Professor Rachel Elboim-Dror

Novel: Clean Death in Tel Aviv

ISBN: 0-595-27062-X

Available for purchase from www.amazon.com (as well as from other publishers and by phone order, see details below).

Clean Death in Tel Aviv recreates the repressed dramas of Ruth Levin and of a generation of Zionist pioneers who sought to found an earthly utopia in Palestine. Her nightlong journey into the past unveils the contradictions and forces that shaped her tortured self. She was raised in a utopian agricultural community with an idealistic father ready to sacrifice himself and his family and an abusing mother-amidst a scorching desert and routine Arab attacks. Pealing off one mask after another in a desperate effort to discover her interior self she exposes her sexual ambiguities, her pleasure in cruelty to herself, her obedience to her army commanders and to her husband, whom she hoped to tame and make sexually potent. She awakens to failed feminine desires and tragic Israeli realities. At dawn her husband discovers her once-fervent body on the pavement.

Ruth Levin—a soldier and intellectual, liberated and puritanical, masculine and feminine, craving for life and living in the shadow of death—experiences the unbearable personal and collective anguish of the New Jewish Woman.

Blending mythology, poetry and a contemplative passion for self-knowledge, the heroics, tragedies and yearnings of the Zionist saga are exposed through one woman’s desperate narrative—culminating in her dissolution, reflecting the realities that displaced utopian hopes.

“The author analyzes herself and us with razor-sharp perspicacity, peering into the very essence of a woman’s soul. The book offers a daring and courageous retrospective panorama.” —Dimui, Journal of Literature, Art and Criticism

“Using an inner monologue to examine the dark sides of one’s soul, Elboim-Dror examines in her novel the selfhood of her tragic heroine, exploring deeply internal and external realities without retreating, posing a challenge to her readers.” —Iton 77, Literary Monthly

“Ideological debates clashing with stubborn and difficult realities, the landscape, the colors and smells of the ancient virgin land, the social and family tribulations, suspicions and cooperation, fears and loves, resourcefulness and sacrifices and the naked raw sexuality.” —Hadoar, Hebrew bi-weekly, New York

The book is available from: Ingram Book Group, Baker &Taylor and from the publisher: iUniverse, Inc., Lincoln, NE, ISBN 0-595-27062-X, May, 2003, 302 Pages, available in paperback, hardcover and ebook via:

www.amazon.com www.barnes&noble.com www.iuniverse.com (which enables you to read the first few chapters directly of the www page); or by e-mail: custservirce@iuniverse.com or by ordering via the phone, USA order call: 1-877-823-9235, International order call: 001-402-323-7800

About the author: Rachel Elboim-Dror is a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She grew up in a pioneering settlement, served as an officer in the Israeli army, and received her doctorate from Harvard University. Her novel, published in Spanish and Hebrew, was chosen as one of the best published in Israel in 1999.

To Professor Rachel Elboim-Dror's home page

E-mail: msred@mscc.huji.ac.il