The Aaronsohn Saga [Hardcover]

Although this book is nonfiction, it holds the reader's interest as if it were a best-selling spy novel. It is an excellent and fascinating book because it is the true biography of a real spy, Aaron Aaronsohn. The word "spy" conjures up many adjectives and attributes, such as, mysterious, courageous, secretive, intelligent. All these words apply to Aaron Aaronsohn and they also describe his sister, Sara. The Aaronsohns participated in the Nili intelligence group which observed, collected, and transmited information about the maneuvers of the Turks in Palestine during World War I. The Nili group supplied British with crucial intelligence they otherwise could not obtain ...

Aaronsohn had independently volunteered to spy for the British on the Ottoman Empire which then ruled Palestine. He was a citizen of this Empire and therefore was betraying the trust of the rulers. To his credit, it was recorded that he paced like a caged lion before he undertook this most courageous and risky undertaking. Shmuel Katz, the author did a huge amount of research to write this impressive book. His sources include, Aaronsohn's own diaries, British documents from the War Offlice Intelligence Reports, and the letters and papers of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the principal London Zionist leader, who helped negotiate the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was an official British document which stated in effect, the British government supported Zionist plans to create a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, with the stipulaton that the rights of the communities which originally existed there were not harmed [they used the word "prejudiced"]. The wording of this Declaration was very tricky and it is no surprise that controversy ensued afterwards. Local Arab opposition became evident. To this reader, it looks like the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the region stems from this era. The Aaronsohn Saga is a book which helps the reader understand the roots of the establishment of Zionism in Palestine. It also clarifies why Aaron Aaronsohn and his sister Sara are heros in the development of modern Israel.

This reader is impressed how Aaron Aaronsohn's discovery of a field of wild wheat growing in Palestine helped him become a world famous botanist. An important agricultural theory in botany stated that cultured wheat could be hybridized to create a new strain of wheat which would grow and survive in arid regions. His finding helped test that scientific theory and articles about it were published in scientific journals. He became famous both in the United States as well as Western Europe. In 1910, the U. S. Department of Agriculture helped Aaronsohn realize his dream of establishing an agricultural experiment station in Palestine near Zichron Ya'akov his home village. Creative financing with the help of famous Gentile and Jewish businessmen, for example, Julius Rosenwald, the founder of Sears and Roebuck and Supreme Court Judge Louis D. Brandeis, helped his dream come true. Aaronsohn also had prominent European supporters for this pet project.

One highly memorable true story in Aaron Aaronsohn's life occurred two years after the Ottoman Turks entered World War I on the side of the Germans. Aaronsohn still had some freedom of movement due to his status as a scientist and Turkish citizen. He booked passage on a ship sailing for New York from Copenhagen. He met a German young woman who conversed with him freely, considering herself an ally with his Turkish citizenship. Amazingly, at port in Kirkwall, Scotland, Aaronsohn was escorted off the ship and accused by the British of possessing "too much German stuff". Olga Bernhardt the German lady whom he befriended was dismayed and promised to help him. In New York, she was true to her word, and provided the story to the New York Evening Post. They published the story that Aaron Aaronsohn was arrested by the British as a Turkish spy! How ironic, when he was in fact a spy for the British, which Scotland Yard who arrested him did not know. While it is true he spent time in Germany due to his legitimate research and carried documents in German, he also had a cover story about a bogus research project involving sesame seeds. Fortunately, he received support from Otto Wartburg, a botany professor and he also received backing from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture regarding his collaboration within U.S. government's "Bureau of Plant Industry" presumed to be within the Department of Agriculture. Oddly enough, the arrest and its consequences of Aaronsohn being accused as a Turkish spy, saved his family in the village of Zichron Ya'acov, in Palestine. If he failed to return to Palestine by a specific deadline, they would have suffered greatly. Scotland Yard was in for a great surprise to discover that Aaron Aaronsohn and other villagers of Zichron Ya'acov in Palestine were in fact voluntary spies helping the British in their war effort ...

The book concludes on a sad note, when a carrier pigeon which held secret information about the Turks did not reach its destination but was captured by the Ottomans. They then kept close tabs on the Palestinian village where the Nili group was active. Later, Sara, Aaron's sister, was imprisoned and tortured but she would not divulge any secrets. When her elderly father was beaten right before her eyes, she could no longer take the punishment and sadly, committed suicide. She did however manage to convey her thoughts in a letter written right before she died. Although Aaron Aaronsohn did not suffer torture or imprisonment for his actions against the Ottoman Empire, his death reamins an unsolved mystery, leaving many unanswered questions. It is worth reading the book to discover how Aaron Aaronsohn died at the age of forty four. This is a very excellent book which helps the reader understand the growing roots of Zionism and Jewish settlement in Palestine. It also clarifies some of the complex knots created by history in this volatile part of the world. While at times the book is slow reading due to being jam-packed with details, unfamiliar names, and unfamiliar places, in the end it is a valuable book due to the subject matter and contents. Anyone desiring to learn about a real life spy and spy organization and its impact on world history and the history of Israel will enjoy reading this book.
Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

I was somewhat nervous about getting "The Aaronsohn Saga" to review. While I love stories of naturalists, and stories about spies, and stories about World War I, I know very little about Zionism or the early history of the Israeli state. And this book, which I am reading in the new English translation of a Hebrew original, does expect a certain level of familiarity, with the people involved if not the specific events.

That's part of the benefit of the book for me - this book was written in Israel for an Israeli adience, and so I don't expect to know all the background, any more than I'd expect a born and raised Israeli to know the details of the Arnold/Andre conspiracy. Reading history written by the other is always a valuable experience, and particularly for an American reading about and event like the World Wars, where the American narrative is, ah, singular. So this book did feel foreign, and to some extent that was a distancing effect that I had to force myself to work past.

Luckily, the story this book tells is so gripping that I got pulled into it anyway. There is adventure and tragedy, star-crossed romance and arranged marriage, science and war, politics and idealism, personality and pragmatism. It focuses on the story of Aaron Aaronsohn, a remarkable man who had the ability to see clearly and the passion to turn his vision into reality at a great turning-point in history. The book covers his early life as the child of an early Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine, his scientific training and his early work in botany and agronomy as he created - from the ground up - a U.S funded scientific station near his hometown. and his involvement (not always happy) in world Zionism and local Palstinian politics. As WWI comes to the Middle East he tries to find a way to harness the resources of his people to turn the outcome of the war to a victory for the Jewish state.

The story really picks up when Aaron and friends finally manage to establish a working relationship with the British and create a secret, daring spy network called Nili throughout Turkish-controlled (and German-allied) Palestine, a collective of fearless and dedicated young and old people, men and women, accomplishing amazing things with almost no resources and in the face of constant danger - a danger that finally caught up with them, just weeks before the British victory that they had helped to build.

This book does suffer in some ways. It exhibits what seems to be the common problem of historians working closely from paper sources - the book gives time and space to events based on how well-documented they are, rather than how important they are, so we get chapters and chapters of Aaron, frustrated and fighting the British bureacracy in minute detail, while the exciting and vital things happening among the members on the ground in Nili are summarized and mostly crammed into one chapter. Similarly, the publisher's blurbs talked about how the title of the book became "The Aaronsohn Saga" because Aaron's sister Sarah played such an important role in the events, and yet it seems like she got little more than the occasional passing mention and a grand death scene. And then there's another Aaronsohn sibling, Alex, who keeps popping into the narrative to do something activist, intriguing and barely descibed - and then disapperaing with no elaboration as soon as his story isn't directly intersecting Aaron's. I feel like this would be a much richer book if it truly was the saga of all the Aaronsohns and of Nili instead of what seems to be, in places, little more than an annotation of Aaron's diary. On a similar note. parts of the book descend almost into panegyric, reading like a praise-song for Aaron at the expense of other parts of the story, and spends a lot of time telling up how amazing he is during periods where what he's doing is mostly fruitlessly fighting bureaucracy and alienating potential allies. I understand that nobody (even Aaron Aaronsohn) is a perfect human being; in a biography I'd rather have his imperfections explored than have them excused.

That said, this was a deeply interesting look at a fascinating personality and a perspective of history that was little known to me, and I'm glad I got a chance to read it.

This is part of a spate of new books on the Aaronsohn family (Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T. E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict and Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East andJerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict ). However this one deals with the role of the family in establishing a secret underground spy ring known as Nili and focuses on the role of Sarah Aaraonsohn as a spymaster and leader of the ring. During the First World War this ring played a not insignificant part in the British military victory of the Turkish army and its German advisors in Palestine. In addition it examines the culture of the pre 1914 Jewish Yishuv in Palestine and its policies during the war, including the role of Chaim Weizman in obtaining the Balfour declaration.

This is a moving narrative that tells both the broad story of the war and the minute details of the Sarah's quest to save her people from the Turkish yoke. Including dialogue and scenes of horror, torture and bravery this is a fascinating story about a family and a community in a time of hardship.

Seth J. Frantzman

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  3.8 out of 5 stars