Exile in the Promised Land: A Memoir

by Marcia Freedman

Lively first-person account of fourteen years in Israel by former Knesset member, feminist movement founder, early peace activist.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

234 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Marcia Freedman (Hebrew: מרשה פרידמן‎, born 17 May 1938) is an American-Israeli activist on behalf of peace, women's rights, and gay rights. In the early 1970s she helped create and lead the feminist movement in Israel. Freedman was the founding president of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and a past president of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Yaari · Rating 5 out of 5]

1. ממואר
2. פמיניסטי
3. לסבי
4. חיפאי
ומכל אלה נובע לוגית שזו חובת קריאה (ובאמת היה מאוד מוצלח אז לקרוא!!!!!)
כמו כן, חייבות להקים הוצאת ספרים ישראלית רדיקלית חדשה

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book because I was invited to attend a lecture by the author, Marcia Freedman, at UC Berkeley in April 2016. Published 26 years ago, the book is no longer widely available: only one library had it in its shelves and it could be gotten for the price of shipping through online vendors. Reading it, I felt like I had come to this book way late. Not that it was specifically dated; it is a memoir about a specific period of time after all. But that I would have liked it more, felt more in touch with its sentiments, if I had read it back then.

The book is ostensibly about Freedman's 14 years in Israel, but really focuses on her time in the Knesset and secondly on her life (after the Knesset) in Haifa with the women's movement there. She does not spend much time on her married life before politics. She also doesn't do much character development of the people around her, except as her foils, how she interacts with them.

Freedman is honest about her impact on the people around her, her harshness, her brusqueness, the effects on her marriage and her child, but even these confrontations do not receive much analysis or a great deal of light. I feel that the book would have benefited by more interactive editing, getting Freedman to write more in some areas and to wrap up loose ends that were not addressed.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tone and quality of the writing were uneven--sometimes the writing felt workman-like and the mechanics of getting from here to there were very visible, sometimes she came up with the perfect little aphorism to describe Israel or racism or Judaism or feminism or what-have-you. It also provided a fascinating look at how Knesset, but also politics in general, works. Corruption, committees, coalition building--at one point she describes it as a defanged version of the British Parliament. I also learned a lot about Israeli culture in the 1970's--I can not imagine living here back then. It seems sort of like Britain in the 1950's if World War II were still going on. But with better food.