Joshua Gamson
Animated by diverse voices -gay soldiers and kibbutzniks, Palestinian activists, lesbian politicians and mothers, the many tribes of modern Israel -Between Sodom and Eden reveals the startling burst of lesbian and gay politics in Israel and the often painful cultural challenges that accompany it. It is an important analysis not just of gay people but of Israel itself, with all its lively idiosyncrasies, animosities, and delights. This is the definitive ride through gay and lesbian life in Israel, and you couldn´t ask for a better guide than Walzer, who takes you there with an insider´s passion and an outsider´s insight.
David Tuller
A fascinating, provocative and highly readable exploration of the nature of sexual identity in one of the world's most complex societies. With a reporter´s keen eye and a scholar´s critical intelligence, Lee Walzer offers us a compelling look at the tumultuous, joyful, determined, bittersweet, brave, and often surprising lives of Israeli gays and lesbians.
Urvashi Vaid
Between Sodom and Eden is critical to understanding the existence and emergence of movements for gay and lesbian freedom around the world. The evidence of a thriving lesbian and gay movement in Israel is cogently presented in this ground-breaking, readable and fascinating book. Walzer analyzes the roots, dynamics and potential of the Israeli movement and makes visible the elements of the process by which deep social change is made.
Wayne Hoffman
After interviewing more than 100 people—from activists to rabbis to legislators across the political spectrum—about this societal sea change, Walzer has crafted the definitive resource on gay Israel, and an essential glimpse into the country's broader social wars.
Rebecca Alpert
This book tells the story of the development of a gay and lesbian rights movement in Israel. Walzer keenly analyzes this vibrant, if hidden, dimension of Israeli culture.
Michal Eden
Walzer portrays, in amazing accuracy, an entire chapter of Israeli history to date never before documented, and thereby he shatters the Israeli heterosexist ethos.
Publishers Weekly
If God didn't make Adam and Steve as well as Adam and Eve, somebody did--because they are certainly alive and well in modern-day Israel, along with their lesbian sisters. This engaging journalistic foray into everyday gay and lesbian life and culture in the Promised Land is brimming with surprising information and conclusions. Based on interviews with Israeli gay and lesbian activists, high school students, kibbutz members, teachers and legislators, as well as common citizens, Walzer, an American attorney and journalist, portrays a complex culture that--although deeply divided on many religious and political issues--is reconciling itself to, and even celebrating, gay life and sexuality. Walzer is best at describing the extremes of Israeli culture: the government has banned employment and military discrimination based on sexual orientation and gay issues are discussed in high schools, yet family life and reproduction are so entrenched in Jewish tradition that it remains difficult for many gay people to come out. Still, many of the gay people he interviews claim that Israelis are not homophobic, simply heterosexist. Walzer reads Talmudic law sensitively--in his view, the Hebrew bible condemns homosexual acts, not people--and places anti-gay religious laws in the broader context of social mores and teachings on sexuality. Walzer's observations on the differences between gay life in Israel and the U.S. (such as that Israelis are far more willing to accept gay people if they identify as individuals and not as part of a "community") lend his provocative study additional interest. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
