Rating: 
Summary: Three stories: Two exciting + one boring =a worthwhile book
Review: Laura Blumenfeld book REVENGE is really three stories. It is the story of her family and its interactions, It is the story of her desire for Revenge, and it is the story of her searching from culture to culture, from the land of my ancestors (Sicily), to Albania, to Iran for justification for the revenge she craves for the attempted murder of her father. The encounters with the various cultures was great reading, The Iranian cleric who saw a difference between a Jew born in the Holy Land, a tourist and a European who moved there in terms of their right for revenge was incredible. Her encounters with the family of the shooter and those who ordered it was riviting, particularly since they not knowing who she really was, were willing to lie to her face concerning the shooting, perhaps they were lied to as well, who knows? It was drama and a page turner. Her own family situation frankly couldn't compare. I understand that to each person their own situation is what drives them, but I found myself rushing through that stuff to get to the other, however I don't think I could see the book working without them. The dispute over the Greek Temple, to me was the defining moment of those encounters. It is a very relevent book and one of the most worthwhile reads I've had. It combines history, current events and cultural values in a way that no history book or cultural text could. Its weaknesses are unable to push it down to three stars for me. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating story
Review: Laura Blumenfeld writes a fascinating story of her personal search for revenge after her father was shot in the head by a Palestinian terrorist in the Old City of Jerusalem. Her father, a rabbi, was a tourist. He was targeted for reasons that were unknown.
Blumenfeld spent many months speaking with the family of the incarcerated terrorist, presenting herself as a journalist, which is in fact her actual occupation. She managed to communicate with the terrorist himself, as well.
Though her father was able to forgive and release his attachment to the incident, Blumenfeld remained obsessed with the attack. She visited Albania, where revenge has been codified over 2,000 years of sanctioned practice; in Sicily, where the Mafia have established revenge as a tool for establishing and maintaining power; and in Iran, where Muslim tradition includes revenge as a part of its legal system.
Most fascinating to the reviewer, as a psychotherapist, is her personal odyssey of sorting out her relationships with her father and mother, and how this interdigitated with her resolution of her search for revenge.
This is an excellent, readable exploration of many facets of the issues surrounding vengeful feelings and their resolution.
Rating: 
Summary: A Daring Bit of Journalism
Review: Laura Blumenfeld writes beautifully. But people looking for an objective or scholarly treatise on revenge, or a monograph on the situation in the Middle East, should go elsewhere. This book is a personal journey of discovery and adventure, filled with emotional truths and some shocking surprises. In the end, the author exposes herself in a way few writers would dare. I loved this book. But even if you don't, you have to admire it.
Rating:
Summary: Cultural revelations
Review: Laura Blumenfeld's style of writing is lyrical and translucent. Her political philosophy is as close to the words of Jesus, as anyone can get - love your enemies. But I doubt if this philosophy will work for Israeli Jews. The heart of her story is not about the shooter, but about her mother's lack of empathy when her father is shot and wounded by an Arab. I applaud her courage in revealing this personal material to the reader. In the course of far and ranging research on the subject of revenge (who paid for all her trips to various countries?) she reveals a great deal about human nature. The German victim is sure the Arabs meant her no harm, they only wanted to kill Jews. Hmmmm! The young Christian felt it was his destiny. His family assigned no guilt to the Arab gang that planned the killings just to get publicity for their political cause. Laura's father, a rabbi, and her husband, a federal prosecutor, believe in justice tempered by truth and mercy. Not a bad philosophy. That leaves the family of the shooter, who I can assume represent the Palestinian culture. They chuckle when recounting the shooting of the rabbi. They also chuckle when recounting how neighbors stoned their puppies to death, and they had to get rid of the father dog because he howled too much after that. The dog showed more compassion than the Palestinian family. It makes you wonder. I'll side with the Judeo-Christian ethic any day. The Muslim ethic leaves me cold.
Rating: 
Summary: Working on some levels, not on others
Review: Laura Blumenfeld, a young reporter for the Washington Post, has written a sometimes engaging book about revenge and its motives that finds its inspiration in her personal history. She explores the reason for vengeance in humans through the study of different cultures but most importantly, by far, is the pulse of revenge her own body and soul feels, sparked by the shooting of her father in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman.
Blumenfeld's father, an American rabbi was a victim of a random attack. He happened to be walking in Jerusalem in 1986 at dusk when a gunman, Omar Khatib shot him on the scalp, leaving a gouge on his head. A centimeter lower and the bullet would have penetrated his skull, most probably killing him instantly. As it was, her father was relatively unhurt and able to continue a normal life. Omar was a member of a group of terrorists who vowed to avenge the U.S. bombing of Libya by randomly killing tourists in Jerusalem.
Enter his daughter, 12 years later, newly married and off to Jerusalem with her husband to live in the Old City for their first year of marriage. Ostensibly, she took a year from her reporter's job for a book writing sabbatical, a book whose topic is revenge and how different people cope with crimes and slights exercised on their person and their family. More relevantly, she goes to Israel to track down her father's gunman and exact some measure of revenge, though what that may materially be is very unsettled in her mind.
Her journey finds her meeting Omar's family in Ramallah, the nexus of Palestinian authority in the West Bank. Her descriptions of their many meetings are clouded by her intimate connection with the crime in question. Since the shooter is still in jail, she can only correspond with him through smuggled letters exchanged by the family via their regular visits with Omar. Critically, she has decided to mask her real identity to the family, calling herself simply Laura or Laura Weiss (her married name) and not giving any indication that she is the daughter of the victim. This leads to a dramatic ending to the book, one that would put many novels to shame, when she reveals herself to the family and Omar in a memorable court scene.
While Blumenfeld's writing is uneven and her search for the appropriate remedy for her vengeful impulses become rather drawn and laborious to the point of being pedantic, she nevertheless has a extremely engaging story to tell. Some of her best writing emanates from her research into how different cultures treat vengeance. She traveled to bastions of vengeance such as Sicily, Albania (where vengeance has even be codified in a published manual outside the purview of the legal system, but much more relevant than their law), Iran and Egypt to interview people on how their injustices are remedied. What emerges from her original research is a world where America's simple and trusting view of crime and punishment has very little foothold and a world where mysticism, belief, faith and superstition still dominate, if not monopolize many facets of life.
Still, this is book is predominately Blumenfeld's own story and its climax is powerful. However, one must remember that even if she can effect change in one Palestinian family, her story is the rare exception in the Middle East. Noble as her effort is, she is a educated American with the means and ability to study her own primeval urge towards vengeance with some measure of balance and make what one many would see as an enlightened choice. Her story is rare indeed and as such, is unsuitable as a blueprint for a healing between the parties. If only everyone could be as intellectually faithful as the author, the world would be a much finer place. Alas, we shall never witness such a world.
Rating: 
Summary: The Revenge of a Western Intellectual
Review: The beginning of this book was interesting and so was the information the author gathered on revenge and the history of revenge in different cultures. I found her analysis of revenge, however, to be rote and boring, very uninspired. The end of the book was extremely disturbing and offensive. This story is about a woman trying to reconcile her need for vengence with her western intellectual morals. In the end she gets her revenge on this terrorist who shot her father. What is her version of revenge? To befriend and forgive him. This terrorist who tried to kill her father, who belonged to murderous bloodthirsty terrorist gangs who target civilians for death. Her father was not killed, thank God, but how many Jews did this animal murder? How can she reconcile her friendship and forgiveness to one who murders her own people? Where does she get the right to forgive him for their murder? Does she forgive the nazis as well?
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking in its humanity
Review: There are times in reading Laura Blumenfeld's revenge that I inwardly cringe, wishing there was a bit more introspection to her crusade. What made this book so compelling is the message that we all have the ability to choose our own revenge for past hurts. Laura is very honest about her wish to somehow find a revenge for the shooting of her father. What drives the story is the intertwining of the lives of her and her family, and her quest to find out all she could about the man who shot her father. This quest compells her to live in Isreal and to seek out and get to know the family of the shooter. It also forces her to confront some of the feelings she has as a Jew towards the turmoil in Isreal and the continuing violence. As she comes closer to confronting the shooter, she finds that all is not cut and dried, and that there are other currents beneath her quest for revenge. The clarity and honesty that this story is told with is breathtaking, for it confronts the dilemna of revenge, and the seemingly never-ending cycle it nutures. I could not put this book down, partly because it had no pat ending, no made for TV ending. It was honest and does not pretend to know the solutions for the continuing cycle of violence. It is simply a story of how one young woman came to confront and understand the drive which seems to take over her life, and how she does not let that quest destroy her.
Rating:
Summary: Hello, I hate my parents. Please buy my book
Review: This book is a good example of the suicidal tendency of the liberal. To cut to the chase the "revenge" entailed is hunting down the person who shot her father and... being his friend. Why? Because it is very magnanimous behavior and allows one to strike moral poses in an innner mirror. In a word, the author's behavior stems from unbelievable narcissism, mingled with hatred of her parents. I mean do the math people: terrorist shoots her father, author bends the reader's ear at length about her parents' crummy marriage and subsequent divorce and how it wronged her, author hunts down terrorist and becomes his friend. All in the name of "revenge." And it is revenge - revenge against her father and mother. What the reader is disedifyingly treated to is the held-together-with-string psychology of a coddled princess who never has grown up. Who still thinks everything must somehow be ultimately about her. Her father is shot in the head by a terrorist: its about her. SHE must be the one to make a big self-dramatizing deal out of hunting the terrorist down. SHE must go through much soul searching and hemming and hawing and moralizing and liberalizing and fantasizing and decide that being the Jew murdering terrorist's best friend is an extremely big thing to do: because its about her, remember, and this sort of behavior reflects very well on her. Something she can add to her resume. Graduated such-and-such school with this degree, went to graduate school for that degree, forgave terrorist who shot my father... in a word she's a thoroughly modern Millie. But again, this all would not be so bad if it were not so disingenuous. What the reader is at bottom saddled with is a book that could have been a few sentences long: "Hi I am a very good person who has suffered much. Largely at the hands of my parents and their crummy dysfunctional marriage. I hate my parents. They ruined my perfect world. A terrorist shot my father and I thought I hated him because he further impeded my life by forcing me to take account of something besides myself for several seconds. But then I realized it was all about me because I could make big drama out of the situation and "coping" with it and "getting closure." Then I realized that, even better, I loved the terrorist who shot my father because I hate my parents. I became his best friend. The End." Can you imagine what this woman's cronies must get an ear full of?
Rating:
Summary: Not What I Expected
Review: This book is a slow read. After the author's father gets shot I wanted to put the book down and use it as a sleep aid. Nothing really goes on in the story and the author's decesion to write letters to the bad guy is just downright boring. I was expecting a real revenge story--not some pen pal narrative. I feel duped!
Rating:
Summary: a view form outside the box
Review: This book transcends the partisan politics of the Middle East conflicts to present a deeply moving look at one person's experiences of the same. Not for tiny minds hungry for nothing but entertainment, but a useful read for anyone interested in remaining human in this increasingly complicated and violent world.
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