Written by Wafi Ali
Photographed by Calev Ben-Dor
On 7 October at the Begin Centre in Jerusalem, Calev Ben-Dor, an LSE postgraduate alumnus, launched his new book, “After the Dust and Ashes: October 7, The Book of Job, and Journeys from Grief to Hope”.
The book is “partly a biblical commentary, partly a personal memoir, and partly an approach to processing grief” in the destruction of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Ben-Dor is currently the editor of the Fathom Journal, a quarterly London-based journal focused on “hard-headed realism” of “Israel, the region, and global antisemitism”. Commenting on his motivations for the book, he said: “Throughout the centuries, the Jewish tradition would often turn to ancient texts as a psychological and theological guide through the darkness, so I felt like reading the biblical Book of Job through a contemporary lens would do justice to that tradition.”
Ben-Dor is a former LSE Master’s student of History of International Relations, with a key focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. “I was always fascinated by history, politics and international relations”, Ben-Dor said, “LSE gave me a further grounding in those areas”.
