Exile in the Promised Land: A Memoir - Softcover

In 1967, realizing a long held dream, Marcia Freedman moved with her husband and young daughter from the United States to Israel. Within four years she became a founding member of Israel's women's movement, fulfilling a need based on personal discoveries that "...housework and childcare are explosive when unshared; that anatomy need not be destiny; that anger is a rational response to oppression;...I learned that like Blacks, like Jews, women needed a liberation movement." In 1973 she was elected, unexpectedly, to the Knesset, Israel's governing body. Issues she raised about wife abuse or abortion choices were met with ridicule and personal attacks; these escalated as she became an outspoken proponent of Palestinian autonomy. Political life took its toll, and her marriage of thirteen years ended as she came to acknowledge and accept herself as a lesbian. In addition to shedding historical light on a critical area of the world, Marcia Freedman shows us a woman who struggled with questions bigger than herself, a woman who found some answers and even more questions. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith

Former pk Israeli Knesset member Freedman, now an organizer of Jewish women's peace activities in Berkeley, Calif., describes her struggle to bring women's liberation to Israel during the 1960s and '70s in a biting memoir extremely critical of the Israeli government. She chronicles with keen self-understanding her evolution from American immigrant housewife to feminist organizer and member of Shulamit Aloni's liberal Citizens Rights Movement to head of the radical Women's Party. She discusses forthrightly she had a definite point of view which I'm sure informs her opinions.g and sorrowfully such disappointments as pk her unsuccessful efforts to win support for abortion reform and to publicize the problem of wife-beating, the fragmentation of the women's movement and her growing isolation--which she attributes to her militancy, lesbianismdelete comma?/pk and support for Palestinian self-determination. While Freedman raises important questions about bias in Israeli society, she fails to provide sufficient evidence to pk back her serious allegations about government incompetence in dealing with discrimination, violence in the occupied territories and the conflict in Lebanon.
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