Revenge: A Story of Hope

Rating:
Summary: Nobel Prize Material
Review: Faulkner said that great books touch the human heart and Revenge certainly did that for me. Blumenfeld mixes her personal story with scholarly research on a topic that keeps wars brewing and personal happiness at bay: revenge. She layers religious history with current news and throws in her account of her honeymoon year. Her prose is elegant and her characters unforgettable.
Our book club had a longer discussion on this book than we have ever had. Most of us had borrowed the book from the library, but decided we need this gem in our personal libraries.

Rating:
Summary: Shallow book
Review: I just want to warn prospective buyers - this book is shallow and not worth the read. My bookgroup and I read this as one of our selections. All of us were excited at first - because several of us had heard the author interviewed on the radio and the interview was very interesting - however, the book itself was disappointing. We came away with no deeper understanding of how someone deals with the very natural feelings of revenge. There was too much information shared about her family conflicts - dialogues with her parents. And it just wasn't interesting. As I said earlier, I was shocked at how shallow this book is considering her subject.

Rating:
Summary: Comfort and Transformation in a Brilliant Book
Review: I read this book word for word.

At times I was embarassed by the simple mindedness of the author and even more, of her mother (e.g. making a fool of herself in the Israeli court room).

She writes very well and I have had to make a sharp distinction in this book in matters of form and content.

I was personally offended by statements such as:

p.52 "Do you think they got the right poeple:?.. They often arrest the wrong people." That is a terrible accusation and it is actually a calumny.

On two occasions she calls the Land of Israel ugly (e.g. when she compares it to an ugly woman two men fight over, too drunk to see how ugly she is. Indeed!)Another, when she is waiting to see her father's shooter in a bus and the dust around her is what she thinks Arabs and Israelis are fighting over. (she just does not understand that even her smug existence in New York is a function of the survival of Israel, dusty or not) Later she quotes her (long suffering husband) as saying Israelis can be Monumentally rude. I doubt that Americans are refined and civil at all times. But that is of no major consequence.

In one of her letters she writes: "..He (David Blumenfeld) thinks you have been wronged by Israel in your life. He believes that you went through hell, as did your brother, Imdad and your parents.." ( I think this is where the true intent of the book shows through like a sharp knife through a sack)

One of the main hobby horses is to render the conflict personal rather than national. Well, it is an ideological conflict and not a personal one. She managed to see it from her own (very ego- centri eyes) which is fine given the archetypal JAP she is as portrayed by herself in this book. For the rest of us, it just isn't a personal matter, it is a historical one, a national one and an existential one. It takes a lot of "Hutzpah" to be so judgemental from the safety of a middle class Diasporah existance. For every Jew living in Israel it is not such a matter of luxury. We have no choice. For us it is a matter of life or death, not of pretty sentiment.

I found the exchange of trinkets and the gooey relationship between the family of the terrorist and the victim between off-key and down right nausiating. I am sure in Kalandia more than one person found Laura Blumenfeld as corny as I do here in Jerusalem.

I wonder why Laura had no time for Jewish victims (countless orphans whose perants were murdered in cold blood over the Sabbath Table, only a few days ago but also during the time she snooped around this land)and had all the time in the world for people who have very little in common with her. She was actually patronizing and therefore degrading to them.

And yet, she writes so well! A pity that what she has to say is mostly shrieking sentimental kitch.

Life is not that cardboard, black and white, good/evil scene at all. But to speak in the "black and white, no shades in between terms, consider this:

If the Arabs renounced violence tomorrow, there would be no violence in this land.
If Israel renounced armed confrontation tomorrow, there would be no Israel. (this is taken from some material circulating the internet.)

A book that will be forgotten before too long.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but self-centered
Review: I saw the author interviewed on the PBS News Hour. She spoke about her story and it is amazing. She transformed a relationship with a Palestenian man who attempted to murder her father more than a decade earlier. She was after revenge and in the end got 'sweet' revenge.

This book not only talks about that amazing transformation, but we also learn about Laua's first year of marriage and she provides a terrific analysis of revenge and how it is dealt with in several different cultures. Woven into the analysis is her own drive for revenge and how she comes to terms with that.

I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating story
Review: Laura Blumenfeld writes a fascinating story of her personal search for revenge after her father was shot in the head by a Palestinian terrorist in the Old City of Jerusalem. Her father, a rabbi, was a tourist. He was targeted for reasons that were unknown.

Blumenfeld spent many months speaking with the family of the incarcerated terrorist, presenting herself as a journalist, which is in fact her actual occupation. She managed to communicate with the terrorist himself, as well.

Though her father was able to forgive and release his attachment to the incident, Blumenfeld remained obsessed with the attack. She visited Albania, where revenge has been codified over 2,000 years of sanctioned practice; in Sicily, where the Mafia have established revenge as a tool for establishing and maintaining power; and in Iran, where Muslim tradition includes revenge as a part of its legal system.

Most fascinating to the reviewer, as a psychotherapist, is her personal odyssey of sorting out her relationships with her father and mother, and how this interdigitated with her resolution of her search for revenge.

This is an excellent, readable exploration of many facets of the issues surrounding vengeful feelings and their resolution.


Rating:
Summary: Working on some levels, not on others
Review: Laura Blumenfeld, a young reporter for the Washington Post, has written a sometimes engaging book about revenge and its motives that finds its inspiration in her personal history. She explores the reason for vengeance in humans through the study of different cultures but most importantly, by far, is the pulse of revenge her own body and soul feels, sparked by the shooting of her father in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman.
Blumenfeld's father, an American rabbi was a victim of a random attack. He happened to be walking in Jerusalem in 1986 at dusk when a gunman, Omar Khatib shot him on the scalp, leaving a gouge on his head. A centimeter lower and the bullet would have penetrated his skull, most probably killing him instantly. As it was, her father was relatively unhurt and able to continue a normal life. Omar was a member of a group of terrorists who vowed to avenge the U.S. bombing of Libya by randomly killing tourists in Jerusalem.
Enter his daughter, 12 years later, newly married and off to Jerusalem with her husband to live in the Old City for their first year of marriage. Ostensibly, she took a year from her reporter's job for a book writing sabbatical, a book whose topic is revenge and how different people cope with crimes and slights exercised on their person and their family. More relevantly, she goes to Israel to track down her father's gunman and exact some measure of revenge, though what that may materially be is very unsettled in her mind.
Her journey finds her meeting Omar's family in Ramallah, the nexus of Palestinian authority in the West Bank. Her descriptions of their many meetings are clouded by her intimate connection with the crime in question. Since the shooter is still in jail, she can only correspond with him through smuggled letters exchanged by the family via their regular visits with Omar. Critically, she has decided to mask her real identity to the family, calling herself simply Laura or Laura Weiss (her married name) and not giving any indication that she is the daughter of the victim. This leads to a dramatic ending to the book, one that would put many novels to shame, when she reveals herself to the family and Omar in a memorable court scene.
While Blumenfeld's writing is uneven and her search for the appropriate remedy for her vengeful impulses become rather drawn and laborious to the point of being pedantic, she nevertheless has a extremely engaging story to tell. Some of her best writing emanates from her research into how different cultures treat vengeance. She traveled to bastions of vengeance such as Sicily, Albania (where vengeance has even be codified in a published manual outside the purview of the legal system, but much more relevant than their law), Iran and Egypt to interview people on how their injustices are remedied. What emerges from her original research is a world where America's simple and trusting view of crime and punishment has very little foothold and a world where mysticism, belief, faith and superstition still dominate, if not monopolize many facets of life.
Still, this is book is predominately Blumenfeld's own story and its climax is powerful. However, one must remember that even if she can effect change in one Palestinian family, her story is the rare exception in the Middle East. Noble as her effort is, she is a educated American with the means and ability to study her own primeval urge towards vengeance with some measure of balance and make what one many would see as an enlightened choice. Her story is rare indeed and as such, is unsuitable as a blueprint for a healing between the parties. If only everyone could be as intellectually faithful as the author, the world would be a much finer place. Alas, we shall never witness such a world.

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking in its humanity
Review: There are times in reading Laura Blumenfeld's revenge that I inwardly cringe, wishing there was a bit more introspection to her crusade. What made this book so compelling is the message that we all have the ability to choose our own revenge for past hurts. Laura is very honest about her wish to somehow find a revenge for the shooting of her father. What drives the story is the intertwining of the lives of her and her family, and her quest to find out all she could about the man who shot her father. This quest compells her to live in Isreal and to seek out and get to know the family of the shooter. It also forces her to confront some of the feelings she has as a Jew towards the turmoil in Isreal and the continuing violence. As she comes closer to confronting the shooter, she finds that all is not cut and dried, and that there are other currents beneath her quest for revenge. The clarity and honesty that this story is told with is breathtaking, for it confronts the dilemna of revenge, and the seemingly never-ending cycle it nutures. I could not put this book down, partly because it had no pat ending, no made for TV ending. It was honest and does not pretend to know the solutions for the continuing cycle of violence. It is simply a story of how one young woman came to confront and understand the drive which seems to take over her life, and how she does not let that quest destroy her.

Rating:
Summary: Comfort and Transformation in a Brilliant Book
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read about the personal impact of violence on an individual. However, instead of my comments, I would like to forward a quote from an article that appeared in Newsday on April 2, 2003. The article is about a good man named Arie Bucheister who was gunned down, senselessly, while at work in his store. His wife, Beth, talks about the lessons learned and the comfort she has gotten from Laura Blumenfeld's book, "Revenge."

"If anything was on Arie's mind, Beth said, she was unaware. He had not seemed troubled when he left New York. There was no sense that he was afraid or anxious.

But he had been reading a book that may have put him in a pensive mood.

"Revenge: A Story of Hope," by journalist Laura Blumenfeld, is an account of the author's search for the Arab man - a militant member of the Palestine Liberation Organization - who shot and wounded her father, David, a rabbi, during a trip to Israel. Though Blumenfeld, who grew up on Long Island, was at first consumed by anger, "Revenge" shows how the writer's fury was transformed.

Beth said the story resonated with Arie.

"Now that I've read that book, I know I have lived my life the right way," Arie told Beth.

Blumenfeld's exerience confirmed Arie's notions of basic decency, Beth said, and emphasized his conviction that "teaching each other right from wrong does make a difference."

By the time he completed "Revenge," Arie was in tears, Beth said.

He died a few days later - shot in his office, door open, believing the best."

Copyright (c) 2003, Newsday, Inc.

Clearly, this book will have a major impact on every reader.

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Rating:
Summary: A Transcendent Revenge
Review: Twelve years before Laura Blumenfeld wrote this book, a Palestinian gunman grazed her father's skull in a botched attempt at murder. Her subsequent desire for revenge slowly, suspensefully, becomes a magnificent tale of personal growth, insight, compassion, humor, and tragedy. The book is also a nuanced examination of the human desire for revenge from the myriad perspectives of different cultures. Blumenfeld, a young Jewish American woman, travels back to Israel with the inital idea of becoming friendly with the incarcerated shooter's family. After gaining their confidence and winning them over on a personal level, she hopes to then reveal her identity to them and then revel in their guilt, anguish and mixed emotions. She tells us of this project and letters that she writes to the shooter to gain insight into why he shot her father and how he feels about it now. It is a cat and mouse game, in which she tries to gain his confidence while hiding her true identity and yet at times she wonders if he is playing with her. Blumenfeld is also a newlywed at the time and we see the effects of what she is doing on her husband, an account often oddly but touchingly humorous.They love to tease each other. At one point, her husband buys a chicken from an Hasidic Jew to slaughter and give to the poor as part of a sacrificial ritual of atonement for past sins. Amidst her husband's difficulties in dealing with the resistant bird, Laura asks him to explain the purpose of the ritual and then says to him the chicken functions like Christ at the crucifixion. He warns her that if she does not stop bugging him he will end up henpecked. Blumenfeld's research project also affects her parents estranged relationship in an eventually positive manner. Blumenfeld goes on to explore revenge rituals in which agrieved parties defuse potentially violent responses. She interviews interesting people like Vitka Kovner, a Holocaust survivor who plotted to poison the German water supply after World War II but who had very rigid boundaries about what she considered ethical. One moment of irritation I had in reading this book was when Blumenfeld refers to Allah as the god of the Moslems. Surely she knows better than this; that part of the tragedy is that both Moslems and Jews, despite significant theological differences, worship the same God and share many of the same Biblical stories. Was this just her anger and alienation coming through at this early stage of the story? I will not reveal the book's ending and the courtroom drama of the shooter but it is definitely worth reading. Though the central action rises out of a political situation, Blumenfeld seeks a personal understanding of what took place. She does give us insights into the Jewish desire to fight back, to not be suckered into a passive victimhood, and how that motivates Israeli politics. I was not aware before reading this book that that revenge for murder is an important motivating factor in the increase of Jewish West Bank settlements. If there is a shortcoming to this book, it is perhaps the failure to explore more wide ranging solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its seemingly endless cycles of violent revenge fueled by the tragic events of the recent past. Nevertheless, this is a beautiful and hopeful story arising out of ugliness and despair. If it inspires even a few individuals, it will be well worth the sacrifice of Blumenfeld's actions and writings.

Rating:
Summary: Humanity, Courage, Forgiveness, and Hope
Review: [Audio edition, abridged] As a work of fiction, this nicely bridges the psychological drama and the suspense novel, and proves you can write an interesting tale without explosions, betrayals or mayhem.
While perhaps not as well crafted as Fuentes or Marquez, the author creates a disarmingly flawed heroine, who nonetheless becomes endearing. The theme of "is the world essentially good or bad?" is well dramatized, and the climactic courtroom scene as suspenseful and dramatic as a prime-time thriller. A "ripping good yarn", especially considering the themes of family values, hope and peace.
It will be interesting to see what further works this author creates, and how her craft progresses.