Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist: The Story of a Transformation – A Wry and Moving Memoir of Extremism, Holocaust Legacy, and Hope - Softcover

Halevi, Yossi Klein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062362321 ISBN 13: 9780062362322

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2014

Synopsis

The poignant and insightful memoir from Yossi Klein Halevi, the award-winning journalist and author of the acclaimed Like Dreamers—a coming-of-age story about a traumatic family history, radical politics, and spiritual transformation that speaks to a new generation struggling to understand what it means to be Jewish in America.

The child of a Holocaust survivor, Yossi Klein Halevi grew up in 1960s Brooklyn perceiving reality through the lens of his family’s brutal past. Increasingly identifying with their history of suffering, he regarded the non-Jewish world with fear and loathing. Determined to take action—and seek retribution—he became a disciple of the late rabbi Meir Kahane and a member of the radical fringe of the American Jewish community.

In this wry and moving account, Halevi explores the deep-rooted anger of his adolescence and early adulthood that fueled his increasingly aggressive activism. He reveals how he started to question his beliefs—and his self-inflicted suffering as a hostage of history—and see the world from his own clear perspective.

As a journalist and author, Halevi has dedicated himself to fostering interfaith reconciliation. Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist explains how such a transformation can happen—giving hope that peaceful coexistence between faiths is possible.

About this title

About the Author

Yossi Klein Halevi is an American-born writer who has lived in Jerusalem since 1982. He is a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land and Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, which won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Family Book of the Year Award for Best Jewish Book in 2013. Together with Imam Abdullah Antelpi of Duke University, he co-directs the Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative. He and his wife, Sarah, have three children.

From the Back Cover

From Yossi Klein Halevi—the critically acclaimed author of Like Dreamers, winner of the Jewish Book Council's Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award—comes a memoir, published in paperback for the first time with a new introduction, about his journey from Jewish extremism to interfaith reconciliation.

The child of a Holocaust survivor, Yossi Klein Halevi grew up in 1960s Brooklyn perceiving reality through the lens of his family's brutal past. Determined to take action—and seek retribution—he became a disciple of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and a member of the radical fringe of the American Jewish community.

In this wry and moving account, Halevi explores the deep-rooted anger of his adolescence and early adulthood that fueled his militant politics. He reveals how he began to question his beliefs and see the world from his own clear perspective, freeing himself from being a hostage to rage.

Speaking to a new generation struggling to understand what it means to be Jewish in America, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist explains how such a transform-ation can happen—giving hope that peaceful coexistence among faiths is possible.

From the Inside Flap

When Yossi Klein Halevi was a boy, his father told him stories - not fairy tales, but stories of his own harsh past, of living in a tiny hole in the ground to hide from the Nazis, of the nightmarish experience of the Jewish people. He grew up, his father's stories grew within him, and Halevi found himself identifying more and more with the persecution and suffering of his people. Even as a boy, he wanted justice, retribution, and action. By the sixth grade, Halevi was learning how to handle a gun, handing out leaflets, joining right-wing movements. Soon he was swept away by the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane and was on the front lines of every protest, hoping to see his face and raised fist on the television news reports. At the climax of his activism, he led an unprecedented demonstration in Moscow to force the world to free Soviet Jews. But then Halevi began questioning the basic premises of his life, repudiating rage as a worldview, and trying to free himself from the bitter accounts of history. He wished for a life that embraced a world different from his father's. In Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, Halevi looks back on his youth with wry affection, reflecting on who he was - and why - and seeing his hotheaded and passionate fellow activists from the perspective of time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062362321
• ISBN 13: 9780062362322
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384