June 29th, 2009 at 12:27 am (Israel by the Book, Time Warp Israel Travel Diary)
Dec. 3rd, 1955. In the evening I went to a tea in the home of Mrs Chazar (Mr Chazar was the Minister of Education of Israel, now a Professor). The occasion was to get together with a group of women from all parts of the world. These women are mostly delegates of societies like Hadassah etc. There were some from America, South Africa, England, Sweden, Suisse. I had a very nice time. These women also take a course in the seminar for 6 weeks and tour the country in the same time.
Comments
May 14th, 2009 at 3:09 pm (Israel by the Book)
Very exciting! Tour Israel by the book: the tour follows the autobiography of Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, through Jerusalem, and the classic, O Jerusalem, by Larry Collins and Dominque LaPierre.
Contact Drive-Israel.com for details.
Comments
May 10th, 2009 at 3:12 pm (Israel by the Book)
Oz, born in Jerusalem in 1939, now lives in Arad and teaches at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He has been a visiting Fellow at Oxford and a visiting professor at Princeton. Dressed in a brown turtleneck and sports coat, Oz said that the “news are not awful” despite the reports from CNN. He urged the audience not to be completely devoted to the news broadcasts but to leave time to experience the entire range of human emotions from love to loneliness. “Otherwise,” Oz said, “we have given in to the fanatics who seek complete attention to their cause.” The Israel that hardly ever makes it to the news broadcast, “is an Israel where people are tempermental, noisy, hedonistic and secular to the bone. Israelis are great talkers and poor listeners, a country of 6.5 million prime ministers! I love Israel,” Oz said, “even when I cannot stand it!”
Oz spoke about the “great and simple things” in life such as loss, love, loneliness, rage, compassion. Oz took five years to write The Same Sea and he even went to Cypress alone to be able to concentrate on it. But there at the end of each day of writing, he found himself making notes and sketches, writing verse and rhymes and he realized that this was how the book had to be written, not only to tell a story, but also to “sing and dance.” His goal became to write a novel taken back to its “gutsy roots of shameless storytelling”. It is also a very personal story, at once both fiction and confession. The story is set in Bat Yam and tells the story of a prodigal son, his beautiful girlfriend, his father, sex and ghosts. The tale transcends politics and tells of the possibilities of more than forgiveness, but indeed of momentary communion between enemies. But it is not a political book and Oz pleaded with the audience not to read it as a political text.
Comments
