The ATID Book Podcast went on the road to visit Hillel Halkin in Zichron Yaakov for a wide-ranging discussion on issues emerging from his recently re-issued book, “Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist’s Polemic” (Gefen Publishing).
Halkin came on Aliyah in 1970 and has been a prolific author, novelist, translator and essayist​. When first issued in 1977 the book, framed as a series of letters with a semi-fictional interlocutor, hit a raw nerve in the American Jewish community. In this conversation Halkin talks with Rabbis Chaim Brovender and Jeffrey Saks about an array of issues, including Jewish life and culture in Israel vs. the Diaspora, the meaning of Jewishness and Israeliness and how they inform each other, the sources for a contemporary Jewish culture, the state of Hebrew in the world today, and the prospects for secular Judaism and Diaspora Judaism in a post-Pew world.
The book is available on Amazon and the new preface is available at Mosaic.