I was excited to get "The Aaronsohn Saga" to review. I love history and am always amazed at the heroes produced during times of war. I became fascinasted by the story of Aaron Aaronsohn and his sister Sarah.

Aaron grew up in a Jewish agricultural settlement and studied agriculture and botany. During World War I, the Aaronsohns created a spy ring known as Nili and worked with the British against the Turks. The story also covers the politics of the time. There are horrible things that happen as well as examples of courage and strength. This is a family that helped shape a region.

I usually don’t read stories of violence or such sadness, but this book provided such good information about a time and place I know very little about. It is well worth the read for anyone interested in the history of the region. ( )

This was an Early Review Book from Librarything. Although it's not one I would have chosen on my own (I enjoy history, but this was not a place or time I'd previously had much interest in), it is a compelling read about a remarkable scientist and spy iin the cause of a liberated Jewish state around the time of World War I. Aaron Aaronsohn started a Jewish spy organization, NILI, to provide information and support to the British in the hope that the end result would be a self-governing Jewish state. The intrigue, courage and betrayals that followed make for an interesting read. I was particularly surprised to find out what a low opinion Aaronsohn and others had of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who is described here as an anti-Semite and a true charlatan. ( )

I was somewhat nervous about getting "The Aaronsohn Saga" to review. While I love stories of naturalists, and stories about spies, and stories about World War I, I know very little about Zionism or the early history of the Israeli state. And this book, which I am reading in the new English translation of a Hebrew original, does expect a certain level of familiarity, with the people involved if not the specific events.

That's part of the benefit of the book for me - this book was written in Israel for an Israeli audience, and so I don't expect to know all the background, any more than I'd expect a born and raised Israeli to know the details of the Arnold/Andre conspiracy. Reading history written by the other is always a valuable experience, and particularly for an American reading about and event like the World Wars, where the American narrative is, ah, singular. So this book did feel foreign, and to some extent that was a distancing effect that I had to force myself to work past.

Luckily, the story this book tells is so gripping that I got pulled into it anyway. There is adventure and tragedy, star-crossed romance and arranged marriage, science and war, politics and idealism, personality and pragmatism. It focuses on the story of Aaron Aaronsohn, a remarkable man who had the ability to see clearly and the passion to turn his vision into reality at a great turning-point in history. The book covers his early life as the child of a pioneering Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine, his scientific training and his work in botany and agronomy as he created - from the ground up - a U.S funded scientific station near his hometown, and his involvement (not always happy) in world Zionism and local Palstinian politics. As WWI comes to the Middle East he tries to find a way to harness the resources of his people to turn the outcome of the war to a victory for the Jewish state.

The story really picks up when Aaron and friends finally manage to establish a working relationship with the British and create a secret, daring spy network called Nili throughout Turkish-controlled (and German-allied) Palestine, a collective of fearless and dedicated young and old people, men and women, accomplishing amazing things with almost no resources and in the face of constant danger - a danger that finally caught up with them, just weeks before the British victory that they had helped to build.

This book does suffer in some ways. It exhibits what seems to be the common problem of historians working closely from paper sources - the book gives time and space to events based on how well-documented they are, rather than how important they are, so we get chapters and chapters of Aaron, frustrated and fighting the British bureacracy in minute detail, while the exciting and vital things happening among the members on the ground in Nili are summarized and mostly crammed into one chapter. Similarly, the publisher's blurbs talked about how the title of the book became "The Aaronsohn Saga" because Aaron's sister Sarah played such an important role in the events, and yet it seems like she got little more than the occasional passing mention and a grand death scene. And then there's another Aaronsohn sibling, Alex, who keeps popping into the narrative to do something activist, intriguing and barely descibed - and then disappearing with no elaboration as soon as his story isn't directly intersecting Aaron's. I feel like this would be a much richer book if it truly was the saga of all the Aaronsohns and of Nili instead of what seems to be, in places, little more than an annotation of Aaron's diary. On a similar note. parts of the book descend almost into panegyric, reading like a praise-song for Aaron at the expense of other parts of the story, and spend a lot of time telling up how amazing he is during periods where what he's doing is mostly fruitlessly fighting bureaucracy and alienating potential allies. I understand that nobody (even Aaron Aaronsohn) is a perfect human being; in a biography I'd rather have his imperfections explored than have them excused.

That said, this was a deeply interesting look at a fascinating personality and a perspective of history that was little known to me, and I'm glad I got a chance to read it. ( )

This book is a tribute to Aaron Aaronsohn, his sister Sarah, and others who formed the “NILI” espionage organization in WWI Palestine to assist the British from behind Turkish lines. (NILI is the acronym for the Hebrew phrase “the eternity of Israel will not lie.”) The goal of NILI was to see Britain take trusteeship over Palestine with eventual independence for a Jewish homeland. Also, aware of the genocide of Armenians by the Turks, NILI feared the Jews might be next without British intervention. This is an inspiring story, and one not widely known. Many Americans are familiar with the brave and ferocious leaders of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but not so with the early heroes of Zionism, reflecting, I presume, the still politically charged nature of the existence of Israel. The stories of the young NILI martyrs will stay with you after you learn of their courage and travails. Nevertheless, I have a number of criticisms of this author’s presentation.

Let’s start with the title. Frankly, it just doesn’t do the story justice. How would anyone know to care about this story?

Only one map is included, showing the scope of NILI’s activities within a small area inside Palestine. But because most of the story involves the logistics of travel between Palestine and other parts of the Levant, a map of the whole Middle East and Anatolia would have been helpful.

Too many details bog down the narrative. For each operative, we get a recitation of the complete family tree. At times I felt like I was reading Numbers in The Torah.

We are hurled into the adventures of Aaronsohn in medias res, and set into a literary thicket of trees. What forest are we in? Why was the Zionist movement so important to Jews and in particular to these Jews of NILI? One minute they’re farmers and researchers; the next they are ardent Zionist spies. What happened?

We also don’t learn until page 211 what the British-Zionist relationship is all about or why Palestine mattered at all to the British. (On the former topic the author makes an interesting point about the British Cabinet’s declaration in favor of Jewish aspirations: “…not intended as an act of altruism towards the Jewish people, but a political undertaking aimed at turning the sympathies of Russian and American Jews (many of them neutral or even pro-German) towards the Allies. It was needed moreover as a preemptive coup in view of a possible pro-Zionist declaration from Germany…”)

The author takes great pains to defend Aaronsohn against his detractors. Repetitive excerpts from Aaronsohn’s letters complain about his perceived mistreatment and antagonism from others. There was fierce opposition to NILI from the Jewish community, but Katz would have us believe it was mostly from pettiness and jealousy, which did seem to be rife among these passionate ideologues. Katz largely elides broader issues however, especially the question of Jewish identity, which was of critical import during this time period. While he mentions (not until page 303) that Edwin Montague of the British Cabinet protested that Jews are not a nation, but a religion, Katz (himself clearly a strong Zionist) does not let readers know the basis or context of this roiling controversy.

The beginning of the 20th Century in Europe marked a strong movement toward racial thinking, and in particular, the racial status of Jews. If, in fact, they were deemed to be a separate racial category, it was only a small step to concluding they were not entitled to the same privileges and protections as other citizens. German Jews especially had been experiencing a mini “enlightenment” prior to the promulgation of racist thought, and were loathe to jeopardize their newly acquired access to academia and politics. (See, e.g., Amos Elon’s "The Pity of It All.") According to Elon, because a lot of the Jewish intelligentsia wanted to emphasize that their loyalty was primarily as German citizens, they converted to Christianity (to no avail, as it happened), thus depriving much of mainstream Judaism of intellectual leadership. But their motivation was clear: they wanted to be thought of as fellow Germans, and did not desire to muddy the waters of acceptance by lending any credence to Zionist conspiracy theories.

Moreover, the Jews in Palestine who were minding their own business had every reason to fear repercussions from the Turks because of NILI’s activities. The infighting over cooperation versus resistance tragically presaged the internecine conflicts of the Judenrate in the next World War. It would have been useful for Katz to address these ongoing concerns of a group subject to persecution and reprisal, instead of treating the matter as one merely of local, sui generis squabbling and greed.

Katz credits the efforts of Aaronsohn and NILI with helping to prevent further abuse of the Jews by the Turks. Aaronsohn and his group assisted the British a great deal, but I think larger forces determined what the Turks did or did not do. The heroic efforts of Jan Karski and Szmul Zygielbojm to bring the Holocaust to the attention of the world in WWII stopped nothing. Even Churchill wanted to help the Jews, but Roosevelt, now the great power, did not want to alienate Stalin. There are many strategic complexities in the international arena, but Katz keeps us tied to the ground in the Levant with Aaronsohn and other early Zionists. I wish he had given us more context, and less minutiae.

Katz relates some fascinating anecdotes: the British reluctance to attack the Turks by sea in spite of the clear advantages over a land attack in Gaza – for the British, it was all too reminiscent of Gallipoli; the need to lay water pipelines before any attack (to paraphrase historian Michael B. Oren on the Middle East, it’s always about the water!); Aaronsohn’s valuable contributions on the geology and water sources in the Beersheba-Gaza zone and hydrography of the coastal plain (information that the British had no access to prior to Aaronsohn); and Aaronsohn’s trenchant insights into other players in The Great Game. (On T.E. Lawrence, for example, Aaronsohn wrote, “Has a high opinion of himself. He gives me a lesson on our settlements, on the spirit of the people … etc. Listening to his words I had the feeling that I was present at a lecture by a Prussian scientific anti-Semite who expressed himself in the English language.”)

Was this a good story? Yes. It needs context, tighter structure, and a more dispassionate presentation. I would recommend it for those who are already familiar with the issues and are interested in knowing the very small details of how a local spy organization might work, and/or those interested in the details of early Zionism. ( )

The Aaronsohn Saga concerns the life of Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestinian Jew from the early 20th century. Apparently, he was a botanist of some repute; he discovered "wild wheat", which seems to be something of great importance. But more importantly, during World War I, he organized a spy ring called Nili, which gathered information on the Ottoman Empire and supplied it to the British. This information has been credited with successfully easing General Allenby's invasion of Palestine, as he knew the exact disposition, arrangement, and strength of the Turkish forces.

The whole spy thing was quite fascinating to me. Before reading the book, I had assumed Aaronsohn carried out this spying because he believed in the British cause. This is sort of true-- his sister Sarah, who ran Nili whenever he was out of the country (which was quite frequently) once witnessed the massacre of a group of Armenians at the hands of the Turks and feared that such a fate could befall her own people-- but it was also very much politically motivated. Aaronsohn, an ardent Zionist, believe that a British-dominated Palestine had a higher chance of leading to a Zionist state than a Turkish one, especially if the British authorities were in some sort of debt to the Jews.

Aaronsohn, an accomplished botanist, agronomist, and geologist with no formal training in any of those fields, was in charge of an agricultural station at Athlit. When locusts infested Palestine, he was the closest thing the Ottoman had to an expert on the subject, and he and his people were granted unlimited access to the country to help clear them out-- including military camps. So as they rid the country of locusts, his people quietly gathered all the information they could. Aaronsohn later traveled to America, ostensibly to work on a new food source for the Turkish government, but in actuality to make sure he was arrested in Scotland on the way so that he could make contact with British authorities (including Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picot fame) and established a line of communication. How he pulled this off is probably my favorite incident in the book.

Reviewing a biography is a bit strange for me-- I can't exactly talk about the plot or the characters, can I? Aaronsohn's story and that of Nili is certainly interesting, fascinating, and at times even heartbreaking (I think it would make a fabulous movie), and Katz does a good job of telling it. It certainly covers a topic of which I had very little knowledge beforehand, but knew I would like learning more about, and I did.

Mostly, what I have to pull out are quibbles-- there are a few aspects I found very strange. It opens up with a chapter that occurs relatively late in Aaronsohn's life, his initial contacting of the British authorities. I know that biographies generally need to open with a hook better than a person's birth, but this is followed up with a second out-of-sequence chapter that occurs somewhat earlier in his life, early in his agricultural career, when he discovers wild wheat and visits the United States. Oddly, the events of this chapter are never directly alluded to when their positions are reached in the main narrative. I know I probably could have compared dates if I had really wanted to, but I felt this could have been handled better with just a smidgen of extra work.

More glaring was the fact that some seemingly-important events went unexplained, or were relegated to footnotes. Two of Aaron Aaronsohn's brothers are first mentioned in a footnote! The text mentions one in passing, and a footnote on his name informs you that he was born last, and gives you the name of the two brothers to fall between Aaron and him. His sisters, Sarah and Rivka, seems to live with him, but this is never really explained, as his parents were alive at the time. I think they lived with him-- they are always referred to as helping him, even when they were young and he had moved away from home.

Most strangely, his mother is killed in a footnote! If there was a reference to her death in the main body of the text when it happened, I missed it entirely. In a section of the narrative talking about the farming town of Hadera, there is a footnote explaining that conditions there for early Zionist pioneers were rough and that they paid the price: "Aaron's mother Malka, barely sixty years old, died in 1912" (76). At that point, the main narrative had reached 1915, and that was the first I'd heard of her passing! I'd've thought the death of his mother would have had some impact on him.

Another oddity can be seen in those dates-- Aaronsohn died in 1919, and the book has already reach 1915 on page 76 of a 330-page book. This is because his early career is covered somewhat skimpily at times, with us being told that he worked one job for several years, and another for a couple more, cheerfully rolling over vast spans of time in a couple paragraphs (38). Maybe nothing of interest did indeed happen during this time, but I found it rather odd. Especially as Katz says in the introduction that "Aaronsohn's early career, with its amazing achievements in the world of science, was surely important enough for a biography" (1).

Conversely, the story of Nili is covered in painstaking detail, so much that Aaron Aaronsohn actually disappears from the narrative for about five chapters at a point where he is in London and the text does not follow him there until some time later. I can certainly understand Katz's reasoning in doing this-- those chapters are some of the most involving in the book, as they concern the discovery of Nili by the Turks and its destruction-- but make a book ostensibly about Aaron Aaronsohn feel oddly unfocused.

Actually, Katz says in the introduction that the book is called The Aaronsohn Saga and not Aaron Aaronsohn: A Biography because "It is impossible to see and write of Sarah only as a lesser player--as Aaron's deupty.... Sarah was a great historic personality in her own right" (1). But aside from the sections on Nili, Sarah is not much more developed than many other figures in Aaron's life, which makes the title and this claim feel like a concession to the fact that Katz's story of Aaron Aaronsohn just meandered a bit.

But I would not lose out on those chapters for anything-- the disintegration of Nili is gripping reading, obviously researched and covered in a meticulous level of detail, and the eventual fates of Aaron's father and his sister Sarah are compelling-- and tragic. I just wish Katz knew whether he was writing an Aaron Aaronsohn book or a Nili book. Somewhat less interesting or relevant, however, is a chapter describing how an Israeli police officer in the 1960s discovered the long-disputed ultimate fates of two members of Nili.

My other quibble would be the book's heavy Zionist streak. It is understandable in that Aaron Aaronsohn was (obviously) a Zionist and that the author is (more obviously) one as well, but aggravating in that any Jew who was not a Zionist-- or indeed, did not agree with Aaronsohn's brand of Zionism-- feels somewhat vilified. (For example, one is referred to as Aaronsohn's "lifelong enemy" in a photo caption, but when I thought about what that man actually did, it comes across as a tremendous oversimplification for someone who was doing what he thought was right every bit as much as Aaronsohn was.)

Don't let this list of problems fool you, however. Though the book is rough around the edges, it is competently written on the whole, and the tale of Aaron Aaronsohn, an obviously brilliant and passionate man, is fascinating and makes for excellent reading. Would that more people knew about him and his contributions to World War I.

All that said, I have no idea what that bird is doing on the cover.