Rituals of Truce and the Other Israeli

Drawing on personal anecdote as well as extended quotations from Walter Benjamin, Emanuel Levinas, Mahmoud Darwish and the Marx Brothers (among others), Israeli-American poet Benjamin Hollander assembles two ambitious poem-essays in Rituals of Truth and the Other Israeli. The two pieces reflect, challenge and lament central dilemmas of Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian identity, as well as the intractable history between them. Hollander's first title montage is the more satisfying of the two, and the more personal. An Edmond Jabes quote-""I only know that, due to circumstance, solitude has become the profound destiny of the Jew. The State of Israel not only doesn't break that solitude, it often aggravates it""-becomes a repeated touchstone as Hollander offers insights based on his own experience as an Ashkenazi Jew born in Haifa who immigrated to the U.S. at age six, and who thinks critically about his own and others' rhetorical authority.