Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner - Hardcover

Gilbert, Lela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159403639X ISBN 13: 9781594036392

Publisher: Encounter Books, 2012

Synopsis

Saturday People, Sunday People is a unique portrait of Israel as seen through the eyes of a Christian who came for a visit and has stayed on for more than six years. Long fascinated by a land that has become an abstraction centering on international conflicts of epic proportions, Lela Gilbert arrived in Israel on a personal pilgrimage in August 2006 in the midst of a raging war. What she found was a vibrant country, enlivened by warm-hearted, lively people of great intelligence and decency.

Saturday People, Sunday People tells the story of the real Israel and of real Israelis ordinary and extraordinary and the energetic rhythm of their lives, even during times of tragedy and terror. The book interweaves a memoir of Gilbert’s experiences with Israel’s people and places, alongside a rich account of past and present events that continue to shape the lives of Israelis and the world beyond their borders.

As she watched events unfold in the Middle East, Gilbert witnessed how the simplest facts turned into lies, from denial of the existence of a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to the characterization of Israel’s defensive border fence as Apartheid.” Then Gilbert learned of a story that had all but vanished into history: the persecution and pogroms that drove more than 850,000 Jews from Muslim lands between 1948 and 1970 the Forgotten Refugees.” Their experience is now repeating itself among Christian communities in those same Muslim countries. This cruel pattern embodies the Islamist slogan calling for the elimination of First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.”

About this title

From the Back Cover

Hillel Fradkin
Director, Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, Hudson Institute. 
"Gilbert's new book about Israel and the Middle East is spectacular achievement and a pleasure to read. It manages to combine several things all in a graceful whole: an insightful, vivid and affectionate portrait of Israel's people and their good and just life as they go about building their still young country. It thus makes concrete what would be lost should it succumb to the existential menaces it faces. At the same time it shows what is already in the process of being lost - the very ancient and still vibrant Christian communities of the Middle East - the Sunday People, who are now on the road to suffering the same fate in Muslin countries that the Saturday People - the Jewish refugees from Muslim countries - experienced before. In both regards it makes the general issues of our day - especially the impact of radical Islam -- more accessible through the stories of the people they affect. Remarkably all this is achieved through the powerful personal story of a Christian woman who came to Israel as a curious visitor and is now a sojourner sharing the charms and difficulties of its life."
 

About the Author

Lela Gilbert is a free-lance writer and editor who has authored or co-authored more than sixty published books. Her work includes Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (co-authored, Thomas Nelson, 2013), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (co-authored, Oxford University Press, 2008), and Baroness Cox: Eyewitness to a Broken World (Lion-Hudson, 2007). She is a contributor to numerous news publications including the Jerusalem Post, The Weekly Standard, Jewish World Review, and National Review Online (NRO). An adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, she lives in Jerusalem and California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 159403639X
• ISBN 13: 9781594036392
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312