Heroes and hustlers, hard hats and holy men

Since its dramatic birth, Israel has excited the imagination of the Western World. In the process it has yielded some enduring prototypes--the pure-hearted pioneer turning the desert into a garden; the intellectual citizen-soldier with a chessboard in his kit bag and Haydn playing on the transistor radio next to his tank. These high-voltage personalities are the stuff of myth, and Israel is a truly mythological country, often seen as a kind of gigantic Jewish theme park featuring Bibleland, Kibbutzville, Masada, with live sets from Fiddler on the Roof and the entire cast of Exodus. Israelis are supposed to be the brave, patriotic, tough-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside combination of Tevye the Milkman, Elijah the Prophet, and Paul Newman. In much the same way that Barzini wrote about the Italians, Chafets offers Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men as an insider's view of the real Israel and what makes it tick. This book is organized around the disparity between mythological Israel and the real one. It is an essentially affectionate and respectful report on a nation with more internal contradictions and characters than anyplace else on earth. Here is a close-up look at pol