AEROGRAMS ACROSS THE OCEAN IBD

Sinopsis

In August 1970, David Biale, a 21-year-old American Jewish student, arrived at Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in IsraelâÇÖs Bet SheâÇÖan Valley as a volunteer.ááThere, he met Rachel Korati, nine days shy of her eighteenth birthday.ááThey began an intense dialogue about how a secular Jew might be Jewish and what the role of Israel and kibbutz ought to be in modern Jewish life.ááThey also found a common language in the counter-culture of the 1960s to which both were drawn.Upon DavidâÇÖs return to university studies in Berkeley and RachelâÇÖs first steps into independent adulthood - living in a town near Tel Aviv and working as a youth movement counselor -- the two commenced a correspondence in which they continued their intellectual and ideological discussions from the summer, engaging Jewish sources on the one hand, and contemporary events on the other.ááGradually, the letters became more intimate and so began an epistolary romance, which one might associate more with the nineteenth century and which would be inconceivable in todayâÇÖs world of texting and email.Over the next two years, the correspondence continued, often on a daily basis.ááTwice, DavidâÇÖs plans to come to Israel were dashed.ááThe two struggled to hold onto a relationship composed primarily of written words.ááIn the fall of 1971, Rachel was drafted into the Israeli Army and David had his own brush with the American draft in the last phase of the Vietnam War.Aerograms Across the Ocean: A Love Story in Lettersáopens a rare window into the lives and thoughts of two passionate young people, trying to find their identities and life trajectories in the tumultuous early 1970s.ááBy turns philosophical and playful, poetic and prosaic, idealistic and uncertain, pensive and erotic, this jointly-written memoir is a coming-of-age story in Israel after the Six Day War and in America in the shadow of the Vietnam War.ááThe book is organized around the 258 letters the authors exchanged, a correspondence that takes readers back into a different age, half a century ago.