Book Review: מלכים ג

As you may have noticed, dear readers, I have, under obvious influence of Ms. Mara Manischewitz's blog, added an application (for your benefit and for your benefit only, dear readers) on the side of this page in which one can hear my selection of a few popular American Rock songs (I would have liked to have offered greater musical diversity, but there wasn't a lot available there). I'm not sure if I want to keep it though, since it may be distracting and makes the page take longer to load...not to mention the semi-mourning of the "עומר" period is coming soon.

There were some things I would have liked to speak of here, that, as most things, seem to have slipped my mind. One thing of interest I do recall at the moment is seeing a nice new book at the Hebrew book store recently. It's called "מלכים ג" by יוכי ברנדס (who herself is pretty interesting, considering she's the daughter of the Biala Rebbe, and is a teacher of Tanach. I think her name is similar to "Brandeis").

Now, not that I'm the biggest Connoisseur of Hebrew novels, but this one caught my attention; it's a biblical historical novel of the kind you don't see every day. From what I understand it tells us 'the side of ירבעם בן נבט we never knew", through the eyes of a youngster from צרידה. I think this kind of novel is a bit too rare, especially in the usually meaning-devoid Israeli novels. Due to the chronological distance between ourselves and the first Temple period we obviously have a hard time even imagining what "Jewish" life might have been like back then; what "Judaism" meant and what it meant to be a "Jew" back then. Now, obviously Brandes' novel is a modernistic, and unquestionably distorted view of things (to an extent), but at least it shows a true effort in the author, and creates a true effort in the reader to discover more about those formidable times for the early shaping of our people.