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History · Holocaust

Leap of Faith

Summarizing Allan Arkush in Jewish Review of Books · Published Wednesday, March 25, 2026
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JL;DR SUMMARY Matti Friedman's new book explores the courageous yet ultimately tragic mission of Jewish parachutists, including Haviva Reick and Hannah Senesh, sent into Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish History  Holocaust  Zionism  World War Ii  Matti Friedman  Jewish Resistance  Hannah Senesh  Haviva Reick  Jewish Parachutists 

Places mentioned

Banská Bystrica, Slovakia
"On September 18, as Matti Friedman relates in his gripping account, an American B-17 Flying Fortress arrived in the rebel capital of Bansk Bystrica carrying supplies, men from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and a hitchhiker named Haviva Reick, a young Slovakian-born Jewish woman from Palestine."
Bari, Italy
"He visited Bansk Bystrica, Bari, Budapest, and many of the other locales in which his eighty-year-old story unfolded and tried to imagine what these places looked like to his protagonists and how they felt when they were there."
Budapest, Hungary
"The daughter of an important Hungarian writer, and a budding writer herself, she was a teenage convert to Zionism who escaped from Budapest just before the war, changed her name from Anna to Hannah, and quickly became a kibbutznik."
Nógrád, Hungary
"The fear that this is the inexorable reality and is not likely to change in the forseeable future has driven hordes of Israelis, especially during the past couple of years, to relocate themselves to places like Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and even Thailand."
Greece
"The fear that this is the inexorable reality and is not likely to change in the forseeable future has driven hordes of Israelis, especially during the past couple of years, to relocate themselves to places like Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and even Thailand."
Portugal
"The fear that this is the inexorable reality and is not likely to change in the forseeable future has driven hordes of Israelis, especially during the past couple of years, to relocate themselves to places like Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and even Thailand."
Thailand
"The fear that this is the inexorable reality and is not likely to change in the forseeable future has driven hordes of Israelis, especially during the past couple of years, to relocate themselves to places like Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and even Thailand."
Southern District, Israel
"Although he is a combat veteran of the IDF, who has written movingly about his own military experience (and much else), it was only when a paratrooper friend told him that it was wrong to write a book about parachutists without jumping that he made his firstand, presumably, onlyleap from an airplane (in the Negev)."
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Retrieved 2026-03-26 05:31:55 UTC
Curated 2026-03-26 08:32:27 UTC