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A Crack in the Earth: A Journey up Israel's Rift Valley, by Haim Watzman
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The Jordan Rift Valley, stretching from the Red Sea to Lebanon, was ripped open millions of years ago by vast forces within the earth. This geological object has also been a part of human history ever since early humans used it as a path in their journey out of Africa. And for a quarter of a century it has been part of the biography of Haim Watzman, an Israeli journalist.
In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Watzman took a two-week journey up the valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface—an archaeologist who reconstructs the fallen altars of a long-forgotten people, a zoologist whose study of bird societies has produced a theory of why organisms cooperate, and a geologist who thinks that the valley will some day be an ocean. He encountered people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seek to build Gardens of Eden on earth—a booster for a chemical factory, the director of a tourist site, and an aging socialist farmer who curates a museum of idols. And he discovered that the geography’s instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee.
As an observant Jew who has written extensively about science and scholarship, Watzman strives to understand the valley in all its complexity—its physical facts, its role in human history and in his own life, and the myths it has engendered. He realizes that human beings can never see the rift in isolation. “It is the stories that men and women have told to explain what they see and what they do as a result that create the rift as we see it . . . As hard as we try to comprehend the landscape itself, it is humanity that we find.”
Watzman’s poetic evocation of the scientific and the human is a unique chronicle of a quest for knowledge.
- Sales Rank: #2334611 in Books
- Published on: 2007-05-29
- Released on: 2007-05-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .77" w x 5.50" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 208 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Israeli author Watzman (Company C) ambitiously takes on the whole of geological and human history as they developed in the Rift Valley, the defining geographical feature between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian West Bank. Though he occasionally drops too much information too quickly, Watzman is a talented storyteller, deftly engaging readers interested in the Earth's constant evolution, along with those more likely to be interested in the humanity affected by it. With a nice sense of irony and the absurd, the American-born Watzman makes a lively tale out of his travels in the valley, lending a practiced ear to experts and plain folks alike. Yet there are important gaps. Though he clearly wants to do justice to all the rift's stories, frequently referring to his belief that "people see the same landscape differently depending on who they are," Watzman fails almost utterly to bring in non-Jewish voices; the one Arab we meet is an Israeli Bedouin. He is also inconsistent in his references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, mentioning Palestinian violence frequently, but largely ignoring Israeli military operations and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands. Though this is a thoroughly enjoyable read, readers won't get a fully rounded version of the tale Watzman attempts to tell. (June 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Praise for Company C: “An Israeli version of Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead (2004), both hard-nosed and illuminating.” —Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Haim Watzman is a translator and journalist who lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children. He is the author of Company C: An American’s Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel (FSG, 2005).
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I enjoyed learning some background information and stories about the places ...
By Cypridopsis
I enjoyed learning some background information and stories about the places I visited. This was the reason I purchased the book. Have not been to Eilat, but have been to northern Negev and all the way to Mt. Hermon for geology field trip and field work.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Majestic Tales from a
By David B. Brumer
"The rift valley is a natural object, created by physical forces. But when we look at it, we don't see the physical object. We see stories and ideas and our own histories. People see the same landscape differently depending on who they are, when they live, what they've done, and what stories they heard when they were children."
Being congenitally predisposed to this unique and magnificent part of the physical world, I can attest to this pronouncement made by Haim Watzman in his majestic tale of a journey up the Jordan Rift Valley, "a crack in the earth's crust that begins where the Indian Ocean's waters mix with those of the Gulf of Aden." Watzman focuses on the stretch of the rift from the northern shore of the Dead Sea at Eilat to the Golan Heights bordering Syria in his riveting new book, "A Crack in the Earth".
Through a blend of science and faith, Watzman has crafted a story that tells about geological phenomena, scientific analysis, archeological examination, and philosophical musings through the distinct perspectives of biologists, zoologists, kibbutzniks, and other ordinary, modern-day inhabitants of the rift. Watzman, who is himself religiously observant, points out that he is also a journalist and a man of science, making him naturally skeptical. He challenges accepted biblical verities with the same investigative rigor that he uses when scrutinizing geological and biological ones. He notes that "modern archaeology and textual scholarship have cast doubt on the historical truth of the Bible for decades now...in many ways modern Orthodox Judaism is not a religion of the Bible. It's much more a religion built by the sages upon the foundation of the Bible, after the destruction of the Temple and the rise of Christianity." In the same way that the rift valley is the physical foundation upon which people have superimposed their `stories, ideas and histories,' the bible is the textual foundation which Judaism in its modern application builds upon, using human constructionists in the form of the sages of the rabbinic period.
Ultimately, it is the people who have inhabited the sacred lands of the rift that have kept it so fertile in our imaginations. From the Israelites crossing into the Promised Land from Egypt to Jesus being baptized by John in the waters of the Jordan, all the way up to modern Zionists like Rachel the Poetess; these are the stories of the people that fascinate Watzman, and his infectious love of the land and its people enraptures us as well.
Watzman, who is something of an anomaly in Israel as a religiously observant Jew with leftist leanings, largely refrains from politics in this book. Occasionally though, he does weave some political context into his narrative, explaining why, for example, Jericho became off limits to Israelis after the outbreak of the second Intifada. Watzman draws parallels to the turbulent landscape (Tiberias has experienced severe earthquakes almost once a century since the beginning of the Common Era) with the incessant political and social turmoil. He ruefully observes that "to an Israeli living in the first years of the 21st century, turmoil seems to be the rule. Periods of equilibrium seem few, far off, and short-lived." Yet, in geological terms, the ebbs and flows are much slower and deliberate. Some of the rocks on both sides of the rift are between 570 million and one billion years old. In that context, humankind's effect on the region is insignificant. God, who is unchanging, watches bemusedly over it all.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some have already criticized Watzman for not incorporating more of a Palestinian, Arab voice. John Leonard, in Harper's Magazine (June edition) somehow manages, through a tortured interpretation, to read into Watzman "his homeland's hateful modern indulgence of Bronze Age identity politics." Leonard continues with his knee-jerk critique. "He has a hard time even talking to a Palestinian, as if Palestinians were remnants of some antediluvian proto-species prior to language." Or Publishers Weekly, noting that "Watzman fails almost utterly to bring in non-Jewish voices; the one Arab we meet is an Israeli Bedouin."
Both critiques conveniently leave out the poignant encounter Watzman has with a Palestinian at a West Bank gas station at the end of the book, where he risks his own physical safety to preserve his moral bearings and psychic equilibrium. For those of us who know Haim Watzman and what he stands for, the irony would be hilarious if it weren't so deadly. Even in a book that is so decidedly apolitical, by an Israeli Jew who has been so vocal in his criticisms of his country's treatment of Palestinians, critics of Israel can't help but find racism and xenophobia under any and every rock.
But Haim Watzman is if anything, the ultimate mensch. The last section of his book, in which he has a very real encounter with a very real Palestinian, attests to his own very real humanity, and bravery for his beliefs (unlike some Western intellectuals who `shoot first' from the safety of their ivory towers and do their homework later, if ever) . Just before he turns back to "meet the Palestinian halfway" and offer him a ride, he muses that "since humans first began to call the names of gods, they have created their own valley of prayers, desires, deeds, and choices, which overlay the landscape just as the rain clouds do. As hard as we try to comprehend the landscape itself, it is humanity that we find."
This is a beautiful book that radiates a personal warmth and love of the land and its people. It is as uplifting as it is inspired.
[...]
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
More Politics and Personal Memories than Geology
By DHB
The author is a good writer and his descriptions are interesting but the book is not very much about the geology or the archeology of the Jordan Rift Valley. In writing about about places, he gives us more of his on reminiscences than anything else. When writing about geologists he seems more interested in their personal lives than their work.
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