The Wandering Jew Has Arrived - Softcover

Albert Londres

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9652298891 ISBN 13: 9789652298898

Publisher: Gefen Publishing House, 2017

Synopsis

In 1929 Albert Londres, a non-Jew and renowned journalist, set out to document the lives of Jews at this time. His travels to England, Eastern Europe and finally Palestine produced the literary masterpiece, The Wandering Jew has Arrived.

In the East End of London, Londres is moved by the unswerving faith of the Jews. In Eastern Europe, he is astounded by the misery and plight he witnesses. The bleak picture is redeemed by his gentle humor, sharp observations and the unforgettable portraits he paints of the exotic individuals he encounters along his way.

Londres vividly depicts the birth of Zionism and the wave of pogroms that propelled Jewish immigration to Palestine at the turn of the twentieth century. In Palestine, he discovers the new metamorphosed Jew, and his succinct, harrowing descriptions of the Arab massacres of the Jews of Hebron and Safed expose an age-old animosity that is still very much alive today.

Presciently, Londres's investigation provides startling insight into how the unthinkable - the Holocaust - could happen, sweeping across Europe barely a decade after the publication of his book. His evocative, passionately and very personally told story transports readers back to a pivotal moment in history and offers an invaluable perspective on Jewish life in the early twentieth century, on the nascent days of the State of Israel, and on the ongoing strife that has engulfed the region ever since. The Wandering Jew Has Arrived is as relevant today as when first penned.

About this title

About the Author

Albert Londres (1884-1932), was a pioneer of investigative journalism in the early twentieth century. In his search for the ''truth,'' Londres traveled across the world documenting cruelty and injustice and his reports for the French press helped change public opinion and policies towards penal colonies, forced labor, mental asylums and the exploitation of black Africans. The Wandering Jew Has Arrived is based on a series of articles he wrote for the French newspaper Le Parisien. The Albert Londres Prize, on a par with the Pulitzer Prize, is awarded every year to the top two journalists in France.

Review

Wow! Every so often you come across a book which is a treasure.

The Wandering Jew Has Arrived which I received as a gift from Isaac Bougie Herzog, written in 1929 by Albert Londres an non-Jewish French investigative journalist who launched on a trip to document the situation of the Jews one decade before the Holocaust. With some humor, deep and penetrating understanding he documents Jews in London, in far corners of East Europe and in Palestine. Buy and read. --Naftali Bennett, Member of Knesset, Minister of Education and Minister of Diaspora Affairs

Read today, The Wandering Jew Has Arrived can be seen as a chilling and prophetic piece of historical reportage. And so, a dozen years after the Balfour Declaration, he began his investigations into the economic status of the Jews in Europe and their views on Zionism. --Diane Cole, Jewish Review of Books

The quality of Londres' noticing is itself worthy of our notice. It allows us to take a fresh, retrospective glance, however aching, over the nearly nine decades that have intervened between his way of noticing and ours. Our profession is not to give pleasure, nor to do harm, Londres once said. It is to twist the pen into the wound. In giving voice to a Jewish world on the eve of rupture, unhealed to this day, his pen found its full measure of poetry and eloquence. --Benjamin Balint, Haaretz

Edition details

• Publisher: Gefen Publishing House
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 9652298891
• ISBN 13: 9789652298898
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 120