Bless the Bit­ter and the Sweet is the diary of Nao­mi Har­ris Rosen­blatt, a teenage Jew­ish girl in Pales­tine, from 1947 to 1952, trans­lat­ed from Hebrew to English.

Nao­mi was born in Haifa to Eng­lish-speak­ing par­ents, attend­ed the pres­ti­gious Reali school, and served in the Israeli Navy. Her diary chron­i­cles the ear­ly days of World War II, when well-man­nered British offi­cers came for tea at her par­ents’ home; the pow­er­ful impact of Bible stud­ies; the loss of her hero­ic 21-year-old cousin, Dan­ny, in the War of Inde­pen­dence; and falling pas­sion­ate­ly in love with an Amer­i­can vis­i­tor. Naomi’s diary illu­mi­nates events of a unique peri­od of Jew­ish his­to­ry: expe­ri­ences that shaped her Jew­ish iden­ti­ty to this day.

Enriched with pho­tos and an anec­do­tal intro­duc­tion, this book shares seri­ous and amus­ing sto­ries of pain and pride, courage and hope, that recall mem­o­ries of a pre­vi­ous Jew­ish gen­er­a­tion whose for­ti­tude gave birth to a renewed people.