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About the Book

John Rosove’s deeply prob­ing and arrest­ing mem­oir toss­es aside the neat lit­tle iden­ti­ty box­es we put our­selves in. Long­time Hol­ly­wood rab­bi, he is proof that a think­ing per­son can be many dif­fer­ent things at once. Amer­i­can Lib­er­al. Pro­gres­sive Zion­ist. Lover of Israel. Dream­er of Pales­tine. This sweep­ing and fine­ly-wrought nar­ra­tive traces Rosove’s jour­ney from West to East and his philo­soph­i­cal evo­lu­tion shaped by a trio of unfor­get­table men­tors. Along the way, Mar­tin Luther King, Ben­jamin Netanyahu, Natan Sha­ran­sky, and Mar­wan Bargh­outi, the promis­ing Pales­tin­ian leader who sits in a prison cell in Israel, make cameo appear­ances. The killing of 1,200 Israelis on Octo­ber 7, 2023, by Hamas mil­i­tants becomes a hor­ri­ble crime that chal­lenges the core of Rosove’s beliefs. For months, he finds him­self lost in doubt and grief and, yes, a desire for revenge. In the end, as the tragedy of Gaza unfolds, his brave voice does not waver in its deter­mi­na­tion to see peace and social jus­tice come to the Mid­dle East, for the chil­dren of Pales­tine and Israel.

About the Author

Rab­bi John Rosove is Senior Rab­bi of Tem­ple Israel of Hol­ly­wood where he estab­lished a Reform Day School, an active social jus­tice pro­gram, and revi­tal­ized syn­a­gogue and Jew­ish com­mu­nal life in the greater Hol­ly­wood area. He writes a reg­u­lar blog at the Los Ange­les Jew­ish Jour­nal. He is mar­ried to Bar­bara and the father of two sons, Daniel and David.

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