The Jewish March of Folly: The Dramatic Events, Fateful Results, and Unlearned Lessons of Ancient Israel’s Political Suicide

"Well written, thought-provoking narrative which artfully weaves the Jewish past into the Israeli present."Yuval Noah HarariIsraeli bestseller The Jewish March of Folly is a revolutionary history of the Jewish people that discovers ancient Israel’s forgotten civil wars, places them at the heart of Jewish history, and probes their meaning for the future of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Blending journalistic storytelling with historical narration, The Jewish March of Folly reads like a news reporter’s account of political dramas, military battles, personal tragedies, spiritual crises, and social revolutions, while bringing the past to life and probing its consequences – to this day. A charge sheet against reckless leaders who exposed their nation to a catastrophic future, The Jewish March of Folly’s warning last decade, that modern Israel is resuming ancient Israel’s fateful rifts, has proven prophetic this decade, twice: first, when Israel reached the brink of civil war, and then when that crisis was followed by foreign invasion, as had happened repeatedly after ancient Israel’s civil wars.Acclaimed by prominent scholars and literati, quoted widely by leaders from right and left, and handed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to the Israeli cabinet’s ministers, The Jewish March of Folly was on the Israeli bestseller lists for morethan 20 weeks.Amotz Asa-El, The Jerusalem Post’s senior commentator and former executive editor, is a research fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute.Winner of the Bnai Brith Journalism Award for his series of essays on the Jewish people’s future, Asa-El has been quoted, published, or interviewed along the years by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Reuters, Haaretz, Le Figaro, CNN, BBC, SKY and others. His versatile column in The Jerusalem Post, ׳Middle Israel׳ (www.MiddleIsrael.net), is famous for voicing mainstream Israelis’ view on anything, from national, social, and foreign affairs to politics, culture, and religion. Running continuously since 1995, it is one of the international media’s most veteran columns.Holding advanced degrees from Columbia University in journalism, from the Hebrew University in Jewish history, and from Brandeis University in Near Eastern and Judaic studies, Asa-El’s previous books include The Last Jewish Frontier (2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl’s The Old New Land, and The Diaspora and the Lost Tribes of Israel (2004), a geographic history of the Jews. Read more