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Israel is smaller than New Jersey, with 0.11% of the world's population, yet captures a lion's share of headlines. It looks like one country on CNN, a very different one on al-Jazeera. The BBC has their version, The New York Times theirs. But how does Israel look to Israelis? Israel is smaller than New Jersey, with 0.11% of the world's population, yet captures a lion's share of headlines. It looks like one country on CNN, a very different one on al-Jazeera. The BBC has their version, The New York Times theirs. But how does Israel look to Israelis? The answers are varied, and they have been brought together here in one of the most original books about Israel in decades. From battlefields to bedrooms to boardrooms, discover the colliding worlds in which an astounding mix of 7.2 million devoutly traditional and radically modern people live. You'll meet "Arab Jews" who fled Islamic countries, dreadlock-wearing Ethiopian immigrants who sing reggae in Hebrew, Christians in Nazareth who publish an Arabic-style Cosmo, young Israeli Muslims who know more about Judaism than most Jews of the Diaspora, ultra-Orthodox Jews on "Modesty Patrols," and more. Interweaving hundreds of personal stories with intriguing new research, The Israelis is lively, irreverent, and always fascinating.… (more)
User reviews
Rosenthal refuses to deny or shy away from the at times gross inequality within the State of Israel between both Jews and non-Jews from a large variety of different backgrounds. One gets a definite sense that the country which was founded on a war of independence, and has seldom seen peace since, has inherited some of the negative aspects of this reality.
In this way and many others one sees that people from different social, ethnic and economic backgrounds are often at odds, but also in a number of instances live cheek-by-jowl. It's as complex as any other country in the world if not more so and an understanding of its people, their ties to Jewish history and the complexities of integration of Jews from many different backgrounds makes a very interesting read.