The Gavriel Tirosh Affair A Novel by Yitzhak Shalev
In 1936, Palestine is under the British Mandate. Arab rioting against the Jews accelerates, the British respond by limiting the entry of Jews fleeing Europe, and the Jewish leadership of Palestine exercises a policy of restraint. The new history teacher who takes over the junior class of a Jerusalem high school is convinced that a group of his students can be educated to help change the course of Jewish history by changing the way Jews respond to being threatened and displaced. Recalling that fateful time, the novel The Gavriel Tirosh Affair takes stock of what the students and their teacher accomplish. It is astonishing how many of the challenges in the novel remain strikingly relevant today.
Yitzhak Shalev
YITZHAK SHALEV (1919-1992) was born in Tiberias and grew up in Jerusalem, where he lived and raised his family (among them the novelist-to-be Meir Shalev), trained generations at the David Yellin Teachers’ Seminary, and innovated the teaching of the Bible through the method of walking tours.
In addition to Parashat Gavriel Tirosh (The Gavriel Tirosh Affair), Yitzhak Shalev published six volumes of poetry and two novels – Dam VeRuach (Blood and Spirit) and Tachat HaTut (Under the Mulberry Tree) – as well as essays on public affairs, literature, and the Bible.