"Back to Jerusalem." Jerusalem
Report 2 Jan. 1992: 27.
Baker, Carlos. "Bellow in the Holy Land." Theology Today Jan. 1977: 407–08.
Provides a brief
summary of events mentioned in the book. Briefly discusses
Bellow's political stance toward Israel.
Bellman, Samuel Irving.
"Rambling Scenario of Life." Southwest Review 62.2 (i977): 202–05.
Provides a brief
synopsis of contents of the book with commentary on Bellow as
activist and contemporary.
Bird, Christine M. "The Return Journey in To Jerusalem and Back." Melus
6.4 (1979): 51–57.
Concentrates on
the promise implied in the title that before the book ends Bellow
will make sense of America and his return home. Discusses
Bellow's sense of being an American in Israel and a Jew in
America.
Boyers, Robert T.
"Confronting the Present." Salmagundi 54
(1981): 77–97. Cited in MLA
Bibliography, 1981.
Discusses the
established destitution within Indian society as reflected in the
writings of V. S. Naipual. Argues that in TJB more is said
about the situation of one or two friends than about the novelist
himself. Both authors, in place of character portraits or self
outlines, polemic urgency governs. Both books resemble even less
conventional journals or travel books. Nor are there any edifying
spiritual portraits, and neither author can bring himself to tell
us how to live. However, both books are honest attempts to
discriminate truth and neither insists that common sense is an
absolute good. TJB is a bookish inquiry undergirded by social and
ideological inquiries. Considers Bellow's work on Israel as less
ambitious than Naipaul's, concerned less with the quality and
texture of life than with the general significance of Israel as
an idea in Western culture. Bellow is not concerned to establish
the authenticity of his observations, to claim for them a large
validity. He is content to record what seemed to him interesting
encounters and to indicate that intellectuals are apt to see
unimaginable things when they leave their desks and "enter life."
Israel, according to Bellow, is important because it is an index
to the state of the Western soul.
Budick, Emily Miller.
"The Place of Israel in American Writing: Reflections on Saul
Bellow's To Jerusalem and
Back." South Central Review: The Journal of the South
Central Modern Language Association 8.1 (1991): 59–70.
Considers
TJB the
straightforward test case of Bellow's Jewishness. Describes his
utter realism concerning the world's attitude toward Jews and the
Jewish state, as well as his decidedly non-Jewish–American
attitudes. Argues that TJB
reveals aspects of a larger American
tradition of thinking about Israel which resists the idea of
Israel as a material place. Notes this tradition of resistance to
a literal Israel in Melville's Clarel and Twain's Innocents Abroad,
pilgrimages which precede his in the American tradition. Points
out that unlike Twain and Melville, Saul Bellow comes to Israel
as a friend and a Jew, and yet conveys attitudes toward Jerusalem
which virtually reproduce the salient feature of Twain's and
Melville's texts. Comments on Bellow's anti-Zionist prejudice,
his mocking Twain-like attitudes to the Hasidism, and the world
of his Jewish childhood. Notes Bellow's humor and irritation with
the literal and sacred historicity. Concludes that TJB is an
important contribution to America's literature of Holy Land
pilgrimages. Reading it within this tradition in which he
recycles nineteenth-century resistance to a literal Israel into
the twentieth-century pilgrimage, Bellow enacts the very problem
his predecessors in the tradition would warn against: imposing
someone else's destiny on one's self. Bellow can accede to
Jerusalem only by going back to America.
Chomsky, Noam. "Bellow's Israel." New York Arts Journal (Spring 1977): 29–32. Rpt. as "Bellow, To
Jerusalem and Back." Towards a
New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got
There. Noam Chomsky. New York:
Pantheon, 1982. 299–307.
Complains that
in TJB Bellow is a propagandist who has produced a book
of what every good American should believe about Israel according
to the Israeli Information Ministry. Complains also of simplistic
political analyses, biases and even misinformation in the book.
Finally accuses Bellow of possessing merely an engaging ability
to skim the surface of ideas.
Cohen, Sarah Blaeher. "Saul Bellow's Jerusalem." Studies in American Jewish Literature
[University Park, PA] 5.2 (1979):
16–23. Joint issue with Yiddish 4.1
(1979).
Likens the Bellow
who travels to Jerusalem, and into his Jewish past, to the mental
travelers in his own fiction. Takes parts of the book and
compares them to scenes and episodes in Bellow's fiction.
Dahlin, Robert. "Bellow's Nonfiction Debut, on Jerusalem, Coming
From Viking in the Fall." Publishers Weekly 19 Apr. 1976: 40.
Provides a general
overview of the contents of the book.
Duchovnay, Gerald. "The Urgency of Survival." CEA Critic 43.1
(1980): 20–24.
Sees TJB as an
awakening or a reassessment by Bellow of his attitude toward
Israel and his own Jewishness. Recounts Bellow's comments on the
subject of such categorizations as Jewish–American writer.
Sees the major theme of the book as survival. Describes Bellow's
mixed feelings on his return to America. Portrays him as man
trying to retain a footing on a tottering world.
Ehrenkrantz, Louis. "Bellow in Jerusalem." Midstream Nov.
1977: 87–90.
Predicts the book
will disturb Middle East partisans because it fails to endorse
one position entirely. Sees this in light of Bellow's disavowal
of being labeled "Jewish." Commends the book for the quality of
the character portraits it achieves. Discusses Bellow's
assessment of Sartre's critique of the issues at stake in Israel,
and yet condemns Bellow's lack of commitment, likening it to the
lack of commitment found in all of his fictional creations.
Provides an
account of the reading Bellow did in preparation for the book.
Admires his hard-headed appraisal of the situation in Israel.
Delineates Bellow's own political response to Zionism and
examines its tone and content.
Halio, Jay. "Saul Bellow and Philip Roth Visit Jerusalem."
Saul Bellow Journal 16.1 (1999):49–56.
Notes Bellow and
Roth's mutual concern with Arab-Israeli relations, the poor
prospects for peace between them, and the quality of Israeli life
under siege conditions. Bellow punctuates his discourse on these
matters by frequent reference to the views of others?Sartre,
Harkabi, Kolech, and Alsop, as well as many other notables.
Argues that Bellow does not provide a piece of conventional
travel literature; instead he seizes the opportunity to
contemplate and comment on people, events, and most of all,
related writings by others mentioned above. Thus we come away
from his books enriched by the ways his views have been tested,
informed, and altered. By contrast, Roth has given us no
meditation of his own as such.
Hollander, John. "Return to the Source." Harper's Dec.
1976: 82, 84–85. Rpt. as "To Jerusalem and Back."
Saul Bellow.
Ed. Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea, 1986.
97–100.
Hollander
describes the trip depicted in the book as an inward and
backward, as well as an outward and onward, journey. Suggests the
book has as much to do with the diaspora Jew traveling to a
lately marked-out center and home again to exile as it has to do
with Israel itself. Describes the book as being as full of talk
as encounter and of asking one central question about the
survival of Israel. Discusses the "grotesque awkwardness" with
which Bellow depicts the Israeli political experiment. Describes
also the shadow of Russia that falls across the pages of the
book, both through Bellow's personal acquaintance with Russian
literature and through the history of the Middle East
itself.
Lavine, Steven David. "In Defiance of Reason: Saul Bellow's To
Jerusalem and Back." Studies in
American Jewish Literature [University Park, PA] 4.2 (1978): 72–83.
Joint issue with Yiddish
3.3 (1978).
Criticizes the book for a "want of hard
thought, of ideas engaged, analyzed, and judged." Discusses the
recurring themes of the threat of annihilation, incessant talking
as a means to solution, the loss of purpose of the democratic
West, Western naivete in face of the USSR and several others.
Claims that though the book fails as social analysis, perhaps its
primary objective is rather to dramatize, in a non-fictional
context, the primary concerns of the fiction with regard to
humanity and modern existence. By looking at the problems of men
like Teddy Kolech and Meyer Weisgal, "Bellow has come closer to
presenting good men in action than in any of his fiction."
Lavine, Steven David. "On the Road to Jerusalem: Bellow
Now." Studies in American Jewish
Literature [University Park, PAl 3.1
(1977): 1–6.
A general and rather unfavorable review
of the book in which Lavine begins to formulate ideas that will
form the substance of his more developed article in the 1978
issue of Studies in American–Jewish Literature.
Lehmann, Sophia. "Exodus and Homeland: The Representation of
Israel in Saul Bellow's To Jerusalem and Back and Philip Roth's
Operation Shylock." Religion and
Literature 30.3 (1998):
77–96.
Explores the
similarities ideology of the formation of both the United States
and Israel. Notes the prevalence of Biblical models of the New
Jerusalem which undergird both, and the shared notions of
manifest destiny involving the incursions of sacred time into
secular time. Discusses Bellow's comment that Americans have
become complacent and curiously lethargic about their freedom in
a way Israelis cannot afford to be. Describes the voyage to
Israel as described by Jewish–American literature to be a
good litmus test of Jewish–Americans' multiple allegiances,
and notes as well that they conclude either with an affirmation
of Jewish commonality and community, or with a sense of distance
as Americans. Explores its discussion about Israeli politics and
culture, and what this reveals about America. Argues that
initially Bellow arrives in Israel feeling very American and very
secular. However, as his stay lengthens, Bellow becomes
increasingly impressed with Israel and, conversely, censorious of
America. By the time he returns to Chicago, it is America that
feels foreign and disconnected from contemporary realities
because of Bellow's reassessment of Israeli history and his
concomitant re-evaluation of American history and emergent
values.
Libowitz, Richard. "Of
Sights and Vision." Reconstructionist Mar. 1977: 24.
Predicts that the
book will be a best seller because of its concrete detail. Notes
Bellow's discomfiture at the end of the work that there are no
easy solutions to the problem of Israel. Sees the book as both
Jewish and Catholic in its scope.
Argues that "we
might well learn more about Saul Bellow's style from his
nonfiction than his fiction." Provides a discussion of
TJB, in
which he claims that though the "writing is less dense than in
his novels, and less excited. Bellow builds the book from a
series of sketches, each of which stands alone, so that he is
freed from the worry of transitions or even, perhaps, of forming
the whole. Notes that he is no less ???realistic' in his dramatic
scenes than in his novels, for he attempts in both to evoke the
actual world and clearly uses many of the same techniques" (34).
Relates style and the characteristic perspectives of the Bellow
hero to this nonfiction work in an attempt to illuminate
both.
Pinsker, Sanford.
"Jerusalem Without Fictions." Jewish Spectator 42.1 (1977): 36–37.
Commends Bellow for having produced an
engrossing and intelligent view of Israeli life and spirit.
Describes the various dimensions of Bellow's response to
Zionism.
Saposnik, Irving S. "Bellow's Jerusalem: The Road Not
Taken." Judaism 28.1 (1979): 42–50.
Describes how the
mystique of Chicago is translated into the account of Jerusalem.
Shows both the biblical Jerusalem and the modern Jerusalem as the
geo-political center of modern Israel. Sees Israel?like
Henderson's Africa?as a place of spiritual renascence. Also
comments on the circular structure of the book, its characters,
tone and personal biographical elements.
Siskin, Edgar E. "Saul
Bellow in Search of Himself." CCAR Journal 25.2
(1978): 89–93.
Willson, Robert F., Jr. "The Politics of Massage: Moshe the
Masseur in To Jerusalem and Back." Notes on Modern American Literature
2.4 (1978): Item 26.
Suggests that
Moshe, by laying hands on the author, "takes on a somewhat
priestly role; his philosophy of dedication to principle
approximates that of the typical Bellow hero." Ultimately he
becomes a suitable symbol "for the balance of mood Bellow hopes
will prevail in the Middle East." His character reaffirms a faith
in reason and a mature love "that is central to the acts of
self-discovery of such heroes as Herzog and Charlie
Citrine."
Reviews
Agress, H. "To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account."
Contemporary Judaism 31 (1976–1977): 101–03.
Burgess, Anthony. "A Resonant Bellow." Spectator 27 Nov.
1976: 26.
Hanna, Suhail. "To Jerusalem and Back.: A Personal
Account." Worldview July/Aug. 1977: 52, 54.
In TJB, Bellow
rejoices, triumphs, agonizes, and meditates about Israel, all the
while despairing at her failures and cringing at her desires.
Provides a general description of the book and praises it for its
energetic style, delicate cynicism, fine vignettes, and
undergirding compassion.
Howe, Irving. "People on the Edge of History?Saul Bellow's Vivid
Report on Israel." New York Times
Book Review 17 Oct. 1976:
1–2.
Johnson, Paul. "The Issue of Israel." Times Literary Supplement 3 Dee. 1976: 1509.
Krauze, Enrique.
"Libros: To Jerusalem and Back." Vuelta July 1977:
37–39. [In Spanish]
