Garfinkel’s book is an account of his journeys in Israel and Palestine, both actual and emotional.  He is a poet and a playwright, and his account is informed by the preoccupations of his calling.  The book is subtitled “Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide,” and his crossing is both awkward and revealing.

Stylistically, there is a touch of Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, with his immersion from time to time in a beat/hippie lifestyle, and he is constantly living on the edge.  Booze and street drugs are not highly recommended for a diabetic.  One technique that he uses, reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman, is to scatter imaginary voices from his past into the current dialogue, most frequently voices of teachers from his childhood Labor Zionist day school.  The voice of the composite Mrs. Blintzkrieg (a variant of blitzkrieg as infused with blintzes) reminds him of the need to fight for Jewish survival, while that of another teacher calls upon him to heed the prophetic message of justice for all peoples.Garfinkel takes reckless chances, and not just with his diabetes.  He goes alone into the West Bank on a borrowed bicycle with an Israeli flag attached.  Yet, fear is a frequent presence in his mind.  Sirens unnerve him, while those around him take the noise in stride.  With all the dangers, both those of his own creation and those external, it is nevertheless back in Toronto where he suffers serious injury, when struck by a car while riding a bicycle.Ambivalence? Garfinkel is ambivalent about religion.  Does he believe or not?  He doesn’t really know.  Zionism.  Is the existence of a Jewish state right?  After all, Jews have been through many horrors as a people.  Yet, in the here and now Israel is wronging its Palestinian citizens and those in the Occupied Territories.  One state or two?  All of these questions are posed and none answered.What Garfinkel does do is to identify issues.  The miserable conditions in which Palestinians are forced to live, in Israel and in the territories.  The prejudice they face.  The land stolen from them.  He is not satisfied with leaving the reader with his own experiences and observations about such questions.  He also adds the occasional footnote and provides a useful reading list at the end.The author is short on answers but he is keen to expose the errors that form the ideological blinders that many North American Jews wear.  The common notion that the Arabs all fled during the 1948 war in order to give the Arab armies a clear field to kill Jews is shot down.  The proposition that Arabs in Israel are treated equally is demolished.Yet, Garfinkel does more than debunk.  He also finds glimmers of hope.  A Jew who makes it his mission to mark with signs Palestinian locations destroyed when the inhabitants were driven out.  The Oasis of Hope, a community intentionally inclusive of Arab and Jewish families, sending their children together to a school which has opted out of the government system to avoid official interference with what is taught.You would not want to read Ambivalence for answers to the problems in Israel/Palestine.  The hopeful signs are too miniscule for that.  Yet, Garfinkel’s conscientious search makes the book worth the read.Johnathan Garfinkel.  “Ambivalence.”  Toronto: Viking Canada, 207.  352 pages.