By Amos Oz
Conversations and reflections on Israeli identity
Subject
Themes
In the autumn of 1982, Amos Oz embarked on a journey through Israel, conducting conversations with ordinary Israelis in their homes, workplaces, and communities. The result is a series of encounters that reveal a nation torn between competing visions of identity, nationalism, and peace. Travelling primarily through Jerusalem and the mountainous regions surrounding it, Oz spoke with ultraorthodox Jews in the Geulah quarter, working-class residents of the development town Bet Shemesh, religious settlers in the West Bank community of Tekoa, kibbutz members, and Palestinians in the occupied territories. None of the conversations were recorded; Oz wrote them down as they happened, capturing the raw voices of his fellow citizens at a moment of national crisis.
In the autumn of 1982, Amos Oz embarked on a journey through Israel, conducting conversations with ordinary Israelis in their homes, workplaces, and communities. The result is a series of encounters that reveal a nation torn between competing visions of identity, nationalism, and peace. Travelling…
Amos Oz's work emerged during a transformative period in Israeli literary and political culture. Published in 1983, shortly after the 1982 Lebanon War and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the book represents a critical intervention into Israeli public discourse at a moment of profound national…
One of the most striking divisions Oz encounters is between those who see Israel as a fulfilment of religious prophecy and those who view it as a secular national project. In Jerusalem's ultraorthodox neighbourhoods, residents treat the Zionist state with disdain barely concealed beneath pragmatic…
The conversations in Bet Shemesh reveal a chasm between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews that runs far deeper than policy disagreements. The young men who gather around Oz's table at a café pour out decades of accumulated grievances, painting a picture of systematic discrimination and cultural erasure.…
In Tekoa, a settlement south of Bethlehem built on the site of the biblical prophet Amos's birthplace, Oz encounters a different vision of Jewish presence in the territories. These settlers are not primarily motivated by security concerns or practical considerations but by a sense of returning to…
Throughout his journey, Oz encounters not merely different political positions but incommensurable worldviews. Each group he visits speaks a different language, operates from different premises, and draws on different sources of legitimacy. The ultraorthodox appeal to divine will and rabbinic…
The Holocaust casts a shadow over every conversation in this book, functioning simultaneously as unanswerable moral argument, source of existential fear, and barrier to criticism. In Jerusalem's ultraorthodox neighbourhoods, graffiti scrawls swastikas alongside denunciations of Zionist authorities,…
Oz begins his journey in the Geulah quarter of Jerusalem, where he grew up, finding it transformed into an ultraorthodox enclave that has rejected Zionism entirely. The streets still bear relics of the British Mandate, but the grocery stores now house men studying Scriptures whilst the neighbourhood…
Oz travels to Bet Shemesh, a development town that has evolved dramatically from its origins as a transit camp. The town now features white apartment blocks in Givat Sharett, a neighbouring hill settlement whose residents commute to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the older Bet Shemesh where many…
Oz visits Tekoa, a settlement south of Bethlehem built on the site where the biblical prophet Amos was born. The community sits on rocky hills in the Judean desert, its prefabricated apartment blocks and private villas jarring against the ancient landscape. Most residents are immigrants from Russia,…
Oz visits Ofra, another West Bank settlement, where he engages in extended arguments with religious nationalist settlers about the future of Israel, the territories, and the possibility of peace. These conversations represent the intellectual articulation of settler ideology, moving beyond the…
Oz ventures into Palestinian communities to hear Arab perspectives on the occupation and the conflict. These conversations reveal a mirror image of Israeli fears and hopes: Palestinians speak of dispossession, humiliation under military rule, the daily indignities of checkpoints and permits, land…
Near the end of his journey, Oz encounters a figure he calls a Cosmic Jew, someone who embodies a particular strand of Jewish identity that transcends national boundaries and political categories. This person represents Jewish universalism at its most expansive, viewing Jewish identity not as ethnic…
By Amos Oz
Subject
Themes
In the autumn of 1982, Amos Oz embarked on a journey through Israel, conducting conversations with ordinary Israelis in their homes, workplaces, and communities. The result is a series of encounters that reveal a nation torn between competing visions of identity, nationalism, and peace. Travelling primarily through Jerusalem and the mountainous regions surrounding it, Oz spoke with ultraorthodox Jews in the Geulah quarter, working-class residents of the development town Bet Shemesh, religious settlers in the West Bank community of Tekoa, kibbutz members, and Palestinians in the occupied territories. None of the conversations were recorded; Oz wrote them down as they happened, capturing the raw voices of his fellow citizens at a moment of national crisis.