PIONEERS IN ISRAEL

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 17, 1961

The granddaughter of Shmuel Dayan, who was a teenage Palestine immigrant in 1908, is herself the author of two realistic novels of modern Israel. She has here selected from material gathered from fifty years of her grandfather's writings (letters, diaries, articles, etc., written in Hebrew) what is pertinent to his story:-from emigration from Russia, through the earliest Kibbutz (Degania), the first Moshav (the communal settlement, Nahala) the running fight for survival, against Arabs, against British -- and then the current problems of not only settlement of new immigrants, but of adjusting them to the crying need of assimilation and new land developments. While the book seems at times disjointed and demands of the reader a measure of initial interest in the subject, the end result is rewarding. One relives the personal life, the challenge of the impossible, the realization; one senses the inner problems of sacrifice and Adjustment to the goal of the whole rather than the individual, the living of a Utopia, a social plan, the acceptance of compromise. This is the making of a nation seen from the inside -- as recorded while it happened. There are strange gaps. It is not a political document. The War of Liberation is passed over as a thing experienced and won. Todays' problem with the new immigrants looms large and is yet a war to be won. This is documentary evidence.

Pub Date: April 17, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION