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| At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land | 
 enlarge | Author: Yossi K. Halevi
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (16 reviews)
Sales Rank: 510854
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060505826
Dewey Decimal Number: 296.39092
EAN: 9780060505820
ASIN: 0060505826
Publication Date: June 2002
Release Date: June 18, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A brilliantly observed memoir of an unprecedented and remarkable spiritual journey. While religion has fuelled the often violent conflict plaguing the Holy Land, Yossi Klein Halevi wondered whether it could be a source of unity as well. To find the answer, this religious Israeli Jew began a two?year exploration to discover a common language with his Christian and Muslim neighbours. He followed their holiday cycles, befriended Christian monastics and Islamic mystics, and joined them in prayer in monasteries and mosques in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden traces that remarkable spiritual journey. Halevi candidly reveals how he fought to reconcile his own fears and anger as a Jew to relate to Christians and Muslims as fellow spiritual seekers. He chronicles the difficulty of overcoming multiple obstacles?eological, political, historical, and psychological?at separate believers of the three monotheistic faiths. And he introduces a diverse range of people attempting to reconcile the dichotomous heart of this sacred place?struggle central to Israel, but which resonates for us all.
Amazon.com Review
Yossi Klein Halevi, born in America and now an Israeli citizen, embarked on a spiritual quest in order to appreciate the religious dimensions of conflicts in the Middle East. Beginning in 1998, he undertook "an attempt at religious empathy" in order "to test whether faith could be a means of healing rather than intensifying the conflicts in this land." Halevi, author of the critically acclaimed Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, chose "to pray and meditate with my Christian and Muslim fellow believers," as "a conscious refutation of the way we religious people of different faiths have always judged each other--by what we believe about God, rather than how we experience God's presence." The holy days of each religion form the structure of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, and Halevi's encounters with Sufi dervishes, Muslim sheiks, monks, nuns, and laypeople are entertaining, poignant, and sometimes fearsome. The stories do not separate "spirituality" from "politics"--or history, psychology, or theology. His commitment to describing an integrated experience of the many aspects of religious life helps to make the book a successful exercise in empathy, and a book of lasting literary value. --Michael Joseph Gross
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
An honest, humble, inspiring adventure September 8, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I just love this guy. Starting with a simple urge to connect with his neighbors, Yossi Halevi embarks on an awkward, fascinating, dangerous journey through Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. He discovers a series of surprising characters who dream, not just of peace between Jews, Muslims and Christians, but of spiritual friendship. And the story of these fragile, budding friendships becomes an adventure of almost overwhelming power.
I want to quote from one episode, where Halevi and a madcap Jew called Eliyahu Charanamrit McLean attend a mosque in Karawa village on the West Bank:
"This mosque was a family project: Everyone here belonged to the Abu-Laben clan. They were working class people; the shaykh himself was a car mechanic.
"What do the other Muslims think of you?" Eliyahu asked.
"That we're crazy," replied Saud's father. "They think we chant the name of 'Abdallah' instead of 'Allah"". Laughter.
I asked Saud what he experienced during the zakir [or dance of remembering God]. "That our hearts kept getting closer and closer to God," he said, with the Sufi vagueness I'd so often encountered from Ibrahim. ...
Ibrahim, not to be poetically outdone, added "Our souls went up to heaven like clouds".
"When you pray together," said the shaykh's father, "you form one heart".
I felt sad for this forlorn Sufi Shteibl. Here was an Islam with which we could make peace, yet it was almost absurdly perepheral. Still, maybe the fact that a handful of Muslims and Jews had danced together was enough for God to work with; perhaps He would magnify our prayers, widen the circle of ecstasy." (p. 104-105)
Halevi is realist enough to claim no easy victories. As the level of sectarian violence rises again, his network of friends retains little but hope and prayer. It's a marvelous book.
--author of "Different Visions of Love"
 A study in courage May 17, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One problem with writing intelligent books on religion is that religion demands the author experience it. Halevi takes this difficult challenge and seeks common ground with Christians and Muslims. To find this common ground he is willing to push his boundaries, go beyond his fears to find a common ground.
In his efforts he encounters a Catholic order of religious that seeks to return to the Jewish roots of Jesus as a common ground for Jewish-Christian relations; a Catholic monk of the Melkite rite (Jerusalem rite) seeing Arab-Jewish understanding through the Arab Christian; a common ground of genocide with Armenian Christians; a common ground of love with Sufi sheiks ...
Throughout his search runs a thread of the common monotheistic underpinnings of the three major religions of Israel. A second thread is a more universal acceptance that includes the great Eastern traditions - Buddhism and Hinduism. The third thread is the history of the Jewish people and the reality of strife in Israel. Through these threads, Halevi challenges the reader to confront his or her prejudices in the political and religious arenas.
The net result is not a great book, but one I highly recommend because of the issues raised and the author's personal willingness to share his experience in addressing the issues.
Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land October 8, 2005
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a must for all ethnic groups to read.
Hope September 10, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The title is exact. Halevi is an extraordinary person: a mystic deeply rooted in his Jewish faith but who can share a common search for peace and religious experience with Christians, the historic persecutors of Jews, and with Muslims, who have now become the "enemy." I know three of the communities of Christians he shared with and the descriptions are accurate so I can assume the Muslim sections are just as fair. Anyone searching for religious and mystic truth that is non-violent but serious about faith and God will love this book.
What real faith is all about. Amazing. February 14, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Yossi Halevy thinks he is only writing about interfaith connections in the holy land, but in fact the most inspiring aspect of the book is the delicate portrait of his own faith in God, where this deep faith takes him, and the grace of goodwill and wisdom that it creates inside his soul.
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