Hebron, the eter­nal city of the patri­archs, is today also a city of con­flict. In his apt­ly named book, Hebron Jews: Mem­o­ry and Con­flict in the Land of Israel, Jerold Auer­bach tries to under­stand the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty that lives in that con­test­ed city.
Auer­bach notes that when one thinks of the con­flict with­in Israel the set­tlers are the extrem­ists, and the most extreme set­tlers live in Hebron.
Approach­ing the top­ic unemo­tion­al­ly, Auer­bach defly devel­ops the his­to­ry of Hebron and exam­ines the moti­va­tions of set­tlers who choose to live there. The read­er comes away under­stand­ing how sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of a peace process that are bandied about as fea­si­ble, such as resign­ing all of Hebron to the Pales­tini­ans, impacts on real peo­ple with seri­ous his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal arguments.