Summary
Pnina Lahav, as she presents herself in Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (1997): a Boston University law professor, born in Tel Aviv to parents from Iran and Egypt and later resident in the United States, who interviewed Simon Agranat from 1984 for an intellectual biography of him that is also a history of Israeli law in the Zionist century (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 88-193).
Details
- She first saw Agranat in 1969 while clerking in the Jerusalem district court; a 1984 Rockefeller Foundation fellowship enabled a year in Israel interviewing him two or three times a week and studying archives (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 88-125, 178-193).
- Her mother tongue is Hebrew; the book is dedicated to her companion Mort Horwitz (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 110-125).
- She records that her interpretation of Zionism is much more critical than Agranat’s, that she occasionally disagrees with his solutions, and that he freed her to write it her way: “I don’t always agree with you, but it is your book” (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 185-193).
- She notes the reversal between subject and author: Agranat, born in America to Russian immigrants, made his home in Israel; she, born in Tel Aviv, made her home in the United States (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 190-193).
Related pages
Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, Simon Agranat