The Fall of a Sparrow ─ The Life and Times of Abba Kovner

Porat (modern Jewish history, Tel Aviv University) tells the story of Abba Kovner, poet, freedom fighter and Jew. His life started in Vilna, Lithuania, amidst one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. As a young man he was a Zionist-Socialist who predicted the extermination policy of the Nazis and created an underground resistance group that survived the war, although most of Kovner’s family did not. Porat does not gloss over Kovner's determination in 1945 to take revenge for the murder of the Jews by poisoning the water supply of Germany. He later was relieved that his arrest by the British prevented this "madness." Many years later he was one of the advocates for the return of Palestinians to some of the villages they had been expelled from. Kovner's life was that of a visionary who dreamed the impossible and grieved when he couldn't accomplish it. His followers castigated him for his failures even as he was lauded as a hero of independence and as a literary figure. His contradictory life is certainly a commentary on being Jewish in the twentieth century but it is also the study of a man trying to come to terms with an insane world and his own agony. The flowing translation by Elizabeth Yuval is excellent. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)