By Gabby Deutch
At some point in high school, I think it was junior year, I decided to stage a rebellion. I didn’t run away from home, nor did I decide to suddenly stay out past curfew or not do my homework. Instead, I decided not to read Like Dreamers, Yossi Klein HaLevi’s best-selling book about Israel in the wake of 1967’s Six Day War.
I know, I know. This seems less like an act of rebellion than a normal decision not to read a book because of any number of reasons—I didn’t have time, I wasn’t interested in the topic, I was reading a different book, etc. And if it was a rebellion, it was a pathetic one. Actually, though, the book sounded exactly like something I would enjoy (and when I did read it after my raucous rebellion came to an end, I loved it). But I grew up with two lovers of the Jewish literary tradition as parents, so for once in my life I thought I should take a chance to say: “A-ha! Jewish books aren’t the only ones that matter!” (Yes, that was how I rebelled: reading a different genre of books.) Good-bye to bedtime stories set in Chelm and Exodus by Leon Uris and Holocaust memoirs.
Like everything else in the world, my parents ended up being right. Jewish books are still my favorite, and HaLevi’s Like Dreamers sits near the top of that list.
When I received a copy of the book in the mail from Nachshon, I laughed; my family already owned two copies. But when I set off to Israel in January, I packed my new copy and knew I’d read it at some point during the semester. After all, Yossi Klein HaLevi is a visionary in the Jewish world, and I wouldn’t want to show up to our meeting with him unprepared.
I brought the book with me to Europe for a week, and I was done by the time I got back to Israel. I will happily admit that my rebellion failed: HaLevi hooked me on page one. I could not put the book down all week.
We sat down with HaLevi last month on the first night of our politics-themed Shabbaton, our second to last of the semester. The weekend was a whirlwind of ideologies, excursions, and (in my opinion) far too much pessimism. HaLevi, though, appeared hopeful. Most importantly, he didn’t just talk about this conflict in the context of the political situation—he talked about the global Jewish community and, as he put it, the “Jewish story.” His book, he said, was his contribution to the Jewish narrative, an attempt to connect the disparate worldviews of Jews from different backgrounds—religious and secular, kibbutznik and settler, left wing and right wing. HaLevi also made the case for “Jewish peoplehood” as the basis of Jews’ connection to one another. If you see yourself as part of the Jewish story, then you count among the Jewish people.
HaLevi had the rare ability to both captivate his audience and connect with his guests on a personal level. He spoke with humility and clarity. I went into the meeting expecting a discussion of how and why he wrote the book. To be sure, he discussed that, but I was also thrilled to hear HaLevi delve into his theories about the Jewish people, the bridge between American and Israeli Jewry, and how he is working to better the Jewish world through his work at the Hartman Institute.
For a history nerd like me, meeting the author of one of my favorite books is akin to anyone else meeting Beyonce. (Okay, I’d be happy to do that, too.) One of the tenets of the Nachshon Project’s mission is innovation, and in HaLevi I saw a man dedicated to creating a more inclusive future for the Jewish people. And as a fellow journalist and writer, I walked away from this meeting with the knowledge that it might be possible to merge my passions for writing and for Judaism. He said that Jewish writers have an obligation to examine and tell the story of the Jewish people. If I choose to follow this obligation, my mission is clear. Now it’s time to get to work telling the story.
