Discovering Elijah

Discovering Elijah is an anti-war book written by the same author who fifty years ago published the most daring and critical war stories in Hebrew literature. This time Yizhar discusses the earthshaking Yom Kippur War in which he and some of his friends (including the poet Haim Gouri) served as education officers and lecturers. They did not participate in the actual fighting, but they did spend time with the soldiers in battle areas on the Sinai front. The book focuses on the days before the crossing over to the west side of the Suez Canal, during which the protagonist is busy searching for his son-in-law Elijah, a veteran paratrooper who earns his living as a farmer and has disappeared during the unrest of the war. The protagonist travels through the open spaces of the Sinai Desert with the fighters, watching the regular soldiers but also closely observing how the battle is run from the headquarters and the war rooms.

With an amazing talent for description, Yizhar successfully conveys the confusion, the fear, the heroism, the sense of chaos and the impending danger of death. He conveys the poignant moments and the beauty of nature in the mythological spaces of the Sinai Desert which fill the soul with a religiosity with equal deftness. The tone and the pace are varied and the plot shifts from moments of intensity to lyrical passages, from dramatic scenes to comic episodes, from descriptions of the activities to philosophical passages.

The book’s highlight is the description of the unexpected meeting with Elijah in the destroyed city of Suez, but the work centers around the validity and justification of war. Yizhar’s conclusion is clear: war is stupid, life is preferable, conflict over land does not justify the death of young people.