From Israel to Florida, and Back

Winner gets a free Nextbook Press book appropriate to his or her comment (if he or she emails me at [email protected] with his or her mailing address).

We are honored to have this week’s winner be Yaffa Dermer, mother of top Netanyahu adviser Ron Dermer, whom senior writer Allison Hoffman profiled. After an unwise commenter questioned Dermer’s grandfather’s decision to be a builder in Florida rather than Israel, suggesting that regulations in the former were more lax, Dermer mère pounced:

Please be advised that Ron Dermer’s grandfather was a member of the bricklayers Union in the U.S. He only supervised constructions jobs for other contractors. He loved and protected the beauty and the integrity of landscape. He is the only supervisor who was honored at the end of any job, for example the Miami Museum of Science put a plaque in his memory for the fine work he did, or was made an honorary Conch when he supervised the Jail building in Key West. Don’t write lies. Ron’s mother and a very proud daughter.

And his grandson is the Likud prime minister’s top adviser. There’s an essay in that.

Yaffa Dermer gets Hillel Halkin’s biography of Yehuda Halevi, which is about a man (two, if you count Halkin) who felt he could only fully be a Jew in Israel. Her father, in this author’s own humble opinion, is a rebuke to that theory.

Bibi’s Brain
Yehuda Halevi [Nextbook Press]