nathan
says. "People from other ethnic back-
grounds — Greek, Asian, African
American — will come up to met), cause
they've seen my TV show, and they tell
me they never realized the similarities
between Judaism and other religions.
"I think that's really important, and
I hope people will try the recipes,
experiment and learn something. I
also hope they'll read this and see that
there are a lot of similarities among
the people in the Middle East."
— Suzanne Chessler

are quickly outdated by the mad rush
of events.
Paradoxically, the novelist stands a
better chance of capturing the incon-
stant scene than does the presumably
informed political analyst. Martyr's
Crossing (Simon and Schuster; $24),
by Amy Wilentz, vividly testifies to
the truth of fiction.
Wilentz is a journalist who lived in
Israel from 1995 to 1999. She reported
the tensions of the region for the New
Yorker as its Jerusalem correspondent but
turned to fiction as a superior vehicle for
conveying the stresses and emotions she
observed. She switched from fact to fic-
tion to escape the shackles of reality. What
she saw and experienced became the back-
drop for her suspense-laden novel.
The story begins with a heart-rending
scene at a checkpoint between Ramallah
and Jerusalem that is closed because a
terrorist bomb killed 50 Israelis.
Marina Hajimi, a Palestinian born in
Boston and married to Hassan, a polit-
ical prisoner, is desperately trying to
get Ibrahim, her sick son, to Hadassah
Hospital. The sensitive and compas-
sionate Israeli commander, Lt. Ari
Doron, telephones in vain to get per-
mission to admit her. He makes several
calls, but Ibrahim dies. The rest of the
book painstakingly portrays the har-
rowing events that follow the tragedy.
Wilentz is shrewd enough to recognize
that the jarring problems she has identi-
fied do not lend themselves to a solu-
tion. She tries to present both sides of
the conflict between Israelis and
Palestinians but manifests a slight bias
toward the Palestinians even though
Doron is a sympathetic character and
some of the Palestinians are repellent.
Wilentz demonstrates a deep sense of
empathy, showing through her fiction-
al version of Middle. East events that
there are heroes and villains among
both the Palestinians and the Israelis.
In the United States, we believe in the
myth that every riddle can be solved.
Martyr's Crossing contradicts that myth.
— Reviewed by Morton I. Teicher

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