- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; Updated edition (July 18 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060505826
- ISBN-13: 978-0060505820
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 399 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#494,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Books > Travel > Middle East > Israel > Jerusalem
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Yossi Klein Halevi, born in America and now an Israeli citizen, embarked on a spiritual quest in order to appreciate the religious dimensions of conflicts in the Middle East. Beginning in 1998, he undertook "an attempt at religious empathy" in order "to test whether faith could be a means of healing rather than intensifying the conflicts in this land." Halevi, author of the critically acclaimed Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, chose "to pray and meditate with my Christian and Muslim fellow believers," as "a conscious refutation of the way we religious people of different faiths have always judged each other--by what we believe about God, rather than how we experience God's presence." The holy days of each religion form the structure of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, and Halevi's encounters with Sufi dervishes, Muslim sheiks, monks, nuns, and laypeople are entertaining, poignant, and sometimes fearsome. The stories do not separate "spirituality" from "politics"--or history, psychology, or theology. His commitment to describing an integrated experience of the many aspects of religious life helps to make the book a successful exercise in empathy, and a book of lasting literary value. --Michael Joseph Gross
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The political landscape of the Middle East has inspired many books, but few have focused on the intersection of its religious paths as healing territory. This is where Jerusalemite Halevi, a transplanted American Jewish journalist, breaks ground. To become more at home in Israel, a land that 800,000 Muslims and 200,000 Christians call home, and to seek out an alternative to the Oslo peace process, Halevi visited monasteries and mosques, Sufi sheiks, humble monks and silent nuns. In the two years of his interfaith spiritual journey, he confronted history, theology, politics, psychological taboos and concerns over personal safety, learning much concerning the two faiths he previously knew little about. His search for holiness brings him to "conflicting versions of truth," but he attempts nonetheless to experience unity through prayer and meditation: he surrenders to a whirling Sufi zikr, debates with Armenian priests, spends Holy Week with the Ethiopian Orthodox and explores the depths of silence with cloistered nuns. To visit a sheik in Gaza, he ventures to the same spot he had patrolled and where he was wounded as a soldier. Despite his successes, relating to Christianity and Islam "as spiritual paths rather than as devouring forces that had tried to displace the Jews proved even more difficult than I'd imagined." Halevi's forthright prose, which evokes the immediacy of his encounters, does not try to gloss over his religious and political resentments, yet exudes a yearning for commonality and love. Since he sought out the "best representatives" of each religion, isolated examples who do not speak for the majority of their co-religionists, Halevi's effort remains an experiment in "testing the border crossing between faiths." Despite the current outbreak of violence, he concludes, religion must be an integral part of the process if peace is to come to the Middle East. Readers of all religions will appreciate the honesty of this spiritual walkabout.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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I lived on the border of Jerusalem. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I lived on the border of Jerusalem. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An honest, humble, inspiring adventure,
By
This review is from: At The Entrance To The Garden Of Eden (Paperback)
I just love this guy. Starting with a simple urge to connect with his neighbors, Yossi Halevi embarks on an awkward, fascinating, dangerous journey through Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. He discovers a series of surprising characters who dream, not just of peace between Jews, Muslims and Christians, but of spiritual friendship. And the story of these fragile, budding friendships becomes an adventure of almost overwhelming power.I want to quote from one episode, where Halevi and a madcap Jew called Eliyahu Charanamrit McLean attend a mosque in Karawa village on the West Bank: "This mosque was a family project: Everyone here belonged to the Abu-Laben clan. They were working class people; the shaykh himself was a car mechanic. "What do the other Muslims think of you?" Eliyahu asked. "That we're crazy," replied Saud's father. "They think we chant the name of 'Abdallah' instead of 'Allah"". Laughter. I asked Saud what he experienced during the zakir [or dance of remembering God]. "That our hearts kept getting closer and closer to God," he said, with the Sufi vagueness I'd so often encountered from Ibrahim. ... Ibrahim, not to be poetically outdone, added "Our souls went up to heaven like clouds". "When you pray together," said the shaykh's father, "you form one heart". I felt sad for this forlorn Sufi Shteibl. Here was an Islam with which we could make peace, yet it was almost absurdly perepheral. Still, maybe the fact that a handful of Muslims and Jews had danced together was enough for God to work with; perhaps He would magnify our prayers, widen the circle of ecstasy." (p. 104-105) Halevi is realist enough to claim no easy victories. As the level of sectarian violence rises again, his network of friends retains little but hope and prayer. It's a marvelous book. --author of Correcting Jesus
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sincere seeker on a challenging quest,
By Rabbi Yonassan Gershom (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: At The Entrance To The Garden Of Eden (Paperback)
This is a deeply thought-provoking book. I ordered it because I have personally been involved in Jewish-Muslim-Christian dialogues (trialogues?) in the USA, and I resonated with the reviews I had read. What surprised (and saddened) me was the extreme difficulty that Yossi had in even finding people willing to dialogue in the Middle East. I had been told that Israel was a segregated society (not officially, but socially) but I did not realize how deeply the mistrust runs. Villages and monasteries that are within visual sight of each other might as well be on different planets.To cross the cultural divide can literally mean taking your life inot your hands. Author Yossi Klein takes that risk. With the help of various unconventional guides, he meets with Sufi shaykhs, Armenian priests, Catholic nuns and many others, hoping to communicate on the level of the soul rather than politics. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes not. On so many occasions, history intrudes with its memories of past brutalities -- Crusades, Inquisitions, the Holocaust. This is not a sugar-coated utopian view of peace, but a scathingly honest chronicle of one seeker's search for common ground in a troubled land. With each new encounter, Yossi struggles with his own anger, distrust, and fear -- as did I when I read the book. Definitely a must-read for everyone who is or wants to be involved in interfaith dialogue.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful book,
By
This review is from: At The Entrance To The Garden Of Eden (Paperback)
This is the story of a Jew who tries to discover if religion can be a source of unity in the Holy Land. He thus begins a two-year exploration of Christianity and Islam. He befriends Christian and Muslim mystics, joins them in prayer in monasteries and mosques searching for wisdom and for peace.And he succeeds. That is the heartbreak and the triumph of this book. Yossi Halevi succeeds until "the madness comes;" until, as his brother Sheykh Ibrahim is forced into anonymity by the Palestinian Authrity. Yossi Klein Halevi succeeded but, as Sheykh Ibrahim tells him (in English; using Hebrew is too dangerous for a man whom Arafat warned not to fraternize with Jews) "This is the time of the fanatics... I am crying every night." Let us all cry.
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