A Mission of Love: The Life of Enzo Sereni

Pua Hershlag received the prestigious Ze`ev Prize for this imaginative biography of Enzo Sereni. A fascinating political figure, Sereni was one of the most important Italian Zionists of his day. The novel begins when Sereni is thirteen. The precocious son of one of the most notable Jewish families in Rome, his future seems safely assured. But his idealism is fired by the ideas of Zionism and he becomes very passionate about the founding of a Jewish state.

In 1927, Sereni and his young wife immigrate to Eretz Israel, where he becomes a leader of the new pioneers. In the following decades he realizes many of his ambitions and becomes one of the most important movers behind Zionist immigration. His final venture is a mission to help European Jews during World War II, from which he never returns.