This Year in Jerusalem

Caroline Mack is a librarian in Beckenham, Kent, England.

The major part of this book—a blend of autobiography, Jewish history,
and political commentary—deals with a journey that Richler made to
Israel in 1992. This was only his second visit to Israel, a fact that is
at first surprising in the light of the early chapters of the book,
which chronicle his teenage years in Montreal, when he was an ardent
Zionist and planned to emigrate to Israel. Richler describes how, as he
grew into adulthood, his early convictions were challenged by the
secular world, so that Canada has remained his home. His exploratory
trip to Israel was finally prompted by the death of a childhood friend,
causing Richler to wonder what his life would have been like if he had
emigrated to Israel, and what happened to those of his contemporaries
who did try to live the Zionist dream.

Richler blends information about Jewish and Israeli history and
politics with the experiences and opinions of the people he met on his
journey. Much of the pleasure in reading the book stems from the
author’s ability to reproduce the speech and idiom of the people he
listened to, so that their words come alive and the reader is able to
hear their voices. These voices are, with a few exceptions,
overwhelmingly Jewish; however, Richler has explored a wide spectrum of
viewpoints and addresses many questions and dilemmas surrounding the
state of Israel. He concludes that there are no easy answers to the
Israel-Palestine problem and no clear rights or wrongs.

This thought-provoking book casts fresh light on a tangled political
situation by revealing the human element behind the stories that appear
in the daily news.