Israel Is Real

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS'' CHOICEA SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLERIn AD 70 when the Second Temple was destroyed a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it taking what had been a national religion and turning it into an idea. Whenever a Jew studied―wherever he was―he would be in the holy city and his faith preserved. But in our own time Zionists have turned the book back into a temple and unlike an idea a temple can be destroyed. With exuberance humor and real scholarship Rich Cohen''s Israel is Real offers a serious attempt by a gifted storyteller to enliven and elucidate Jewish religious cultural and political history . . . A powerful narrative (Los Angeles Times).