Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men - Ze’ev Chafets

I didn’t know what to expect of this book. I came across it when I was researching the word freier, since it has a chapter named “Fear of Frei-ing”. It was a much more personal account than I had anticipated, and it reminded me of how powerful storytelling can be. This is something I experience every day in sales, the need to tell a story, to draw the narrative, and there wasn’t much novel to me in this book, but it was interesting to get a somewhat historical perspective. The book was published in 1986, and he begins his narrative as a 20-year-old American heading to the motherland in 1967. Chafets ends up working for the Liberal Party, he describes the style of Menachem Begin and the Likud, he writes in more of an observer style than Netanyahu’s autobiography, which can’t be much of a surprise to anyone. They are all familiar themes, and not particularly well written or particularly captivating, which is probably why I did not read the second half of the book with as much attention as the first half. I am glad I read it. It reminds me to think about time and patterns, as well as their influence on me and my blindness to their effects. 

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