Aliyah

[melannen]

I would like a book, fictional or nonfictional, about Jewish settlers in Palestine during the time of the first and/or second Aliyah - so, from the beginning of Zionism in the 1880s until the start of the First World War.

I read "The Aaronsohn Saga", which is about what some of those settlers and their children *did* during the war, and found it fascinating, but I found the glimpses of what life was like in the early Jewish towns even more fascinating.

And there's a sci-fi story that's tickling at me, about colonization and identity and the land, but I know I need much better research first. Books about coming to a Jewish homeland in general would also be good- "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" is already on my list. But most of the books I've found about the modern history of Israel/Palestine has been after the Mandate; more about international politics, race, and 20th-century-style nationalism, and less about just coming together and making a new home in an old land, which is what I'd like to read.

Comments

[stellar_dust]

... so hey, did I tell you about the book assigned to our interpretation class? People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.

It's not what you're looking for. It's a lot about international politics, race, and nationalism. And it's much more about being forced from a home (again and again over 500 years) than about coming together to make a new one. (Nothing really happy ever seems to have happened to the Sarajevo Haggadah.) But because it covers select bits of Jewish history from 1480-2002, it might be relevant for you to read, if only for extra background.

[melannen]

Yeah, it's pretty easy to find accounts of the Jewish experience in general, or the history of Israel in the long term. What I really want is something about settlement, in the period when it was mostly just private groups and the patterns of power, opposition and violence in the region hadn't quite yet fallen into their modern patterns.

[gool_duck]

Are you limited to books in English?

[melannen]

I could probably do one in Spanish if it was exactly what I wanted, but I'm not up to reading Hebrew or any other non-Latinate language, unfortunately.