Gershom Gorenberg joins us live from Jerusalem to discuss the topic of his latest book, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East. At the center of Gorenberg’s true-life espionage thriller—which has lessons for today’s intelligence and cybersecurity—are the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, who cracked the Nazis’ “unbreakable” Enigma cipher and foiled Rommel’s bid to conquer the Middle East.
Gershom Gorenberg is a historian and journalist who has been covering Middle Eastern affairs for over 35 years. His latest book, War of Shadows, began with a conversation in Jerusalem that set off years of searching through archives, attics, streets in Cairo, Rome, London – endless days and nights of seeing facts unravel and new ones take shape in place of them, of following one lead to another to find someone who remembered the mysterious woman at Bletchley Park who discovered Rommel’s source in British headquarters – an obsessive hunt that led to the real story of how the Nazis came within an inch of conquering the Middle East. Gorenberg was previously the author of three critically acclaimed books – The Unmaking of Israel, The Accidental Empire, and The End of Days – and coauthor of Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Gorenberg is a columnist for The Washington Post and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and in Hebrew for Ha’aretz. He will return to the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 2021 to teach the workshop he created on writing history. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, journalist Myra Noveck. They have three children – Yehonatan, Yasmin and Shir-Raz.
CSP Partners: Beth Israel (San Diego, CA), Congregation Beth Shalom (Seattle, WA), Congregation B’nai Tzedek (Fountain Valley, CA), Congregation B’nai Israel (Tustin, CA), Temple Bat Yahm (Newport Beach, CA), Temple Beth El of South Orange County (Aliso Viejo, CA), Temple Beth Emet (Anaheim, CA), Temple Beth Ohr (La Mirada, CA), Temple Beth Tikvah (Fullerton, CA), Temple Beth Shalom (Needham, MA), Temple Beth Sholom (Santa Ana, CA), Town & Village Synagogue (NYC, NY) & Valley Beth Shalom (Encino, CA)
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