The Imaginary Voyage: With Theodor Herzl in Israel

In this moving and often astonishing memoir, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres undertakes something most unusual: an imaginary voyage with Theodor Herzl, the great Zionist theorist and spiritual father of Israel. Despite the decades that separate them, they visit together places that Herzl knew only as dreams in the desert.

Former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres combines history, memoir, and fiction in an "imaginary voyage" through 20th-century Israel with the 19th-century founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl. "Only the narrow-minded and unimaginative will find this premise off-putting or surprising," Peres explains. "Everyone else has long known that in our country the impossible is a way of life." This make-believe tour includes a brief description of the Holocaust for a man who initially would have disbelieved it, plus vignettes of life in the Jewish nation-state ("I had no idea whether Herzl would appreciate the pleasure of today's Tel Aviv nightlife. I had a hard time picturing him dancing to some disc jockey's rock 'n' roll, or taking part in a rave on one of the converted docks at Jaffa"). Peres also uses Herzl as a tool for projecting some of his own views on contemporary Israeli politics: "[Herzl] sternly disapproved of the role religious parties play in governing Israel today.... I am concerned about the growing schism between the religious and the secular factions in Israel. The former, to be quite honest, have proven themselves far more vindictive than the latter. If we are not careful, this latent conflict could divide Israel and Israeli society, and encourage intolerance and discourage progress." The Imaginary Voyage is a quickly read tale full of charming idiosyncrasies and edgy political observations. --John J. Miller