Since its dramatic birth, Israel has excited the imagination of the Western World. In the process it has yielded some enduring prototypes--the pure-hearted pioneer turning the desert into a garden; the intellectual citizen-soldier with a chessboard in his kit bag and Haydn playing on the transistor radio next to his tank. These high-voltage personalities are the stuff of myth, and Israel is a truly mythological country, often seen as a kind of gigantic Jewish theme park featuring Bibleland, Kibbutzville, Masada, with live sets from Fiddler on the Roof and the entire cast of Exodus. Israelis are supposed to be the brave, patriotic, tough-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside combination of Tevye the Milkman, Elijah the Prophet, and Paul Newman. In much the same way that Barzini wrote about the Italians, Chafets offers Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men as an insider's view of the real Israel and what makes it tick.

This book is organized around the disparity between mythological Israel and the real one. It is an essentially affectionate and respectful report on a nation with more internal contradictions and characters than anyplace else on earth. Here is a close-up look at politics in Tel Aviv, life in the army, Israeli rednecks, life with a rock'n'roll band on the road (including the front lines), the impact of the Holocaust on young Israelis, the player-fan relationship Israelis have with the Diaspora, the stories of some weird immigrant groups, the view of Jerusalem from a prowl car, the impact of the brawling 1984 election, the life of Israeli glamour girls, and how the law of return helped Israel win a European basketball title --

and more. People and events are described and analyzed, the reader is shown how these disparate elements fit together, and what they mean for the future of the country. Here are the real people of the real Israel in a penetrating, iconoclastic , and often hilarious report of the place the author calls "a good country in a bad neighborhood."