Having worked, first as head of the education department at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, and then as head of information and content for seventeen years, and as someone who has studied, researched and written extensively on the history of modern Zionism, I guarantee the historical accuracy of the new and wonderful novel by Tuvia Fishman in the “Promised Land” series. Truth be told, I watched him spend hours in the center library, researching the background drama of his books (and here garlic I helped him).
Indeed, the well-written novels follow the fictional adventures of Tuvia the Milkman (known from “Fiddler on the Roof”) in the Holy and Special Land, the historical setting is painted with realistic brushstrokes that bounce the leading events and characters of the period and capture the reader in an entertaining and educated story. The portraits of his heroes such as Yosef Trumpeldor, Zeev Jabotinsky, Avraham Stern, David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and Rabbi Kook, to name a few, radiate light and clarity of a classical painting, showcasing their immense personalities with artistic touch.
“The Roar of the Lion”, the third volume in Zvi Fishman’s “Tuvia in the Promised Land” series, continues the Zionist saga, and puts Tuvia and his family in the eye of the storm, as the Irgun and Lehi undergrounds abandon the Zionist establishment’s “restraint” policy against Arab terrorism Of the late 1930s, fighting against the rule of British occupation in the country. If you prefer to remember Tuvia as that beloved and oppressed milkman of the state of Entebbe, lacking the strength to overcome the blows that fate inflicts on his way, then the updated version of Fishman of Tuvia of Shalom-Aleichem is not for you. Just as upheavals in history have forced the Jewish people to rediscover their long-lost heroism on their return to Zion, so too has Tuvia become a new type of Jew willing to take a rifle and fight back when his family and liberty are threatened.
Fishman, who was a screenwriter in Hollywood before he became an avid religious and Zionist Jew and immigrated to Israel, knows how to weave a fascinating story. The great drama of the modern Zionist enterprise provides him with much material. He manages to harness all the struggle and intrigue of those days and found the thread that connects everything to a flowing plot, and he did this through Tuvia’s character and skills as a gifted storyteller. I can not think of a more exciting adventure than the return of the Jews to their ancient and modern homeland. The novel manages to capture the great courage, self-sacrifice and heroism that were the foundation of the establishment of the Jewish state. In reading this fascinating series of historical novels, originally “Tuvia in the Promised Land, Get up and wake up!”, And now, “The Roar of the Lion,” the reader finds himself in the midst of the battle for Jewish sovereignty in Mandatory Palestine, Which was obtained with much toil.
It is clear that Fishman does not just want to tell a fascinating story. Since the founding of Israel, the history of modern Zionism has been told in favor of the distorted and manipulative glasses of the Mapai socialist-hegemony that ruled the country during the first decades of the state. Not small, for example, it is common to think that Ben-Gurion founded the Haganah, but its real founder was the father of Betar and the Revisionists, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, in the winter of 1919-1920.
Fishman’s novels come to shed new light on Zionist drama, presenting events from a clear right-wing and religious Zionist perspective. In the old Zionist textbooks, it is possible that Rabbi Kook received a passing mention, Jabotinsky was portrayed as an extremist (and worse) who threatened the prospects for peace, and the name of God was not mentioned at all. In the novels of Fishman, Rabbi Kook, “Jabu,” and others become the leading characters. In addition, the novel receives wonderful illustrations by Shirley Brown, in a style reminiscent of classic novels of the past by Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.
One of the most difficult cases in the history of modern Zionism was the assassination of Chaim Arlozorov, followed by the trial of Avraham Stavsky, which was set up in a well-run blood libel intentionally created by the left-wing socialist camp against the Revisionists, with the aim of harming Jabotinsky politically. As a result, they seized control of the Jewish community in the National House and the Zionist Congress. While there is a novel about that incident, “The Glass Wall” from 1971 by Desmond Meering (the pen name of the son of British Police Inspector Harry F. Rice involved in the original investigation), Fishman’s “Lion Roar” tells the dramatic story in more authentic detail, With the clear intention of correcting the “fake history” woven by the left-wing media of the period and of the Jewish Agency leadership. In Fishman’s story, the victim of the murder is Parchik Aronov, Tuvia’s former communist son-in-law, and yet this is the Arlozorov affair. The free hatred that surrounded the witch hunt that sought to convict and execute an innocent man threatened to destroy the entire Zionist enterprise, and the reader can not help but compare the shameful affair with the political plans and unholy agendas that still accompany the political enterprise in Israel even today.
“In short,” as Shalom Aleichem would say, the novels in the “Tuvia in the Promised Land” series are a sweeping and formative reading. And there is a lot of humor and romance, along with the doses of ideology and action at the pace of the film. I especially enjoyed how the author even sucked the gangsters at Agassi Siegel and Meir Lansky into the Zionist axis. Fishman says he hopes to bring the saga to a climax in two novels that will bring Tuvia from old age and the Jews to a sovereign state in the Promised Land. If the author continues with the same flowing prose and concern for the right side of the story, he will create a great literary treasure for the people of Israel.