Gather the Olives

Gather the Olives is a dangerous book. That’s because it is about peace in a time when peace in the Holy Land is a faraway, even radical notion. It is about hope and food and community and the way there can be solidarity in sharing a meal. Hence the danger: this book might remind its brave readers of how peace is nourished and how hope can’t be extinguished.

Over the years, Bret Lott—the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including the novel Jewel (an Oprah’s Book Club selection)—has lived and taught in Jerusalem, affording him the opportunity to travel throughout Israel and the surrounding area. Now, in Gather the Olives, this gifted storyteller has brought together a collection of intimate portraits of the people, the food, and the hope for peace to be found in a region ravaged by war and conflict.

Through meditations on such varied matters as an olive oil cooperative run by Israeli and Palestinian women, a non-kosher butcher shop in the middle of upscale—and very kosher—German Colony, the nighttime harvesting of olives by Bedouins in downtown Jerusalem, a traditional Shabbat dinner at an ancient home within the walls of the Old City, a simple yet beautiful plate of fruit in an office in Ramallah, Bret Lott considers how food and the people with whom we share it can bring together hearts and souls in a lasting, meaningful, and peaceful way.