Memories After My Death

Book excerpt: The former Israeli prime minister shares a revealing portrait of his father, one of modern Israel’s leading political and literary figures. Memories After My Death is the astonishing true story of Tommy Lapid, a well-loved yet controversial Israeli figure who saw the development of the country from all angles over its first sixty years. Tommy Lapid’s life charts a course through every major incident of the Jewish experience since the 1930s, from seeing his father taken away to a concentration camp to arriving in Tel Aviv at the birth of Israel. In this heartfelt tribute, Yair Lapid presents both an intimate portrait of his father and a sweeping narrative of how Israel became what it is today. Tommy Lapid’s uniquely unorthodox opinions—he belonged to neither left nor right, was Jewish, but vehemently secular—expose the many contradictions inherent in Israeli life today.