Taking Flight: A Review of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood by Adina Hoffman. Steerforth Press. 217pp. $22.00.

by Judith Bolton-Fasman

Aliyah, a word that literally means to take flight is also the common term for immigrating to Israel. Adina Hoffman evokes both interpretations in her luminous new book House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood. In a wonderful melding of memoir, travelogue and political observation, Hoffman clearly demonstrates that there is no place on earth like Israel, let alone her Jerusalem neighborhood of Musrara.

Making aliyah from San Francisco, Hoffman, who is a film critic for the Jerusalem Post, lands in Musrara and transforms it into a vantage point from which to survey the inner and outer landscapes of Jerusalem. It is an old neighborhood, a place where the beauty of Middle Eastern surfaces is detected in both the gentrification and aching disrepair of its various buildings. Long-time Sephardic residents share space with Israeli yuppies and European transplants. Musrara, writes Hoffman "was built under Ottoman rule at the start of the century, mainly by well-to-do Muslims, though with time it also became home to Christians, Armenians, Greeks and a smattering of Jews who all lived together in relative luxury and harmony during the British Mandate."

Hoffman's fascination with local history contributes to her greater understanding of Israeli culture and life. She learns that Musrara literally means "pebble-covered" in Arabic. But in 1948 the Israeli government had "concocted a new symbolic name for the neighborhood, to replace the old, literal one..." The neighborhood was given the name "Morasha," the Hebrew word for legacy. But with the exception of a few realtors and government officials, the name never stuck.

The reason for that, as Hoffman soon discovers, is that even in a place as small as Jerusalem, the notion of a national legacy varies wildly from block to block. Hoffman ably illustrates this in eloquent portraits of her neighbors, one of whom is Meir, the grocer. Like the many Israelis that she encounters, Meir is symbolic of the sabra, or native fruit of Israel--prickly on the outside, sweet and soft on the inside. From his perch by the front door of his store he keeps a watchful, stern eye on the neighborhood. Inside his store, he extends credit to anyone who asks.

A lesser writer might have let that anecdotal picture of Meir stand, but Hoffman delves further after accepting an invitation to eat a Shabbat dinner at his house. She vividly conveys both the curiosity and reluctance she feels at the prospect of seeing Meir outside of his grocery store. What ensues is a sweet, memorable portrait that shows the ways in which a cultural divide can gradually disappear.

Then there is being both drawn to and exhausted by living in Jerusalem, a place one can never truly leave. Hoffman writes that "...leaving Jerusalem was not like leaving any other place. Often in turning one's back and going away from it, one felt oneself drawn nearer--just as, when caught up in its messy push-and-pull, one frequently longed to be elsewhere."

But that phenomenon yields to harsher political realities. "One lives in this city, if one is a Jewish Israeli of any conscience not strictly tribal," writes Hoffman, "by learning to suppress awareness, to turn away in shame, disgust , or helplessness, hurrying on as the young soldier girls stationed before the central post office laugh and yawn and demand to see the papers of every tenth-generation Palestinian Jerusalemite who dares pass by on their way to work or shop."

Again not content to let the image remain a photographic still, Hoffman animates things by attempting to locate the Arab family who once lived in her apartment. Her query begins as a bureaucratic exercise that quickly gives way to an emotional odyssey, one in which facts mingle with empathy. She tempers weighty symbolism with political truths; loyalty to Israel with a yearning for reconciliation and ultimately peace with her Palestinian neighbors.

It's a challenge for any writer to make this familiar material fresh and original. It's an even greater challenge to say something worthy with that material. Adina Hoffman has done both. She is a writer who brilliantly mixes poetry and politics. Her book deserves to be widely read and her gift with language savored.
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