Presented by David and Rachel Biale
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In August 1970, David Biale, a 21-year-old American Jewish student, arrived at Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in Israel’s Bet She’an Valley as a volunteer. There, he met Rachel Korati, nine days shy of her eighteenth birthday. They 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. They also found a common language in the counterculture of the 1960s to which both were drawn.
Over the next two years, upon David’s return to the United States, the correspondence continued, often on a daily basis. Aerograms Across the Ocean: A Love Story in Letters opens 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. Organized around the 258 letters the authors exchanged, 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.
David Biale holds the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professorship in Jewish history at the University of California, Davis. He is the author or editor of eleven books on Jewish history, three of which won the National Jewish Book Award.
Rachel Biale is a clinical social worker and Bay Area Jewish community professional and activist. Her books include Women and Jewish Law, What Now? 2-Minute Tips for Solving Common Parenting Challenges, and Growing Up Below Sea Level: A Kibbutz Childhood.
This event is made possible, in part, by Richard and Martha Pastcan in honor of the bat mitzvah of Mika Buckwald.
Co-presented by New Lehrhaus.
