Just in time
for the 50th anniversary of
the Six-Day War, author Tammar Stein has written a middle grade historical
novel set in Israel in the days leading up to the war. Though much has been
written about the Six-Day War for an adult audience, her novel, The Six-DayHero, is one of the only books geared for school age readers.
The Six-Day
Hero tells the
story of Motti, a 12 year-old boy living in West Jerusalem. His brother is a
soldier in the IDF and Motti dreams of being a hero like him one day. But as
tensions rise and the war draws near Motti realizes not all heroes wear
uniforms.
Here’s an
interview with the author about the unlikely spark for her novel, and why the
Six-Day War just might be more important to the history of the Jewish people
than Hanukkah.
Q: What inspired you to write
this book?
TS: My mom called me after a rabbi
from her synagogue told her he had nothing to assign his fifth grader to read
about Israel. My mom followed this up with career advice for me: “You should
write something.” I kept thinking about this. Nothing about Israel for fifth
graders? Really? Someone should do something! Then I had one of those aha
moments. Oh wait…me. I should do something.
Q: The Six-Day War took place
before you were born. How did you become interested in writing about it?
TS: It was remarkably easy to set a
children’s book in that time period. Even though the geo-political situation
was precarious, children had an incredible amount of personal freedom. They
were free to roam after school without adult supervision and had amazing scraps
and adventures that their parents never knew about, daring each other to go
right up to the barbed wire border between Israel and Jordan, racing each other
in the streets, checking out protests and Arab markets. It made them scrappy
and independent. It was fertile ground for a novelist. Anything could
happen.
Q: Did researching and writing
about this war change any pre-conceived notions for you?
TS: Yes! I thought it was a simple
story. The war lasted 6 days. Israel won. Not much left to say. But as I
started interviewing friends and relatives who had lived through it, I realized
there was so much more to say. The month leading up to the war was a bitter,
frightening time. For many Israelis, it felt like a redux of WWII, which for a
small country with a significant percentage of Holocaust survivors and
refugees, was a terrifying reality. Was history going to repeat itself? Were
millions of Jews going to be slaughtered again? Would the rest of the world sit
back and watch it happen again?
Q: You spent part of your
childhood in Israel. Was your family touched personally by this war?
TS: My dad was an 18-year-old
Israeli soldier in the Six-Day War. He helped me with the details, the mood,
sharing the thoughts and fears that raced through his mind. I spoke with my
aunt and uncle, family friends. Because of the national draft, everyone of a
certain age was personally touched, either as an activated soldier or as a
relative of one. Leading up to the war
they really thought they were going to be annihilated. Newspapers were using
words like Holocaust and catastrophic and existential threat.
To win so completely, to unify Jerusalem for the first time in 2000 years…it
felt like a bigger miracle than Hanukkah and Purim put together.
Order a copy now.
Order a copy now.
