Israela by Batya Casper    Books by Batya Casper - View all · Electra: A Gender Sensitive Study of the Plays Based on the Myth · Israela
Category:	Historical Fiction	Publisher:	Tate Publishing & Enterprises	ISBN-10:	1617778281	Type:	Fiction
Pages:	380	Copyright:	August 15, 2011	ISBN-13:	9781617778285

Buy your copy! Download to your Kindle (eBook) Amazon Amazon Barnes & Noble.com Kindle Edition www.Israelathebook.com Israela is a story of three women and their loved ones torn apart in a country at war. It is about love, secrets and betrayal; but also about hope and heroism, about Arabs saving Jews and Jews healing Arabs; about a family desperately seeking the right path. In Israel, the lives of three women interweave with the story of their country. Ratiba, an Israeli journalist, turns her back on her heritage to marry an Israeli Arab. Her sister Orit, an actor, lives alone and longs for her lost sister. Elisheva is a nurse who dedicates her life to the wounded and the dying. As their lives unfold, the three women find themselves facing choices they would never have envisioned. Here, the ancient pulsates in present time and the biblical holds prominence with the secular. Beneath this modern-day drama unfolds the story of a land and its people, revealing the historical trajectory of two peoples, victims and perpetrators of a biblical curse. I started writing this book for my children. Originally, I wanted to trace the trajectory of modern Israeli history in order to see how we’d arrived at our present reality. I also wrote it for the many people I meet who are ignorant of the complexity and the richness of Israel and Israeli life; ignorant of the temerity that all of its citizens demonstrate, and of the excruciating concerns that tear them apart on a constant basis. I am aware that this is only a perspective, my perspective, perhaps the perspective of many like myself; that it is one side of a conflict that originated way back in prehistorical times. It is perhaps an apologia, perhaps simply a call out there to those of legitimate opposing views, people of a different historical and cultural background who want peace. Perhaps this is a prayer for understanding, for dialogue. In fact, it is mostly a work of fiction, of fantasy, ultimately – of hope. Excerpt There they are, near the litter and the garbage cans outside the back stage door: Of course! Ibrahim, my sister's husband, and the singing uncle I met at his wedding. My first instinct is to rush back into the theater, to hide until they leave. But catastrophic thoughts are pounding with my blood into my head. "What's wrong?" I ask him. "Has something happened to Ruti?"

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Professional Reviews
Fresh and essential outlook
This perceptive, poignant novel offers a fresh and essential outlook on Israel. With memorable characters and an abundance of drama, Israela is gripping reading.
Lou Aronica, New York Times bestselling author.

Reader Reviews for "Israela"

Reviewed by Batya Casper	4/10/2012
* Home * About the Book * About the Author * Purchase Israela * Reviews * Media * Blog * Contact eu Review of Israela, April, 2012 10/04/2012 0 Comments Edit | Settings | Delete Are you sure you want to delete this post? This action is permanent. Yes, delete postNo, keep post http://www.jewishnh.org/reporter/2012/2012-April.pdf Israel becomes a character in the story as we follow the lives of three women growing up in Israel after the the counry’s independence in 1948. In this beautifully written book by Dr. Batya Casper (Tate Publishing, 2011), we explore the debate between the Israelis and the Arabs as they try to live side by side. I found Casper’s way of presenting each side’s view through these women’s eyes really made me feel that I was in their shoes as they try to figure out how to live in peace and why after all this time the Arabs and Israelis cannot find a way to get along. Her descriptions are poignant, and her viewpoint is objective. Our main characters are Orit, a child rescued from the Holocaust and brought to Israel, then adopted by parents who are sympathetic to the idea of Arabs and Israelis co-existing happily; her half-sister, Ruiti, also known by the Arab name Ratiba, who takes this idea so much to heart that she marries an Israeli Arab and hides the fact that she is Jewish from him and his family; and their cousin, Ellysheva, who comes to Israel as Allison, and as an adult works in a hospital searching through Arab homes look- ing for explosives and suicide bombers. Hamzah says, “The tragedy is that in the long term, when they wake in the middle of the night to see the ‘evil’ Israeli soldiers in uniform in their home, their guns at the ready, they look into our eyes, and I know that at that very moment I have created a second generation of suicide bombers.” Casper also brings to life the character of the State of Israel, Between chapters of the story we hear from Israela. These parts are written in italics, and it is like you are listening in to her private thoughts. At one point she says, “It was not me who first separated Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. That would be far beyond my abilities. Do the stories of their Bible not clearly warn them how not behave? What not to repeat? Why don’t they see that? It was not I who misinterpreted the Koran into an imperative for murder. Would Allah not have preferred his people to live in peace? Does Elokim, my G-d, want anything but peace for His children?... So they have Allah and we have Elokim, and we are at war.” Elisheva works in a hospital taking care of the wounded of the wars and the suicide bombers. They are all trying in their own way to make sense of the world they live in and seeking to deal with the sadness and despair they are experiencing. Ellysheva is at the memorial service for her father, thinking back on the synagogue and religion of her youth, and she thinks, “I wonder now why loving G-d is a commandment and why to love your neighbor like yourself is the second most important principle of faith, a rule like not crossing the road on a red light. I wonder why protecting the stranger in our midst is almost as mportant in the scriptures as honoring our father and our mother, as not coveting our neighbor’s wife. Because if the strangers in our midst were friendly, we would not need a law to protect them. In a local book group that read this book, the consensus was that this story reflected the reality of life in Israel, presenting a realistic view of the social history of Israel. In the story, the character Orit has a series of dreams interspersed with news bulletins. Batya Casper told me in an interview, “All the news bulletins are factual, as are the stories of Arab/Jewish intermarriage. There are, in fact, a growing number of such cases.” Casper says that her interest in writing Israela “was to show a truly loving relationship between two good people.” All of the scenarios in this story are based on fact. Casper moved to Israel in 1956. She has lived there intermittently since childhood. Merle Carrus, The New Hampshire Jewish Reporter

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