I suspect that the three writers and compilers of this fascinating anthology have misplaced the apostrophe in their title. Heartbeats – The Insider’s Guide to Israel (An Anthology by Tour Educators) is not a guide to Israel for people who are already well-acquainted with the country from the inside. It is essentially a comprehensive overview of modern Israel written by insiders – 22 men and women of an independent, critical cast of mind, with extensive experience as tour educators.
The people who have contributed to this volume are professionals, skilled in the art of imparting information, and respectful of the opinions and beliefs of others. The essence of tour education is to assist people to enjoy a fully rounded experience, encompassing both the past and the realities of modern life. Heartbeats provides just such an in-depth guide to Israel in all its complexity.
To provide a fully inclusive account of today’s Israel, an astonishingly wide range of topics and issues needs to be covered. Heartbeats touches on more than 30.
The opening section of the book deals with how Israelis are affected by their location, a tiny sliver of land at the junction of three continents. Israel’s story is one of accessibility and separation simultaneously. As Gilad Peled observes: “From snow-capped Mount Hermon in the North, to the coral reefs of the Red Sea in the South… in Israel everything is within reach. Even the future.”
He explains how various, sometimes conflicting, factors go toward shaping what he calls “the Israeli mind” – how Israel being a very small island in an ocean of enemies produces an underlying feeling of constant threat, but on the positive side, also engenders a special “family feel,” a sense of mutual responsibility.
Peled speaks of the weight of 3,000 or more years of history lying heavily on Israelis, and how it engenders the deeply embedded concept that each generation is but one link in a chain stretching far into the past and deep into the future. He notes that in the 2021 UN index of World Happiness, this particular combination of circumstances has resulted in Israel achieving no less than 12th place out of 156 countries surveyed.
Yishay Shavit writes of the special spot that Jerusalem occupies in the Israeli consciousness, while Uri Feinberg describes the integral part that the Israel Defense Forces play in Israeli life, and the “amazing social network” created by the majority of young people serving in the armed forces. Other writers cover the impact on Israeli life of such matters as the national holidays, music, culture, food and environmental issues.
The major political issues affecting Israel today are not forgotten in this wide-ranging survey of modern Israel. We learn of the determination of Israelis living close to the Gaza border not to be forced from their homes, and also about life in Gush Etzion, and the special problems of living in Hebron.
Writers describe with personal knowledge the issues surrounding minorities residing in Israel. Writer and tour educator Nadia Mahmood Giol speaks from her experience of the problems faced by what she calls “Israeli Palestinians,” and the special difficulties of Arab women citizens of Israel. “I have dealt with the ramifications of my complex identity throughout my entire life,” she writes.
There are contributions covering other non-Jewish minorities that form part of Israeli society – the Druze, the Bahai, Christians – but the compilers have not neglected related problems deep within the Jewish family itself.
Rivka Brama tackles head-on the early struggles of Mizrahi immigrants to achieve recognition against the established Ashkenazi elite who ruled Israel in its early years – struggles that boiled over in 1959 into riots, and led to the establishment of the Black Panther movement.
Netanel Zelicovich, who describes himself as “an ardent ultra-Orthodox man,” is equally straight from the shoulder in tackling the dichotomy between the haredi and the secular sectors of modern Israeli society. He terms it “an enormous ideological difference.”
Zelicovich describes how the haredi community is coping with today’s great economic and social changes, and makes a plea for greater understanding from the secular world of the positive values embodied in a haredi life.
In an effort to omit nothing of significance, chapters in Heartbeats cover women’s access to the Western Wall, weddings and conversion, kibbutzim and business, how issues surrounding gender and identity have impacted Israeli society, how perception of the Holocaust has changed over the years, and even a comparison of how Israelis view Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The compilers of Heartbeats undertook a formidably difficult task: to assemble from a group of expert and knowledgeable writers an extensive but in-depth account of modern Israel and its people. In this full and informative survey, illustrated by Erez Aharon’s wonderful artwork, they have succeeded brilliantly. Almost everyone will have something to learn from Heartbeats.■
Heartbeats – The Insider’s Guide to Israel (An Anthology by Leading Tour Educators)Ya’acov Fried, Gilad Peled and Yishay ShavitGefen Publishing House, 2021237 pages, $24.95