ent back and read this novel.

Shlomzion, a young idealistic girl growing up in Jerusalem, falls in love with Yair, son of a renowned academic. They decide to get married and go to Yair's rabbi to get his blessing. Alas, the rabbi does not give them his blessing and instead says: "Heaven rejoices, but there is a hand that delays". These enigmatic words cause Yair to call off the wedding and the couple part.

Jump forward a few decades. Yair married Leah, has several children with her and lives in a settlement. Shlomzion quits being religious and spends time in the Sinai desert, marries Yair's old army commander and has a daughter, Mia. Years go by and Mia, who does the reverse journey of her mother and becomes religious, announces that she is going to get married to Ariel, who turn out to be Yair's son. The loop is closed. If the parents were not to wed because of a "hand that delays", their children will.

This is a simple and easy novel to read. It is interspersed with quotations from the Bible, the Talmud and the prayer book, so it might be a little off-putting to those not familiar with these texts. The background to the happenings is the aftermath of the Oslo accords, when Rabin was prime minister and the gap between mainstream Israel and the settlers grew to frightening proportions. The book doesn't reach the climas, Rabin's murder, but it deals with the zeitgeist of the times. ( )

Although Shlomtzion's religious fervor and the reason she gives it up is somewhat implausible to me, Elon's story is still a strong story about the power of love and the repercussions of choosing reason over love and vice versa. She manages to write a story about history, culture, and politics (personal as well as national), in a lyrical way that catches the imagination and makes you care for all her characters, whether you agree with them or not. ( )

if you awaken love If You Awaken Love, by Emuna Elon is a wonderfully written novel, dealing with rejection and acceptance, love and loss, and other underlying, issues, within the pages.

The story line takes place during turbulent times, a thirty year span from the Six-Day War up until the day Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated. Although politics is not the primary theme in If You Awaken Love, it is there, underlying the pages, difficult not to notice. We are given glimpses of life through those who lived in Israel before its statehood, glimpses of the Left and Right Wings, the Orthodox and the secular, the elderly and the young, the liberal and the staunch, and so on. The reader sees both sides of the spectrum within the vivid images that Elon depicts, from those Jews who are in favor of a dual land, and those who are more restrictive in their thinking.

On the surface, If You Awaken Love might seem to be a drab or unsaturated story or too dry for some readers. But, its’ beauty is within the illuminations that Elon so aptly and masterfully brings the reader. Her words are dynamic, strong, yet filled with a sensitivity to both sides of the issue. Elon uses biblical passages to enhance the story line, which make the novel all the more profound.

I applaud Emuna Elon for her endeavors in documenting history, combined with a story of love and war, in a compelling first novel. ( )