For Gordis, Begin stands as an exemplary leader whose selflessness and deep loyalty to the Jewish people and to Israel...
A life of Menachem Begin (1913–1992) considers his legacy.
With multiple biographies of Begin published in the last 10 years, Gordis (Senior Vice President/Shalem Coll.; The Promise of Israel, 2012, etc.) re-examines the controversial Israeli leader in order “to look at his life through the lens of the passion he still evokes” and to ask, “What was the ‘magic’ of his draw?” Born in Poland, Begin joined the Zionist Betar movement, founded by the charismatic Vladimir Jabotinsky. Serving in a leadership position in that organization, Begin honed his skills as a public speaker and committed himself to two basic ideas: the Jews must have their own state; independence required military strength. In 1939, Begin and his wife fled Poland for Palestine but got only as far as Vilna, Lithuania. There, Begin was arrested by the Soviets; although sentenced to 8 years in a labor camp, he was released after six months, joined the Free Polish Army and was sent as a soldier to Palestine. For the next 50 years, Begin was an outspoken, galvanizing and divisive force in Israeli politics. Gordis delineates the fierce controversies within the Zionist communities and focuses especially on the rivalry between Begin and David Ben-Gurion, a battle between Begin’s “romantic preoccupation” with Jewish victimization and Ben-Gurion’s pragmatic belief that Israel needed to move beyond the past. That essential difference resulted in opposing military, political and social strategies. In 1977, after losing eight consecutive elections, Begin finally achieved high office and became, as Gordis puts it, “the most Jewish of Israel’s prime ministers.” His first act was to give asylum to 66 Vietnamese refugees, and he insisted on welcoming Ethiopian Jews. Signing a hard-won peace treaty earned both Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat a Nobel Peace Prize.
For Gordis, Begin stands as an exemplary leader whose selflessness and deep loyalty to the Jewish people and to Israel should inspire any who may question “the legitimacy of love for a specific people or devotion to its ancestral homeland.”Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4312-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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