Havurah Shalom

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz – This is a powerful saga of a man, a family, and a nation forged in the crucible of a difficult, painful history. The tale is epic in scope, set mostly during the author's childhood in Jerusalem of the 1940s and '50s, while also following his ancestors back to 19th-century Ukraine, and describing the anti-Semitism and Zionist passions that drove them to Palestine in the early 1930s, where they settled in a rough, dusty, lower-middle-class suburb of Jerusalem. Oz's parents found mainly disappointment there: his father, a scholar, failed to attain the academic distinction and Oz's beautiful, tender mother, after a long depresson, committed suicide when Oz was 12. This memoir brims over with riches: metaphors and poetry, drama and comedy, failure and success, unhappy marriages and a wealth of idiosyncratic characters, all painted lovingly and with humor. Questions? Contact Marjorie Walters at marjoriewalters@gmail.com.