In this first comprehensive history in English of the Jews of Hebron, Jerold S. Auerbach explores one of the oldest and most vilified Jewish communities in the world. Spanning three thousand years, from the biblical narrative of Abraham's purchase of a burial cave for Sarah to the violent present, it offers a controversial analysis of a community located at the crossroads of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle over national boundaries and the internal Israeli struggle over the meaning of Jewish statehood. Hebron Jews sharply challenges conventional Zionist historiography and current media understanding by presenting a community of memory deeply embedded in Zionist history and Jewish tradition. Auerbach shows how the blending of religion and nationalism—Orthodoxy and Zionism—embodied in Hebron Jews is at the core of the struggle within Israel to define the meaning of a Jewish state.

"Auerbach gives a passionate account of the Jewish presence in Hebron, and in reading the book the reader can truly comprehend what lures Jews to that dangerous place....This is a worthwhile achievement. His book is a long-needed contribution of a serious scholar to an ongoing academic debate, in which the Hebron Jews were left without a decisive, unapologetic, systematically argued voice." - Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal Of Jewish Studies

"It has been said that historians are more powerful than the gods because the latter cannot change history. But American historian Jerold S. Auerbach has done something even more powerful; he has demonstrated a clairvoyance which is quite astonishing in a book that he began researching years ago. Hebron Jews...while focusing initially on the coordinates of Hebron from the Biblical era to yesterday opens up a broad and stimulating inquiry on the settler movement in general and its reverberations on the chasm between the right and the left in the current Israeli political spectrum. It is a tribute to the author's competence in matters historical....In this lively literary pilgrimage Auerbach shows what many have forgotten — that Hebron was a vital Jewish centre comparable even to Jerusalem....Auerbach's book is a model of disinterested research which, through the alchemical process of fine writing and passionate advocacy of the truth, delivers a highly readable sage about the travail of modern Zionism." - Chicago Jewish Star

"Auerbach deftly develops the history of Hebron and examines the motivations of settlers who choose to live there. The reader comes away understanding how significant elements of a peace process that are bandied about as feasible, such as resigning all of Hebron to the Palestinians, impacts on real people with serious historical and political arguments." - Jewish Book World

"Broad and stimulating.... Intriguing and revalatory.... Auerbach's book is a model of disinterested research which, through the alchemical process of fine writing and passionate advocacy of the truth, delivers a highly readable saga about the travail of modern Zionism." - Midstream: A Quarterly Jewish Review