Please join us for a special evening, Wednesday, October 18, 7:30 pm at Temple Menorah, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War with author Uri Kaufman who will present about his book- 18 Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How it Created the Modern Middle East.
A special guest for the evening will be Israeli Consul General Maor Elbaz Starinsky.
October 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East. The War was a trauma for Israel and following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order. The Jewish State came shockingly close to defeat. A panicky cabinet meeting debated the use of nuclear weapons. After the war, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in disgrace, and a 9/11-style commission investigated the “debacle.”
But, argues Uri Kaufman, from the perspective of a half century, the War can be seen as a pivotal victory for Israel. After nearly being routed, the Israel Defense Forces clawed its way back to threaten Cairo and Damascus. In the War’s aftermath, both sides had to accept unwelcome truths: Israel could no longer take military superiority for granted — but the Arabs could no longer hope to wipe Israel off the map. A straight line leads from the battlefields of 1973 to the Camp David Accords of 1978 and all the treaties since.
This program is co-sponsored with the Temple Menorah
This literary event was made possible with the generous support of the Jewish Book Council, Books&Books, and The Betsy Writers Room @thebetsyhotel