Some Will Make It, Others Not

Review of Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile, by Judy Lev

Some stories of the immigrant experience invite readers to view the past through a nostalgic haze. Sure Grandma and Grandpa had it tough, but they made it. And if maybe they didn’t see it that way, still their sacrifices were worth it, producing financially secure children and then, mirabile dictu, introspective MFA grandchildren.

This is not that book.

Judy Lev writes about American immigrants to Israel in the first decades after independence, before Start Up Nation, before better than Europe per-capita GDP, before intermarriage between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim produced the distinctly Israeli culture emerging today. Her olim reside in Baka, a formerly Arab Jerusalem neighborhood, where the fledgling government stashed recent arrivals. In these stories, Baka undergoes seemingly unceasing, if haphazard, construction, much like the new nation itself. Page length vignettes inserted between many of the stories add texture through the voices of residents not featured in the stories themselves: Herzl the Vegetable Guy, Uri the Egged Tour Guide….

The stories themselves are not comforting. Some of the olim are going to make it in Israel, others not. The most misty-eyed of the bunch tosses aside a big-time U.S. law school scholarship to make his life in Jerusalem. Decades later, his son eyes emigration to New Zealand. At the wife’s initiative, a Newton, Mass family of four decamps to Baka. Passive aggressive Dad decides to bring the kids when a Moroccan neighbor reenacts literally the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, with predictable results. You want Land of the Tanach, honey?

The strongest story, “Malka’s Holocaust,” provides a fresh angle, much needed among the sea of Holocaust Porn our major publishers dish out. Barber of Auschwitz! Dance Teacher of Dachau!

Thanks to She Writes Press, an independent publisher serving women writers, for affording us the chance to encounter this excellent collection. As the major houses continue their shameful boycott of Israeli writers, (“It’s not the right time…”) the work of independent publishers is more important than ever.

Judy Lev, Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile (She Writes Press, 2025)