Dec. 10, 2009 DANIEL GORDIS , THE JERUSALEM POST It's been almost a year since St.-Sgt. Dvir Emanuelof became the first casualty of Operation Cast Lead, losing his life to Hamas mortar fire just as he entered Gaza early in the offensive. But sitting with his mother, Dalia, in her living room last week, I was struck not by loss, but by life. And not by grief, but by fervent belief. And by a more recent story about Dvir that simply needs to be told, especially now at Hanukka, our season of miracles. This ...

Dear Jay, We don’t know each other, though I’ve known of you and your work for some time.  Like many others, I recently read your “How I’m Losing My Love For Israel” in the Forward.  Because you write so articulately, and because your column has attracted such widespread attention, I’m taking the liberty of responding. The truth is, you and I agree about a lot.  We’re both worried about some of what’s happening to Israeli society.  We’re both tired of all the equivocating (though probably for different reasons).  We’d both love some real leadership around here.  We’d both like peace.  And we’re both exhausted. That exhaustion is the first reason you give for that fact that your “love [for Israel] is starting to wane.”  But frankly, ...

Miri, thirty-seven years old, is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. She has her life carefully organized and moderated, until she discovered an abandoned Chinese boy whose foreign worker mother has been deported by Israel immigration authorities.  Miri decides to reunite the family, and embarks on an amusing and touching journey.  A lovely window into "normal" Israel people, and slice of Israeli life that we don't often see in the world of film.

Israel is not all about war, army, immigration. Sometimes it's just about regular people trying to live regular lives. This film, about a single mother raising her teenage children alone, isn't at all critical of Israel. Indeed, it's not "about" Israel. But because it takes place in Israel, it offers a window into parts of Israeli life, even while dealing with a subject much more universal.  Memorable and beautifully done.

Foreign workers are a major dimension of Israeli life, and not a necessarily pleasant one. Israel has allowed thousands of people to enter to work here, but their status is often grey, and their conditions sometimes deplorable. This movie actually addresses the case of foreign workers in reasonable conditions, and even so, points to the underbelly of Israel's underclass, an issues Israel is eventually going to have to confront.  See this movie, and you'll understand the issue better than ever before.

Amos Oz's autobiography captures the flavor of life in Palestine before Independence in ways that virtually nothing else I've read does. The passages that describe the events of November 29, 1947, the day of the UN vote on Israel's creation, and his discussions with a Kibbutz member of whether the Arab "enemy" is really a "murderer," are literally unforgettable. The entire book is a masterpiece.

Kashua is an Israeli Arab, who interestingly writes in Hebrew only. Funny and sad, he is far from an apologist for the "Zionist narrative." He tells a story of a community that belongs nowhere, and exposes the complexity of Israeli Arab life. Watch also for his second book, "And It Was Morning," not yet in English.

I read this book both in Hebrew and in English, and didn't love it. But I'm a minority. Most people loved it. And it clearly reveals slices of Israeli academic, judicial, Arab and romantic life. It's a good yarn, if a bit long, and gives a rich picture of dimensions of contemporary Israeli life.

David Grossman is among Israel's greatest novelists. This book, in addition to his "See Under: Love", are wonderful introductions to his work.  Intimate Grammar tracks the story of a poor adolescent in the period of the Six Day War, offering a glimpse into the two Israels of the period: the victor in the Six Day War, and the society still coming to terms with those on its fringes.

So there we are, sitting at the Shabbat lunch table, guests of friends we hadn’t seen in far too long. We were three couples, all of us immigrants, each with kids, ranging from 22 (with a boyfriend) to 4 (without a boyfriend). And another couple, parents of our hosts, visiting from the States, both of them well known and highly regarded academics. Sometime in the middle of lunch, the mother of the hostess, whose academic interest is “identity,” asks us all, without even a hint of irony or condescension, “Can you please explain to me why you would choose to live here? What got you to leave what you had and come here?”

No one, it was clear, had asked any of us that ...