Chil­dren’s

A Promise Ful­filled: Theodor Her­zl, Chaim Weiz­mann, David Ben-Guri­on and the Cre­ation of the State of Israel

Howard Green­feld
  • Review
By – August 6, 2012
Howard Green­feld out­lines his objec­tives for A Promise Ful­filled in his intro­duc­tion: I have tried to answer three basic ques­tions: Why should the Jew­ish peo­ple have a state? Why did this state need to be locat­ed where it is? And why — and how— were they able to cre­ate this state?” The book is then struc­tured to answer these ques­tions by exam­in­ing the lives of Theodor Her­zl, Chaim Weiz­mann, and David Ben- Guri­on. While Green­feld suc­cess­ful­ly answers his three basic ques­tions and pro­vides a thor­ough analy­sis of the impact and sig­nif­i­cance of Her­zl, Weiz­mann, and Ben- Guri­on to the cre­ation of the State of Israel, the high read­ing lev­el, sophis­ti­cat­ed vocab­u­lary, and aca­d­e­m­ic tone make the book chal­leng­ing to the aver­age stu­dent. How­ev­er, teach­ers and stu­dents already well-versed in the his­to­ry of Israel and curi­ous about the lives of these sem­i­nal fig­ures will find it a valu­able resource. It would also be an excel­lent text book or read­ing assign­ment for cours­es on Israel, or for stu­dents prepar­ing for a vis­it. For ages 14 – 18.

Rachel Kamin has been a syn­a­gogue librar­i­an and Jew­ish edu­ca­tor for over twen­ty-five years and has worked at North Sub­ur­ban Syn­a­gogue Beth El in High­land Park, IL since 2008, cur­rent­ly serv­ing as the Direc­tor of Life­long Learn­ing. A past chair of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award Com­mit­tee and past edi­tor of Book Reviews for Chil­dren & Teens for the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries News & Reviews, her arti­cles and book reviews appear in numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions. She has been a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Library Association’s Sophie Brody Book Award Com­mit­tee since 2021.

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