The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives

After her father died, Sharona Muir learned by chance that he had invented Israel’s first rocket.Muir’s parents divorced when she was very young, but she adored the father she saw on Saturday outings. She knew him as Invention-a-Minute Ben,” a freelancer who designed gadgets and created surgical equipment that saved lives. Itzhak Bentov occasionally told stories of his early days in Israel, but it was only after he died that Muir accidentally learned he had been a member of a top-secret group of scientists called Hemmed, which made weapons for Israel’s War of Independence.Amazed by this discovery, Muir traveled to Israel to meet her father’s colleagues, a group of idealists–many of them refugees from Europe–who had been summoned by David Ben-Gurion to create weapons for a new nation. With the equivalent of $3,000, these young scientists set up shop in a rooftop shed in Tel Aviv, working day and night, falling asleep at their desks while still holding their pencils.Through the memories they share, Muir comes to know the brilliant, impassioned, and creative young Bentov. She weaves her own memories of him into their stories: demonstrating his latest invention for her, taking her canoeing, sharing his wilder thoughts about consciousness and the cosmos. As the truths she seeks emerge, Muir elegantly evokes the hubbub of Jerusalem streets, the uncommon lives of her hosts, and the land and skyscapes of the Negev. The result–a story of invention and self-invention, of Israel’s founding generation, and of a deep, abiding love between father and daughter–is an incandescent memoir.