In Twelve Tribes, award-winning journalist Ethan Michaeli weaves together the personal histories of Israelis of all tribes into a narrative of social and political change. Readers will meet the aging revolutionaries who founded Israel’s kibbutz movement and the brilliant young people working for the country’s booming Big Tech companies. They will join thousands of ultra-Orthodox Haredim at a joyous memorial and marvel at the life experience of Belaynesh Zevadia, who came to Israel from Ethiopia, and decades later returned to her birth country as the ambassador from Israel. They will be challenged by portraits of Israeli Arabs navigating the opportunities and discrimination in a democratic state, through conversations with Palestinians who are striving to build institutions on nascent land, and by the Israeli settlers who are seeking to establish a Jewish presence on the same land. Framed by Michaeli’s experience as an Israeli American, Twelve Tribes illuminates the complex dynamics within the country and reveals Israel as a land of paradoxical intersections‚ a place where all of the world’s struggles meet, and a microcosm for the challenges faced by all nations today.
Nonfiction
Twelve Tribes: Promise and Peril in the New Israel
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2020
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