The Two Zions: Reminiscences of Jerusalem and Ethiopia

by Edward Ullendorff

This book is a fascinating first-hand account of intellectual, political, and daily life in two vanished Jerusalem before the creation of Israel, and Ethiopia before the Marxist revolution. Ullendorff , who went to Hebrew University in the 1930s and held numerous British government
posts in the interwar and war years, counted among his acquaintances Haile Sellassie, S.Y. Agnon, J.L. Magnes, Martin Buber, and many other eminent scholars, writers, educators, and Zionists. He provides numerous eyewitness accounts of notable people and events, including the lost dream of
Arab-Jewish accord, British conduct in Palestine, the promotion of Hebrew as a modern language, the Falashas, Ethiopian customs, and the political upheaval in Ethiopia that brought about the fall of Selassie.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 1988

Reviews

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ullendorff was a British linguist who taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then also participated in the British government in Eritrea. He became an expert on Semitic languages (Ge'ez, the mother tongue of Amharic and Tigrinya are both part of Afro-Asiatic families, as is Hebrew and Arabic and Tamasheq). This is his auto-biography, about his time in Eritrea and Jerusalem. The final chapter is a remarkable defense of Haile Selassie, who he got to know quite well.