Revenge - a Story of Hope

Mood: Quiet Music: Manhattan Transfer

This is a book by Laura Blumenfeld. I first saw her on C-SPAN discussing her book and was astonished at the background, journey, and conclusion. The book jacket has the grabber: "My father was shot by a terrorist. A decade later, I went looking for him..."

"Looking for him" is a huge understatement. Her father survived the attempt on his life in 1986, and this event absolutely overwhelmed her. She became obsessed with finding and confronting the Palestinian who tried to kill her father. With a family full of lawyers and rabbis she figures out quickly the difference between Justice and it's "illegitimate brother", Revenge. She wants Revenge.

The journey she undertook morphed almost beyond recognition and wound up being a psychological/emotional healing as well as a journalistic research project on the level of a post-graduate thesis. She started by just wanting to find and confront her father's would-be killer. But now the study of revenge itself and how to do it PROPERLY becomes her quest. Her travels detoured through Albania, of all places. She calls it one of the Revenge Capitols. It seems that those clever Albanians have actually codified Revenge and have a BOOK that details which revenge is appropriate for which offense!

This 15th Century "rule book" was written by an Albanian monk and is actively sold at book kiosks in Albania. This is a country where revenge is not a choice; it's a sacred duty. However, one must follow the rules set out in this book. IF this happens, THEN your revenge is [fill in the blank]. Furthermore, revenge-taking is the end. No one is allowed to take revenge for someone who took revenge. Got it?

At any rate, her journey went much farther than Albania. With her husband, she winds up in Israel and she then embarks on the most astonishing leg of her astonishing journey - she goes in search of the man who shot her father. She finds him - he had actually been arrested and jailed for his act. But now she wants to confront him and begins a very dangerous dance. She gets to know the shooter's family by representing herself as a journalist, which she is.

It's difficult to condense the multiplicity of dangerous stages she passes through. She befriends and becomes emotionally close to the shooters family. She worms her way into the prison and meets the shooter, who, much to her dismay, is not a monster but a sad little weakling who couldn't even shoot straight the night he was sent out by the PLO to shoot a Jew.

The book's climax is a courtroom scene that not even Hollywood would believe. Laura Blumenfeld goes to court to win freedom for the man who tried to kill her father.

Beautifully, beautifully written. All her condensed emotions and intellect find eloquent expression. I have recommended this book to all my friends and family.