Larry Tye, Author & Journalist

REVIEWS OF HOME LANDS

Click a name to read the review:

American Council for Judaism
Baltimore Chronicle
Boston Globe
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Irish Times
Jerusalem Post
Jerusalem Report
Journal of Jewish Communal Service
Miami Herald
New York Times
USA Today

Here is what some other publications -- and Jewish leaders -- say about Home Lands:

Tye has written a rich and instructive book on Jewish life around the world. Each of seven chapters addresses a unique Jewish community, including some in expected locales (Boston and Paris) and some in surprising ones (Dusseldorf, Germany and Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine). Each account is woven with a personal, anecdotal thread, as the author follows the fortunes of various Jewish families in their home cities. Tye profiles his own background to illustrate the American Jewish experience. His book is more than a personal travelog, however. Tye believes that Jewish life is thriving, even in the most unlikely places, and that there is a symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Jews around the world, at great benefit to both. This thoughtful work deserves a close reading. Recommended for medium and large libraries serving a Jewish clientele.

- LIBRARY JOURNAL, August, 2001

"A deeply moving and informative account of seven diverse cities, creating through its narrative a tapestry of Jewish life in the diaspora. Tye has an eye for detail as well as the larger underlying forces shaping and influencing the Jewish people."

- JEHUDA REINHARZ, PRESIDENT OF BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

"Larry Tye's Home Lands is a jewel. His thorough research, style, and intimate journey through the diaspora are captivating. In spite of some setbacks in Jewish communities his general message is one of preservation and hope."

- KITTY DUKAKIS

Larry Tye's Home Lands is an optimistic book about the Jewish people's ability to meet the new challenges awaiting it in the twenty-first century. On the one hand, it is an emotional book that very skillfully describes the new profile of the Jewish diaspora. On the other hand, it suggests important new ideas and thoughts about the way to perpetuate the Jewish existence. Those of us for whom the future of the Jewish people is very dear will not and should not skip reading this book."

- YOSSI BEILIN, FORMER MINISTER OF JUSTICE, ISRAEL

"If you're looking for good news about the Jewish future, check out Larry Tye's Home Lands."

- RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER

"This well-written personal report on seven major Jewish communities reflects the author's passion for whatever is Jewish in today's turbulent world."

- ELIE WIESEL

"Masterfully woven tapestry of contemporary Jewish life around the world . . . Highly readable and profoundly inspiring."

- DAVID A. HARRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE

"[Tye] has drawn a portrait of creativity, vitality and promise, which is thought-provoking, exhilarating and exciting . . . It paints a picture which we need to see as we enter the new millennium. This is a book which may reorient your perspective. It will certainly stimulate your thinking and will suggest ideas for talks, sermons and classes. My guess is that you will want to recommend it to students, congregants."

- DAVID GORDIS, PRESIDENT, HEBREW COLLEGE

Throughout Western history, resilience has been among the most distinguishing characteristic of Jewish communities. Larry Tye's Home Lands: Portrait of the New Jewish Diaspora attempts to shed new light on this timeless quality. Tye, a reporter at The Boston Globe, argues that the traditional dream of the Diaspora, as summarized by the final line of the Passover Sede--"Next year in Jerusalem!"--has changed. Today, he says, Jews "are forever rooted in Israel, but no longer need to live there." The Diaspora no longer wait in hope of returning to the Holy Land; instead they are grounded in the permanent homes they have made and the cultures they have created throughout the world. And the relationships among these communities, he argues, are just as important as the relationship that each one has to Israel. Home Lands tours seven centers of Jewish life, including Dublin, Dusseldorf, and Atlanta. In each case, Tye tells the story of a Jewish community in counterpoint to the story of one representative family. Together, these stories add a deeply personal dimension to Home Lands' political argument. The book's final chapter, about the Jews of Israel, fulfills Tye's promise to describe "a new encounter of equals, to replace the old one where Israel was seen as the center of the Jewish solar system with Diaspora communities orbiting as distant planets."

- MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The new Jewish diaspora, Tye contends, is made up of Jews who are forever rooted in Israel, but no longer need to live there. This book portrays a heterogeneous people who thrive in secular societies as far-flung as the former Soviet Union and Argentina but continue to embrace beliefs and practices that define them as Jews. The book presents a Judaism that, after centuries of dispersion, marks a race as well as a religion, a culture as well as an ethnicity. To research his story, Tye, a journalist with the Boston Globe, traveled to seven cities, including Dusseldorf, Boston, and Buenos Aires. He focuses on each city's origins, evolution, and present situation, telling the story in part through the experiences of a single family or congregation. In this perceptive (and probably controversial) book, Tye outlines the basis for a new, more nuanced relationship between Israel and the diaspora, concluding that the diaspora is as critical to the survival of Israel as Israel is to the survival of the Jewish people.

- GEORGE COHEN, BOOKLIST