Word: rabins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Despite the rapidity of its printing (the epilogue is dated March 1996, and it was published on April 8) and its pamphlet length (180 undersized pages), the occasion on which this book seeks to capitalize is considerably more serious than the O.J. trial: it is the memoir of Yitzhak Rabin's granddaughter, the same one who spoke so movingly at his memorial service in November...
...Name of Sorrow and Hope is exactly what one would expect it to be. Those who want a capsule introduction to Israel's view of itself, and those who want to display their support for Israel, Rabin and peace, will be well served...
...such, it is not the place to look for serious analysis of the Israeli situation, the peace process or the meaning of Rabin's assassination; nor is it likely that the book's audience will want it to be. Instead, In the Name of Sorrow and Hope is, as Publishers' Weekly declares in the book's promotional literature, "filled with the beautiful anguish and sincerity of youth"--it is a chance for the author to memorialize her grandfather while representing Israel to the world in a noncontroversial...
...Artzi-Pelossof's speech at Rabin's memorial service brought her to the world's attention, so that event is naturally the book's starting and ending point. In between, she touches on a number of topics-- Rabin's personal manner, her experience of growing up in Israel in times of war and strife, a trip to Auschwitz and her life in the army--in a style that is unremittingly sentimental and naive. What interest there is in the book is seldom in the author's treatment of events; rather, the inherent pathos of what she is describing shines through...
Such moments of interest occur at the expected points. Ben Artzi-Pelossof's trip to Auschwitz with Rabin, for example, allows her to relate some gripping stories of Holocaust survivors, such as Samuel Gogol, a harmonica player who was forced by the Nazis to play in a band in front of Jews being walked to the gas chambers--to this day, he instinctively closes his eyes whenever he plays the harmonica. And some of her domestic anecdotes about Rabin are simple and touching, like the time she and her grandfather were sharing a bed with an electric blanket...