May 19, 2006

'Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert'

By NINA C. AYOUB

In 1975 a California teenager made the decision to immigrate to Israel and help establish a kibbutz in the country's southern borderlands. The desert drew Ranen Omer-Sherman, he says, with a "beckoning emptiness" that made everything seem possible. He would spend 13 years in the Arava region of the eastern Negev working as a desert guide.

Humbled by the setting, he brings a firsthand sense of desert beauty and disquiet to a new book, Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert