Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times

By Judy Lash Balint

Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times is a compelling and moving account of life in Israel today. In a series of essays, author and Jerusalem resident Judy Lash Balint travels to the very heart of Israel.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9652292710
• ISBN13: 9789652292711
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Gefen Publishing House
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.7" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A book to make you cry

Judy Lash Balint leaves nothing unsaid. Her diary tells us everything Judy Lash Belint sees just by living in Jerusalem: from the daily terrorist attacks to the water being turned off when she gets back from yet another grueling day of work (in Jerusalem water is rationed and every apartment complex votes on when they will have no water but Judy Lash Balint was not there for the meeting and so did not vote and did not know...) and yet being so tired, no exhausted that never mind she can collapse and sleep without water or a bath or a drink.And from her we hear what it is like to visit a family right after a horror attack. Vadim was murdered and a Palestinian soaked his hands in his blood and held them up for the cameras of the world to see. Irina his pregnant wife was watching television and saw it all on TV... and when Judy Lash Belint pays a condolence call and Irina says nothing because what is there to say?And Judy Lash Belint tells us also of the Ethiopian Jews' custom of going up to the Western Wall to celebrate their gratitude for the Torah and she tells us of drinking coffee in a Starbucks and of the regular election debates.The ordinary and the recognizable intermingle freely in these pages with the horrible and the incredible. It is a book all those who are interested in Israel should read because it tells of one woman's experiences in Israel, in Jerusalem; day by day.

Essential Moving Stories Ignored By CNN, BBC, Sky et al.....

Judy Lash Balint reveals an extremely moving side to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict seldom seen through the cameras of CNN, Sky, the BBC or any other Western media outlet for that matter. Judy Balint reveals the side of a victim long forgotten by the media.The author presents the oft-ignored story of the innocent Jewish/Israeli victims of the Palestinian terrorist war. The innocent victims whose lives have been shattered and whose bodies have been battered and wounded through gut-less suicide bombings and other terror attacks aimed squarely at babes, children, teenagers, fathers and brothers, sisters and mothers, nearly all of whom have just been going about their daily lives like you or I, with no evil intent or political extremism.Whilst we have all witnessed the aforementioned media sources devoting whole reports to the plight, claims and circumstances of Palestinian terrorist organisations and even many individual Palestinian suicide attackers, rarely does the Jewish victim receive any publicity, which is why this book is so important.Judy Balint reveals the story of an Israeli civilian population under siege of Palestinian terrorism, where just visiting a public area such as a café, restaurant, cinema, disco, shopping mall or travelling on a bus is enough to place one's life at risk due to the threat of wholesale, indiscriminate terrorist attacks.The author's words show the underlying fear and frustration of those who must live under this deliberately imposed horror by a neighbouring population that, through it's leader Yasser Arafat, does not even recognise their very right to exist or their ancient claims to their homeland of Israel.Reading these words, one can feel what it must be like to have to send your own children of tender years to school in armoured school-buses under escort, never knowing if they will arrive or return safely.The author's distress is clearly evident when she describes that even after fifty years of Israeli statehood, Israel still has to justify it's existence in a land that has belonged to the Jewish people for thousands of years. A claim to the Land that precedes and predates any Palestinian and indeed any Arab/Moslem claim to the territory. A Jewish claim that extends back through history for some 4,000 years and based upon a Biblical heritage which has yet to be and indeed cannot be rescinded.Judy Balint provides through 55 essays a fact often quoted elsewhere. That although being unsuccessful on the battlefield in destroying & terrorising the Jewish people, Palestinian/Arab & other terrorist entities can terrorise 1,000 by killing one person and by killing civilians they can terrify people and the public at large far more effectively than when engaged in a full scale war. A fact that we too have since experienced in the West since `September 11th'.The author's frustration is clearly evident as she passes comment on the moves of various Israeli governments towards peace and the concessions which have broug

This book gets it right !

This book gets it right!I know - I was there... If you lived in Israel during the period November 1998 to May 2001, the period covered by this book, your sense of recognition will be stimulated most powerfully. If you did not live here, you will learn what many of us went through. I happen to share deeply the values of Jewish pride and determination to hold on to this Land as our home that inform and illuminate Judy Balint's essays. But even if you do not share her values, or even contest them, you will find this book a powerful and moving depiction of very difficult and daunting times. In 55 short essays, ranging in length from 2 to 4 pages, Judy Balint describes graphically real places and people who are so close to me in my comfortable life, I could visit in a matter of minutes or at most a couple of hours. She describes events that made the world news broadcasts and others of a local or even private nature that reflect the experiences undergone by large parts of a whole nation. Her diary could, to a large extent, be my own, and undoubtedly that of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Judy Balint writes with a cool passion. Often I could not help being deeply moved as I read her words. Her descriptions are a vivid revelation of events, personalities, scenes and scenery, heroism, suffering, forbearance, defiance, and dedication, the actions, emotions, and living values of very many of my fellow Israelis. A good read if you want to understand what Israelis have been going through in recent year.

Surviving, going on

For anyone who wants to know what it's like to live with the threat of terrorism on a daily basis, this is a good place to start. Judy Lash Balint provides an excellent internet email service through which many of these essays originally appeared. Here one finds the frustrations of daily life in Israel, what it means to live under the siege of a people whose leaders refuse to recognize your nation's very right to exist, whose school books and clerics call for your expulsion and death. The book shows what it means to travel in buses that are fired upon daily, to travel to several funerals of terror victims within a few days, to drive the terrorized road from Modi'in to Jerusalem, to live under nightly fire in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. It provides the Israeli perspective rarely given in the news, how deeply Israelis desire peace--and why. Israelis are bleeding. There have been more than 600 Israeli victims of terrorism since the Oslo accords were signed--mothers, fathers, children, infants, teachers, rabbis. Proportionately, that would equal 25,000 in the U.S. When you finish this book, you will understand their humanity, and wonder why the Western press corps almost never shows that Israelis are people, too often denied their most basic right--the right to life--because they are Jews. Alyssa A. Lappen

An Interesting and Informative Read

I think this was a great book, a quick read and an interesting perspective of life in Jerusalem. I think people will thoroughly enjoy this. It's a new book, the author's work is highly readable, and I give it a thumb's up.