By Bill Beuttler
Sep 28, 2009
Journalist Rich Cohen has built an impressive career writing nonfiction books about “Tough Jews,’’ beginning with one of that title (a history of Jewish mobsters) and on through such works as “The Avengers’’ (the story of three Jewish resistance fighters during World War II) and “Sweet and Low’’ (an insider’s look at the family that invented the sugar packet and Sweet’N Low - and later disinherited Cohen’s mother “and her issue’’ from the resulting fortune).
It was probably only a matter of time, then, until Cohen, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines, tackled Israel. The result is “Israel Is Real,’’ a smart, energetic overview of the history of the place and its relation to the Jewish people, from biblical times to the present.
Cohen’s narrative is propelled by muscular prose and an irreverent wit at times reminiscent of Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show.’’ It is peopled with everyone from Flavius Josephus (“the first writer of the Exile -- the first to realize that for a stateless Jew, power comes only by making yourself useful to the goyim’’) and King Herod (who in rebuilding the Second Temple “followed the plan described in the Book of Kings - God was the architect, Herod his contractor’’ through various familiar leaders of the state of Israel, with pauses en route for pivotal but lesser-known figures such as Theodor Herzl (the father of Zionism), Samuel Zemurray (the banana peddler-turned-business magnate whom Cohen suggests resigned his job running United Fruit for a year to play key backstage roles in the creation of Israel), and “the perfectly named Rabbi Abraham Kook’’ (founder of the settler movement).
No comments:
Post a Comment