Outsider in the Promised Land: An Iraqi Jew in Israel

by Nissim Rejwan

In 1951, Israel was a young nation surrounded by hostile neighbors. Its tenuous grip on nationhood was made slipperier still by internal tensions among the various communities that had immigrated to the new Jewish state, particularly those between the politically and socially dominant Jewish leadership hailing from Eastern Europe and the more numerous Oriental Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Into this volatile mix came Nissim Rejwan, a young Iraqi Jewish intellectual who was to become one of the country's leading public intellectuals and authors. Beginning with Rejwan's arrival in 1951 and climaxing with the tensions preceding Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, this book colorfully chronicles Israel's internal and external struggles to become a nation, as well as the author's integration into a complex culture. Rejwan documents how the powerful East European leadership, acting as advocates of Western norms and ideals, failed to integrate Israel into the region and let the country take its place as a part of the Middle East. Rejwan's essays and occasional articles are an illuminating example of how minority groups use journalism to gain influence in a society. Finally, the letters and diary entries reproduced in Outsider in the Promised Land are full of lively, witty meditations on history, literature, philosophy, education, and art, as well as one man's personal struggle to find his place in a new nation.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Nissim Rejwan, born in Baghdad, was a Research Fellow at the Harry S Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Over a six-decade career as a historian and journalist, he has published a dozen books, including The Jews of Iraq: 3000 Years of History and Culture and Israel's Place in the Middle East: A Pluralist Perspective, for which he won the 1998 National Jewish Book Award for Israel Studies.

In Baghdad, he began writing for the Iraq Times while managing the Al-Rabita Bookshop, a meeting place for many prominent Iraqi writers. After migrating to Israel in 1951, he studied at the Hebrew University and joined the staff of the Jerusalem Post. He also worked for a number of years on the Arabic section of the Israeli Broadcasting Service; from 1959 to 1966, he was editor of the Arabic daily, al-Yaum.

(from http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/I...)