Next Year In Jerusalem

"In 1944, I was aware of three youth groups committed to the compelling idea of an independent Jewish state: Hashomer Hatza'ir (The Young Guard), Young Judaea, and Habonim (The Builders). Hashomer Hatza'ir was resolutely Marxist. According to intriguing reports I had heard, it was the custom, on their kibbutzim already established in Palestine, for boys and girls under the age of eighteen to shower together. Hashomer Hatza'ir members in Montreal included a boy I shall call Shloime Schneiderman, a high-school classmate of mine. In 1944, when we were still in eighth grade, Schloime enjoyed a brief celebrity after his photo appeared on the front page of the Montreal Herald. Following a two-cent rise in the price of chocolate bars, he had been a leader in a demonstration, holding high a placard that read: down with the 7cents chocolate bar. Hashomer Hatza'ir members wore uniforms at their meetings: blue shirts and neckerchiefs. "They had real court martials," wrote Marion Magid in a memoir about her days in Habonim in the Bronx in the early fifties, "group analysis, the girls were not allowed to wear lipstick." Whereas, in my experience, the sweetly scented girls who belonged to Young Judaea favored pearls and cashmere twinsets. They lived on leafy streets in the suburb of Outremont, in detached cottages that had heated towel racks, basement playrooms, and a plaque hanging on the wall behind the wet bar testifying to the number of trees their parents had paid to have planted in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. I joined Habonim—the youth group of a Zionist political party, rooted in socialist doctrine—shortly after my bar mitzvah, during my first year at Baron Byng High School. I had been recruited by a Room 41 classmate whom I shall call Jerry Greenfeld..."

An advocate for Palestinian human rights offers an insider's view of the Israeli peace movement, drawing on anecdotes, interviews, and letters to raise awareness about the sufferings of political prisoners, the state's increasing tolerance of apartheid-like discrimination, and the growing movement of Israelis who refuse to participate in anti-Palestinian activities.

Inge Dornewald and Lieselotte Vessely are best friends, the kind of friends who almost always know what the other is thinking. Now, however, they are both thirteen and it is 1937 in Vienna. Inge is Jewish and Lieselotte, at the insistence of her Nazi father, is in the Hitler Youth. Their friendship has become unwise, even dangerous to sustain. Yet in a world of increasing terror and despair, as the situation of Jews in Austria becomes more and more desperate, Inge and Lieselotte secretly struggle against the `Devil in Vienna` to keep their friendship alive. Ages 10+

"Rebecca Levine is tired of being a victim, after years of being relentlessly bullied at school and after her loser-outcast image pushed her to a suicide attempt. Home from the hospital and determined to survive, she wants an emotional makeover, and a study-abroad program in Israel seems like the perfect place for it to happen. But when roommate issues crop up, Rebecca is convinced she'll become the school loser again. Can she overcome her issues and make herself over?"--Back cover.

Next Year in Jerusalem recognizes that Jews have often experienced or imaged periods of exile and return in their long tradition. The fourteen papers in this collection examine this phenomenon from different approaches, genres, and media. They cover the period from biblical times through today. Among the exiles highlighted are the Babylonian Exile (sixth century BCE), the exile after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and the years after the Crusaders (tenth century CE). Events of return include the aftermath of the Babylonian Exile (fifth century BCE), the centuries after the Temple’s destruction (first and second CE), and the years of the establishment of the modern State of Israel (1948 CE). In each instance authors pay close attention to the historical settings, the literature created by Jews and others, and the theological explanations offered (typically, this was seen as divine punishment or reward for Israel’s behavior). The entire volume is written authoritatively and accessibly.