TWELVE TRIBES

An American Jew of Israeli parents returns to Israel to delve into the complicated makeup of that country’s society and demographics.

In his latest book, Michaeli, a Jewish author and activist who hails from Chicago, returns to the adopted land of his parents, early kibbutzim residents who survived the Holocaust. During several years of visits from 2014 to 2018, the author interviewed Israeli citizens and refugees in order to document their stories of survival and aspiration. Though the narrative initially lacks a concrete theme and meanders, Michaeli eventually hits his stride, offering useful, focused sociological portraits of his many subjects. “My goal was to document Israel at this crucial historical moment,” he writes, “and so I kept my literary lens at street level, letting conversations unspool and allowing people to speak for themselves.” On his first visit, when bombs were falling between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, he visited his brother, Gabriel, 17 years his senior, who was born on a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee. Gabi, a lawyer, opened a whole world of contacts for his brother, and the narrative progresses through a wide-ranging variety of on-the-ground reportage, uncovering a teeming world of Israelis and Palestinians working and living in uneasy proximity. Whether visiting the Tel Aviv suburbs, fashionable cafes in Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Ponevezh Yeshiva, “one of the essential institutions of the Haredi world,” Michaeli reveals aspects of the country’s character that historians and journalists have been unable to capture. “Neither a cautionary tale nor an international role model, Israel is a microcosm, a tiny domain that contains the truth of how the world really works,” writes the author. “The state’s survival will be determined, then, by the extent to which it is able to accommodate all its tribes, creating a system that respects each tribe’s integrity, but ensures that all are able to contribute to the collective.”

A diligently gathered series of personal stories shows a world defined by difficulty and complexity.