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From Jerusalem to Beverly Hills

Eitan Gonen
AuthorHouse (2010)
ISBN 9781452092942
Reviewed by Charline Ratcliff for RebeccasReads (04/11)

A couple weeks ago I was asked if I would be interested in reviewing “From Jerusalem to Beverly Hills: Memoir of a Palestinian Jew” by author Eitan Gonen. I really enjoy reading biographies; I love learning about some of the other people whom I share this world with so I immediately accepted. As my caption states – “From Jerusalem to Beverly Hills” was a riveting read. This was a book that I was immediately sucked into as soon as I began reading and I didn’t want to put it down. Gonen has a wonderfully descriptive writing style. His life story is amazingly interesting and his personal memories flow across the pages of this book with the same ease that water runs downstream.

In “From Jerusalem to Beverly Hills” Gonen explains how his parents, pioneers from the Soviet Ukraine Diaspora, came to be in Jerusalem. Gonen’s own recounting begins in Jerusalem when he is just four years old and I was impressed by the amount of detail he remembers from such an early age. Gonen shares the challenges his mother had with various schools when she was trying to enroll him in first grade. A religious school eventually accepted him and we follow along as Gonen shares with us his life as he remembers it. During all of this World War II was also happening. Gonen shares his memories of waiting for his father, who had taken a construction job with the British military, to come home. Toward the end of the war the British were limiting Jewish immigration and there were times when Gonen’s father worked too far away and could not safely make it back for Shabbat.

I don’t want to give any more of Gonen’s story away but I will say that he has definitely lived a full life. He has endured much: hunger, personal loss, family displacement and more. He has seen things that no one should have to see. He has experienced things that no one should have to go through and yet through it all I would say he has triumphed. He is a true survivor.

In closing I give “Jerusalem to Beverly Hills” a five-star rating and would say this book is a “must read” for anyone who loves biographies or history.

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