Brecher, Daniel Cil 1951-

PERSONAL:

Born 1951, in Tel Aviv, Israel; immigrated to Germany, c. 1953. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Amsterdam, Holland.

CAREER:

Historian. During early career was director of the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem, Israel; Haifa University, Haifa, Israel, former faculty member; Hebrew University, Jerusalem, former faculty member; currently an independent historian and producer of documentaries for television and radio.

WRITINGS:

Fremd in Zion: Aufzeichnungen eines Unzuverlässigen, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (Munich, Germany), 2005, translated by Barbara Harshav as A Stranger in the Land: Jewish Identity beyond Nationalism, Other Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of the blog Book Reviews: Books about the Middle East and Jewish History.

SIDELIGHTS:

Daniel Cil Brecher was born in 1951 in Tel Aviv, Israel, but by the time he was two years old he had moved with his family to Düsseldorf, Germany. Now a writer, educator, and historian, he has taught both at Haifa University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and he formerly served as the director of the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem. A resident of Amsterdam, where he works as an independent historian, Brecher has produced a number of documentaries for both television and radio. He primarily focuses on the history of the Holocaust and the Middle East. His book Fremd in Zion: Aufzeichnungen eines Unzuverlässigen was published in Germany in 2005. An English version appeared two years later as A Stranger in the Land: Jewish Identity beyond Nationalism.

A Stranger in the Land addresses the subject of Israeli nationalism. Brecher writes from the perspective of someone who, though born in Israel, grew up in Germany; he therefore is familiar with the prejudices that Jews still face in that country and around the world. At the same time, he recognizes that nationalism in Israel can reach extreme proportions, particularly in the face of the ongoing strife in the Middle East. Brecher points to a series of causes and effects, linking many of the less flattering characteristics he sees in Israelis to their reactions to suffering through the Holocaust. A Publishers Weekly reviewer believed that, "though a thoughtful autobiography, this is less successful as history." Desicritics contributor Vivek Sharma remarked of Brecher's first effort: "By incorporating personal experiences and contexts from Middle East conflict, he supplies an account that is at once personalized and representative of biases, prejudices and myths that Israelis have built to rationalize their relationship with Arabs and Arab States." Sharma concluded that "Brecher provides a perspective which seems less biased than most Jewish takes on Middle East conflict."