Safekeeping, by Jessamyn Hope (Fig Tree Books, 2014)I’ve always thought great literature charts the history of missed connections—and the human struggle to repair lost opportunities or absent relations. From Odysseus’s wandering return to Ithaca, to Anna...

And one more change. The journey from inspiration to publication for this book has been long and winding. I'd count it at six years of researching and writing — and 27 years of thinking about my experiences as a young, naive kibbutz volunteer.The path to a final...

Reporters at Ha'aretz dipped into the newspaper archives and discovered the smoking-gun to the "Where did Bernie volunteer?" mystery: in an interview with reporter Yossi Melman from 1990, the Bernie Sanders said he spent several months in 1963 on Kibbutz Sha'ar...

... or at least a winning sub-title for my book. Technically, I think it was my editor who helped slash through the kudzu of potential taglines and help me arrive at the words that will appear under Love & Rockets. Drum roll, please!Chasing Utopia in a Divided...

British acting legend Helen Mirren was recently honoured in Los Angeles at the Israel Film Festival and spoke about her experiences in the country—including a stint as a volunteer on Kibbutz Ha'on six months after the Six Day War, when the first wave of foreign...

The good—no, great—news: my book has a publisher and a publication date. I'm thrilled to announced that ECW Press has acquired the world rights to my kibbutz book with a publication date of Fall 2016.The manuscript is with an editor and I am working with the publisher...

The search for Bernie Sanders' former kibbutz has apparently heated up in Israel. Ha'aretz reported that the Kibbutz Movement has taken to social media (Facebook to be exact) to generate leads on where the current Democratic presidential candidate might have...

As soon as I shared my last blog post on Facebook, a writer friend who had also lived on a kibbutz pointed out a glaring flaw in my Venn diagramming. The clues from Bernie Sanders' brother and his professor friend can, in fact, all be true: Sanders' kibbutz wasn't...

Okay, I'll admit I haven't paid much attention to the looooong silly season of U.S. presidential nominations south of the border, beyond the Donald Trump memes floating across the Internet. I've been more engrossed by our own national elections here in Canada,...

Yesterday, I took my eight-year-old son and his friend to an IMAX showing of the documentary Jerusalem. I doubt it was their favourite IMAX: Vikings or Lemurs were likely more to their taste for armoured battles and funny critters. But I left the expansive theatre...