Gather the Olives: On Food and Hope and the Holy Land

Gather the Olives is a dangerous book. That’s because it is about peace in a time

when peace in the Holy Land is a faraway, even radical notion. It is about hope

and food and community and the way there can be solidarity in sharing a meal.

Hence the danger: this book might remind its brave readers of how peace is

nourished and how hope can’t be extinguished.

Over the years, Bret Lott—the bestselling author

of more than a dozen books, including the novel Jewel (an Oprah’s Book

Club selection)—has lived and taught in Jerusalem, affording him the

opportunity to travel throughout Israel and the surrounding area. Now, in Gather

the Olives, this gifted storyteller has brought together a collection of

intimate portraits of the people, the food, and the hope for peace to be found

in a region ravaged by war and conflict.

Through meditations on such varied matters as an

olive oil cooperative run by Israeli and Palestinian women, a non-kosher

butcher shop in the middle of upscale—and very kosher—German Colony, the

nighttime harvesting of olives by Bedouins in downtown Jerusalem, a traditional

Shabbat dinner at an ancient home within the walls of the Old City, a simple

yet beautiful plate of fruit in an office in Ramallah, Bret Lott considers how

food and the people with whom we share it can bring together hearts and souls

in a lasting, meaningful, and peaceful way.