This is the story of a 16 year-old Jewish boy who left Morocco, the country of his birth, and immigrated to Israel, leaving his parents and younger brothers behind. With insight and wit he describes his meeting with Israel and how the country received its new immigrants. It is the compelling story of the price paid by anyone who leaves his comfort zone and moves to a new country. The auther describes how the newness of immigration remains and gives birth to dilemmas, even after the passage of many years. He asks, what should the immigrant do with the past? Deny it? Forget it? Make room for it? Live a double life? This is Daniel Ben Simon’s sixth book about Israeli society. For the first time, he reveals his own story, the story of a 16 year-old Jewish boy who grew up in Morocco and leaving friends and family behind, went to Israel to begin a new life. The book deals with his double identity, the confrontation between his Moroccan past and new Israeli present, and the enormous difficulties of leaving the country of his birth for another and of integrating one life into the other. One of the reasons for the book’s great popularity in Israel is that for the first time since its founding in 1948, a serious study has been made of the results of the mass immigration of Jews from Morocco during the 1950s. It has been argued that their block voting for the Likud, Israel’s right-wing party, over the past 40 years is the result of the socialist Labor Party establishment’s discriminatio. That argument, and the integrations of the Moroccan immigrants into Israeli society, are dealt with seriously, humorously and with finesse by Ben Simon. *************************************Daniel Ben Simon’s memoir is not only a fascinating, painful and eye-opening record of the encounter between the newly-born State of Israel and the massive Jewish immigration from North Africa, it is also the very personal, very moving story of one young intellectual who, despite pain and insult, became a leading figure in Israel’s politics, journalism and education. A touching tale of pain and love.Amos Oz