arts & entertainment
Peering Into The Soul Of Modern Israel
A look at paratroopers who helped reunite Jerusalem in the Six-Day War; today, they
exemplify the religious, social, political and cultural differences that divide a nation.
Michael M. Rosen
JNS.org
R
eligious Zionism and the kibbutz
movement are "the two messianic
streams within Zionism that
wanted more than just a safe refuge for the
Jewish people says American-born Israeli
author and think-tanker Yossi Klein Halevi.
In his estimation,
those forces — as well
as their internal struggle
and their collective battle
against the "normalizing"
forces of Israeli society —
have shaped Israeli his-
e tory since the conclusion
Yossi Klein
of the 1967 Six-Day War.
Halevi
In Like Dreamers:
The Story of the Israeli
Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and
Divided a Nation (Harper), a new book
assessing the battle for Jerusalem and its
legacy, Klein Halevi skillfully explores these
intersecting forces by examining the bri-
gade of Israeli paratroopers who reunited
Israel's capital.
"For me, what this book really is about
is the fate of Israel's utopian dreams:'
said Klein Halevi, a research fellow at the
Shalom Hartman Institute, a self-described
"center of transformative thinking and
teaching that addresses the major chal-
lenges facing the Jewish people:"
The book traces the professional and per-
sonal trajectories of seven veterans of the
55th Brigade, including Arik Achmon, the
kibbutznik chief intelligence officer turned
avid capitalist; Yoel Bin-Nun, rabbi and
Jews
founder of two settlements and a yeshiva in
enemy, as well as peacetime, when "they're
Judea and Samaria; Meir Ariel, poet-singer
fighting often with one another to help
who wrote and performed "Jerusalem of
shape the character and the destiny of
Iron" in the immediate wake of the 1967
Israel" — a vitality, said Klein Halevi, which
war; a conceptual artist
"impels us forward but
and environmentalist;
also is often the cause
two religious Zionists
of our stalemate against
who spearheaded the
ourselves:"
Gush Emunim settlement
Yet by the end of the
movement; and even a
story in the mid-2000s
disillusioned leftist who
— or at least where
allied with Syria.
Klein Halevi chooses to
The book, Klein Halevi
end it—the stalemate
said, originated in a
breaks, at least modestly,
newspaper article about
as Israelis have come
the brigade he read in
to embrace a grudging,
an Israeli daily some 15
tough-nosed centrism,
years ago.
even unity, as illus-
"I remember being
trated by the book's final
:2
YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI
struck by that and
vignette: Bin-Nun's re-
thought this would make
enactment of the battle
Like Dreamers interweaves the
an interesting article
for Jerusalem in front of
stories of seven paratroopers
someday," the author
a religiously and politi-
who reunited Jerusalem in 1967.
said. "And it turned into
cally ecumenical crowd.
an 11-year article."
"After 45 years of
This book-length article, which Klein
vehement and often brutal disagreement
Halevi regards as a "deeply revealing group
between left and right:' Klein Halevi said, "a
and individual portrait:' traverses Israel's
majority of Israelis today are a little bit left
political, cultural, economic and spiritual
and a little bit right at the same time:'
divides by illuminating the transition of the
He's optimistic about "the emergence of a
movement to settle the West Bank and Gaza new political sobriety in Israel" but cautions
from a secular to a religious enterprise, as
that, perhaps paradoxically, "being a cen-
well as the slow but inexorable transforma-
trist in the Israeli context means strongly
tion of the nation's economy from lethargic
embracing opposite principles:'
socialist basket-case to thriving capitalist
Of course, many chapters remain to be
success.
written in Israel's enduring story, but the
This careful analysis includes wartime,
ones Klein Halevi tells well in Like Dreamers
when these seven men from wildly diver-
result from tireless journalistic efforts.
gent backgrounds unite against a common
The author struggled with "a deep reluc-
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Babs Comes Home
The PBS series Great Performances
will air the concert film Barbra
Streisand: Back to Brooklyn at 9 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 29, on Detroit Public
Television-Channel 56.
In October 2012, Streisand, 71, put
on two sold-out concerts in Brooklyn's
new arena-style venue, the Barclays
Center. She opened
the concerts by
proclaiming: "I love
people from Brooklyn
because they're real
[and] down to earth.
They tell it like it is."
Streisand was joined
Streisand
on stage by her son,
70
Nover,
LI KE
DREA MERS
E STORY OF THE ISRAELI PARATROOPERS
WHO REUNITED JERUSALEM AND DIVIDED A NATION
WHOP Of
rx
Jason Gould, 46, the son of her ex-hus-
band, actor Elliott Gould, 75. He sang a
solo song and a duet with his mother.
Lincoln In The News
Last week, conservative news out-
lets were ablaze with the news that
President Obama had left out the
words "under God" when he recited
the Gettysburg Address at the
request of famous documentary film-
maker and former Ann Arborite Ken
Burns (The Civil War).
Some retracted their harsh words
when it was revealed that President
Obama, at Burns' request, had recited
the first draft of the address, which
didn't include the words "under God."
Videos of 53 famous persons reciting
the address are on Burns' new website,
learntheaddress.org . They include all
..TO TIM MIROFN OF fOell
the living American
presidents and many
members of the tribe:
CNN anchor Wolf
Blitzer, 65; Civil War-
era historian Eric
Foner, 70; former U.S.
Holzer
Rep. Gabby Giffords,
43; Meet the Press
host David Gregory, 43; Lincoln scholar
Harold Holzer, 64; Peter J. Rubinstein,
79, the senior rabbi at Manhattan's
Central Synagogue; Jerry Seinfeld, 59;
Steven Spielberg, 66; U.S. Rep. Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, 47; and NPR legal
correspondent Nina Totenberg, 69.
Levine Is Sexiest
People magazine has named rock
musician and The Voice coach Adam
Levine, 34, its Sexiest Man Alive for
tance on the part of some of the key per-
sonalities to truly open up" — par for the
course for Israelis of that generation.
At the beginning of the project, his sub-
jects regarded him as a yeled chutz, a nega-
tive term meaning "outsider child:' which
carries connotations from kibbutz days.
Yet Klein Halevi wore this term as a
badge of pride, noting that "maybe only a
yeled chutz could have written this book
— an attempt to create a unified narrative
of the last 45 years that embraces left and
right in the same story:'
Indeed, some of the keenest socio-
political analyses in modern history were
written by outsiders; Alexis de Tocqueville's
Democracy in America comes to mind.
Here, on a smaller scale, Klein Halevi
weaves a tale that is impassioned and dis-
passionate, engaged and impartial, reveal-
ing and objective.
Regarding his characters, the author
confided that he feels a personal attach-
ment "to every one of them:' and yet
throughout Like Dreamers, he subjects
their individual and ideological arcs to vig-
orous, although always sensitive, scrutiny.
Klein Halevi characterized the book,
which he researched and wrote over the
course of more than a decade, as "a combi-
nation of intense frustration and occasional
exhilaration — a nagging feeling that I'm
not doing this story justice:'
He needn't worry. As a work of politi-
cal, cultural and religious history, Like
Dreamers is a triumph.
❑
Michael M. Rosen is an attorney and writer in
San Diego.
2013. Harrison Ford, 71, is the only
other tribe member to be named
"sexiest" since 1985, when the award
began; he won in 1998.
Levine's father is Jewish; his moth-
er is the daughter of a non-Jewish
mother/Jewish father; his maternal
grandfather descends from English
Jews and maybe some Sephardim; his
stepmother is Jewish and the mother
of Adam's half-brother, Sam.
While Levine says he identifies
as Jewish, he was
raised with little
Jewish observance
and declined a
bar mitzvah. He is
secular now, and
engaged to 24-year-
old Namibian model
Behati Prinsloo. ❑
Levine