Jeffrey Goldberg’s “Prisoners”

Jeffrey Goldberg’s remarkable book “Prisoners:  A Tale of Friendship and Terror” is out in paperback.  The book was listed as among 2006’s best books by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among others.

When it was published in hardcover in October 2006, it had a different subtitle:  “A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide.”  The new subtitle better reflects the undercurrent of conflicting emotions and conclusions in the book.

Here is an excerpt from the Publishers Weekly Starred Review of the book:

[T]his memoir of the author, an American-bred Zionist, and his 15-year relationship with a Palestinian insurgent is bound to have detractors, in part because New Yorker Washington correspondent Goldberg is painfully honest — about his dreams, limitations and anxieties. “I wanted to . . . have it all,” he writes, “my parochialism, my universalism, a clean conscience, and a friendship with my enemy.” . . .

Goldberg’s book travels from Long Island to Afghanistan as he struggles to understand Israeli-Palestinian violence. His honesty is itself high recommendation; the book is also marked by beautiful turns of phrase and a forthrightness that saves it from occasional self-importance. . . .  [H]is book is complex and deeply affecting.

Goldberg grew up in a leftist, non-religious family, went to a socialist Zionist summer camp and, after attending the University of Pennsylvania, made aliyah to Israel, where he served at Ketziot, the large Israeli prison operated during the first intifada.  Later he returned to America and became a journalist, going back to Gaza to report.  His book begins with his arrest there by Hamas, who know more about him than he suspects, and who ask why he is there:

I could have said:  I’m here because I believe with perfect faith in the catechisms of solutionism, the American national religion, which holds that for every intractable problem there is a logical and available answer.  I could have said:  I am here in search of the secret afflictions of the Palestinian heart.  I am here exploring the contradictions of Jewish power.  I am here seeking the elimination of ambiguity.  I’m looking for the bridge that will carry me across the black hole of cognition that separates Arab and Jew.  I’m here to quiet the conflict in my heart.  I’m here because I’m alive to hope.  I’m here in search of the key to all mythologies.  I’m here because I’m a fucking idiot.

Jeffrey Goldberg will be speaking this Thursday evening (February 7) at 7:30 p.m. at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.  Those in the area should not miss it.