Aston­ish­ing­ly, Israeli les­bians and gays have been able to achieve many polit­i­cal goals that still elude Amer­i­ca’s gay com­mu­ni­ty. Between Sodom and Eden, the first book to explore this rapid­ly chang­ing land­scape, is based on inter­views with over one hun­dred Israelis, as well as Pales­tini­ans. Lee Walz­er explores how, with­in a decade, Israel has evolved from a soci­ety that mar­gin­al­ized homo­sex­u­als to one that offers some of the most exten­sive legal pro­tec­tions in the world. He traces the polit­i­cal, reli­gious, and social fac­tors that make Israel a gay rights trend­set­ter, exam­in­ing the inter­play between Judaism and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, the grow­ing promi­nence of gay themes in Israeli lit­er­a­ture, film, music, and tele­vi­sion, and the role of the media in advanc­ing les­bian and gay polit­i­cal progress.