Ambivalence : crossings the Israel / Palestine divide / Jonathan Garfinkel

"With lofty ideals, spectacular ambivalence, and comical naivete, Jonathan Garfinkel explores Israel and Palestine by talking to ordinary people." "Jonathan Garfinkel can't make up his mind - not about his girlfriend, Judaism, or Israel. And he has an unusual and amusing mind. After all, he dressed as Jesus for Purim at his Zionist grade school. Upon hearing a curious story about a house in Jerusalem where Jews and Arabs coexist in peace, he decides to venture there himself. When he arrives in Israel, though, nothing is as he imagined it, and nothing is as he was taught." "Ambivalence is the provocative, surreal, and often hilarious chronicle of Garfinkel's travels. From secret assignations with Palestinian activists and an uninvited visit to a West Bank refugee camp to Passover with Orthodox Jewish friends and finding the truth about the mythic house, Garfinkel, through his raw honesty and undeniably quirky sense of the world, gives us access to the people behind the headlines. Part memoir and part quest, Ambivalence grapples with the growing divisions in a troubled region and with the divide in Garfinkel's own soul.