Der perfekte Frieden

Amos Oz tells the story of a kibbutz, a story he knows well; for he himself lived for over 30 years in one of these nuclei of the Israeli state. He knows them, these Jonathans, Azarias, Sruliks, Joleks, Chawas, and Rimonas; he knows them in their need to feel at home somewhere. The feeling that drives them all is longing. Longing for a state where they can live freely and safely among the old-school Zionists; longing for adventure and a wide, boundless world among the youth who have already grown up in the security and discipline of a kibbutz; longing for "perfect peace" among someone like Jonathan Lifshitz, who one day decides to leave his wife, his parents, and the community of other kibbutzniks to search for that place in the world where he would truly be "at home and with himself."