Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Biblical Hebron
Chapter 2. Holy Site
Chapter 3. Community
Chapter 4. Catastrophe
Chapter 5. Return
Chapter 6. Renewal
Chapter 7. Crisis
Chapter 8. Endurance
Chapter 9. Legitimacy
Afterword: Memory
Epilogue
Bibliography
About the Author
Jerold S. Auerbach is professor of history at Wellesley College. His books include Explorers in Eden: Pueblo Indians and the Promised Land, Are We One? Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel, Jacob's Voices, Rabbis and Lawyers, Justice Without Law? and Unequal Justice. His articles and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including The New Republic, The Nation, Harper's, and The New York Times.
Auerbach gives a passionate account of the Jewish presence in
Hebron, and in reading the book the reader can truly comprehend
what lures Jews to that dangerous place....This is a worthwhile
achievement. His book is a long-needed contribution of a serious
scholar to an ongoing academic debate, in which the Hebron Jews
were left without a decisive, unapologetic, systematically argued
voice.
*Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal Of Jewish Studies*
It has been said that historians are more powerful than the gods
because the latter cannot change history. But American historian
Jerold S. Auerbach has done something even more powerful; he has
demonstrated a clairvoyance which is quite astonishing in a book
that he began researching years ago. Hebron Jews...while focusing
initially on the coordinates of Hebron from the Biblical era to
yesterday opens up a broad and stimulating inquiry on the settler
movement in general and its reverberations on the chasm between the
right and the left in the current Israeli political spectrum. It is
a tribute to the author's competence in matters historical....In
this lively literary pilgrimage Auerbach shows what many have
forgotten — that Hebron was a vital Jewish centre comparable even
to Jerusalem....Auerbach's book is a model of disinterested
research which, through the alchemical process of fine writing and
passionate advocacy of the truth, delivers a highly readable sage
about the travail of modern Zionism.
*Chicago Jewish Star*
Auerbach deftly develops the history of Hebron and examines the
motivations of settlers who choose to live there. The reader comes
away understanding how significant elements of a peace process that
are bandied about as feasible, such as resigning all of Hebron to
the Palestinians, impacts on real people with serious historical
and political arguments.
*Jewish Book World*
Broad and stimulating.... Intriguing and revalatory.... Auerbach's
book is a model of disinterested research which, through the
alchemical process of fine writing and passionate advocacy of the
truth, delivers a highly readable saga about the travail of modern
Zionism.
*Midstream: A Quarterly Jewish Review*
This lyrical, passionate, and engaged volume should be required
reading for anyone who seeks to understand the Jews of Hebron on
their own terms. Absorbing, sometimes infuriating, and always
informative.
*Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University*
Auerbach cuts through reams of distortion and misrepresentation to
provide an indispensable account of Jews in Hebron from the time of
biblical Abraham to the contentious present. Scrupulously
researched, the book illumes the contemporary Middle East and the
workings of collective memory, all the while engaging the casual
reader who is looking for a riveting story.
*Ruth Wisse, Harvard University*
A fine, original piece of work, thoroughly researched and
beautifully organized. Like Auerbach's earlier books, this one is
solidly and intelligently documented, and handsomely written, in a
prose style that is lucid, vigorous, and graceful. Auerbach is
perambulating a land mine, confronting liberal dogmatisms of the
most ferocious kind. Yet he has maintained a delicate balance
between his sympathies and his principle of scholarly
disinterestedness; to put it another way, he is able to show that
good causes sometimes attract bad advocates. Another kind of
balance he achieves is to consider simultaneously the Arab-Jewish
struggle over Hebron and the religious Zionist-secular Zionist
struggle over Hebron. This is an important book, a history at once
sympathetic and dispassionate.
*Edward Alexander, University of Washington*
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