Exodus is a historical novel by the American novelist Leon Uris about the founding of the State of Israel beginning with a compressed retelling of the voyages of the 1947 immigration ship Exodus. It explores events through the histories of the various main characters and the ties of their personal lives to the birth of the new Jewish state.
Published by Doubleday in 1958, it became an international publishing phenomenon, the biggest bestseller in the United States since Gone with the Wind (1936).Exodus special edition, Amazon books description It was still number one on The New York Times Best Seller list eight months after its release.
Otto Preminger directed a 1960 film based on the novel, featuring Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan. It focuses mainly on the ship's and immigrants' escape from Cyprus and subsequent events in Palestine.
The origins of Exodus
Uris covered the Suez Crisis as a war correspondent in 1956. Two accounts are credited for telling about how he came to write the novel. The first suggests Uris, motivated by an intense interest in Israel, financed his own research for the novel by selling the film rights in advance to MGM and writing articles about the Sinai campaign. It has also been reported that Uris undertook two years of research, and extensive travel - including 12,000 miles within Israel, in addition to conducting 1,200 interviews as a basis for his novel.
Uris would say of his thinking:
There is a whole school of American Jewish writers who spend their time damning their fathers, hating their mothers, wringing their hands and wondering why they were born. This isn't art or literature. It's psychiatry. These writers are professional apologists. Every year you find one of their works on the best-seller list. Their work is obnoxious and makes me sick to my stomach. I wrote Exodus because I was just sick of apologizing—or feeling that it was necessary to apologize.
Others claim Uris was approached by a public relations firm in the mid-1950s with the idea of a writing a propaganda novel on behalf of Israel.Reel Bad Arabs, Jack Shaheen, Olive Branch Press 2001, . Shaheen does not identify the person or collection of persons who sought Gottlieb's assistance.
Whatever the genesis of the work, it generated a new sympathy in the United States and some other nations for the newly established State of Israel.God, Guns and Israel: Britain, The First World War And The Jews in the Holy City, Jill Hamilton, p. 181: "Two months after the tenth anniversary a novel was published in America that changed the public perception of Israel and the Jews. Exodus by the Jewish US ex-marine Leon Uris became an international publishing phenomenon, the biggest best seller in the United States since Gone with the Wind. Both the novel and the subsequent movie thrust Israel into the lives of millions, and with it initiated a new sympathy for the young country." The book has been widely praised as successful propaganda for Israel. Uris acknowledged after the book was published that he wrote it from a pro-Israel perspective, stating that: "I set out to tell a story of Israel. I am definitely biased. I am definitely pro-Jewish." Then–Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion remarked that: "As a literary work, it isn't much. But as a piece of propaganda, it's the greatest thing ever written about Israel".Gonshak, 2011, p. 1
The book also contributed greatly to general knowledge of the Holocaust for Jews and non-Jews alike. The general public learned more about the plight of the European Jews widely affected by Nazi Germany conquests.
Plot Summary In 1946, American foreign correspondent Mark Parker and American nurse Kitty Fremont reunite as old friends. Kitty is an American volunteer at the Karaolos internment camp on Cyprus, where thousands of Jews—Holocaust survivors—are being held by the British, who refused to allow them to go to Palestine. Separately, another pair of friends, Jewish fighters Ari Ben Canaan and David Ben Ami, also reunite.
Ari obtains a cargo ship, which was renamed as SS Exodus, with the intention to smuggle 302 Jewish children from the camp for an illegal voyage to Mandate Palestine before being discovered by military authorities. When the British learn the refugees are aboard a ship in Famagusta harbor, they blockade it, preventing the ship's departure. The refugees stage a hunger strike, during which the camp's doctor dies. Ari has wired the ship with explosives and threatens to blow up the ship and the refugees if the British try to board. When the British attempt to gain time by negotiating, Ari announces that every day 10 children will commit suicide on deck for the world to see. The British relent and allow the Exodus safe passage.
A generation previously, Ari's father Jossi and uncle Yakov migrated to Palestine following the Pogroms in the Russian Empire. They were disappointed that the regional Jews do not farm, and they take money from overseas philanthropists. The brothers change their names to Akiva (Yakov) and Barak (Jossi). Jossi tries to understand the Palestinians, and uses demonstrations of force to gain their respect. The Balfour Declaration was issued during World War I. The two brothers become senior in the Jewish community government, and debate using terrorism to fight the British authorities.
The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine is approved, and the conflict with the Palestinians begins in earnest. The Haganah forces prevail over three Arab generals who vie for fame. They adopt siege warfare tactics. The Jewish victory at Safed, incorrectly rumored as using an atom bomb, frightens the Arab Palestinian fighters, who flee to Lebanon. Israel proclaims its independence and gradually defeats the Arab nations to survive.
Themes
The main plot of the novel, writes Bonnie Helms, who included it in her "150 Great Books" (1986), involves a "story of great courage."Helms, Bonnie A. 150 Great Books, Walch Publishing (1986) p. 99 Among the characters are "freedom fighters" Ari and Barak Ben Canaan and Dov Landau, whose stories are told in flashbacks. American nurse Kitty Fremont and German refugee Karen Hansen work alongside them to help overcome British immigration restrictions. The novel includes several love stories, although they often occur among violence and terrorism. "Uris gives the reader a strong sense of the past, present, and the future of the Jewish people," states Helms.
The characters in Exodus were inspired to seek their meaning and identity in relation to their social settings. Their personal experiences had been founded both in religion and geography. According to William Darby, "The leading characters in Exodus only find romantic happiness when they understand that they must conjoin nationalistic, religious and personal aims."Darby, William. Necessary American Fictions: Popular Literature of the 1950s, Popular Press (1987) p. 93
Years after the book's success, Uris explained why he thinks it received such an enthusiastic reception:
Characters Ari Ben Canaan Ari Ben Canaan, a sabra born and raised on a kibbutz, goes on to become one of the mainstays of the Israeli freedom movement. The handsome Ben Canaan is described as six feet and three inches tall, with dark hair and ice-blue eyes. His father, Barak Ben Canaan (formerly Jossi Rabinsky, born in the Russian Pale of Settlement), heads the Jewish Agency for Palestine. His uncle Akiva (formerly Yakov Rabinsky) leads the Maccabees, a militant organization (based on the Irgun). The brothers came to Palestine after their father was murdered in a pogrom.
As a young man, Ari was in love with a young woman, Dafna, who was tortured, raped, and murdered by Arabs. Dafna later becomes the namesake of the youth village, Gan Dafna, around which a large part of the story unfolds. As part of the Mossad Aliyah Bet (an organization which organized Jewish immigration to Palestine), Ari is extremely creative in devising techniques to bring Jews from all over the world to Palestine – more than allowed by the British quota. During World War II, he served as an officer in the Jewish Brigade of the British army, and he uses this experience to benefit his activities. This is his main occupation until Israel gains freedom, when he joins the Israeli army and is assigned to the Negev desert. He sees himself as part of a new breed of Jew who will not "turn the other cheek". There are similarities to his character and Moshe Dayan, the Israeli military leader and politician; many parallels can be drawn between Ari and Dayan: both the fictional Ari and the real-life Dayan were trained by the same British General and had similar World War II experiences. Ben Canaan is also reported, however, to be based upon Yehudah Arazi. His character most likely was based on Yossi Harel, the commander of the Exodus 1947 operation and a leading member of the Israeli intelligence community.
Katherine "Kitty" Fremont Katherine "Kitty" Fremont is described in the novel as being tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. An American nurse newly widowed, Kitty meets Ari Ben Canaan in Cyprus. Grieving for her lost husband and the recent death of her daughter from polio, Kitty develops a maternal attachment toward Karen Hansen Clement, a German refugee in a Cyprus displaced persons (DP) camp. This attachment and her attraction toward Ben Canaan result in her becoming, initially with reluctance, involved in the freedom struggle. She eventually becomes irritated at Ari's lack of emotion towards violent deaths, but comes to understand and accept his dedication to Israel.
Mark Parker Mark Parker is an American journalist and Kitty Fremont's friend. He is credited as the whistleblower of the Exodus after it left on its voyage to Palestine, as a blackmail against the British.
Bruce Sutherland Bruce Sutherland is a British military officer (rank of brigadier) whose mother was Jewish. After a lifetime of soldiering, he is posted to Cyprus, with instructions to maintain security at the detention camps. Like many British aristocrats he has a stifling, formal manner of speech. Internally, he is torn between his sympathies with the Jews he is required to guard and his duties as a British officer; the horrors he witnessed when his battalion liberated Bergen-Belsen is also a factor. He retires from the army at his own request after a mass escape engineered and led by Ari Ben Canaan. Despite this, he moves to Palestine to settle, becomes good friends with Ben Canaan, and acts as a very unofficial military advisor.
Karen Hansen Clement Karen Hansen Clement, described as tall, with long brown hair and green eyes, is a German teenager who was brought up for a while by foster parents in Denmark. She was sent there by her family when Hitler rose to power in Germany. Her family was subsequently interned in concentration camps, where her mother and two younger brothers die. Before she is transported to Israel, Karen is placed in a Cypriot refugee camp and is one of the passengers on the Exodus. Karen does meet her father again in Israel, but he is a broken man who is unable to communicate or recognize his daughter; the experience leaves her unnerved and shattered. Despite this, she maintains her gentle and dainty personality. At the end of the novel she is murdered by fedayeen from Gaza.
Dov Landau