The Sabras were the first Israelis--the first generation, born in the 1930s and 1940s, to grow up in the Zionist settlement in Palestine. Socialized and educated in the ethos of the Zionist labor movement and the communal ideals of the kibbutz and moshav, they turned the dream of their pioneer forebears into the reality of the new State of Israel. While the Sabras made up a small minority of the new society's population, their cultural influence was enormous. Their ideals, their love of the land, their recreational culture of bonfires and singalongs, their adoption of Arab accessories, their slang and gruff, straightforward manner, together with a reserved, almost puritanical attitude toward individual relationships, came to signify the cultural fulfillment of the utopian ideal of a new Jew. Oz Almog's lively, methodical, and convincing portrayal of the Sabras addresses their lives, thought, and role in Jewish history. The most comprehensive study of this exceptional generation to date, The Sabra provides a complex and unflinching analysis of accepted norms and an impressive appraisal of the Sabra, one that any examination of new Israeli reality must take into consideration.
