This slim, well-writ­ten vol­ume is full of infor­ma­tion about Israel’s gifts to the world in the fields of med­i­cine, com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, the har­ness­ing of solar ener­gy, sci­ence, space, edu­ca­tion and agri­cul­ture. After a very brief overview of the coun­try’s land and peo­ple, Rab­bi Wise out­lines Israel’s inno­v­a­tive inven­tions and its role in mak­ing the world a bet­ter place (i.e. ​“repair­ing the world”). Among these inven­tions are: an emer­gency ban­dage, invent­ed by an Israeli medic and used by Ameri­can sol­diers, which can dou­ble as a tourni­quet and is so easy to use that even an injured per­son can apply it with only one hand, a Pill­Cam which con­tains a smooth cap­sule con­tain­ing a minia­ture cam­era which the patients swal­low to give doc­tors a pic­ture of their diges­tive tract to help them decide on the best treat­ment, the first instant-mes­sag­ing com­put­er sys­tem, the first phone voice­mail sys­tem, and the world’s first car phone. They have devel­oped an elec­tric car sys­tem which has bat­tery-charg­ing sta­tions all over the coun­try and which should make Israel oil inde­pen­dent by 2020 as well as help­ing pro­tect the envi­ron­ment by reduc­ing the pol­lu­tion in the air. It is empha­sized that the inter­na­tion­al news most­ly focus­es on the con­flict rather than the real news about Israel’s cut­ting edge advances in tech­nol­o­gy and how Israeli med­ical teams help coun­tries around the world in cri­sis. The author notes that ten Israeli politi­cians, writ­ers, econ­o­mists and sci­en­tists have received the Nobel Prize for their achievements.

The book pro­vides an excel­lent exam­ple to the world of what a lit­tle coun­try with few nat­ur­al resources but with a lot of inge­nu­ity can do. It fea­tures an attrac­tive lay­out with col­or pho­tos and maps. It is well orga­nized with a glos­sary that includes def­i­n­i­tions of words bold­ed in the text if they aren’t already defined there and an infor­ma­tive index.

Rab­bi Wise is the spir­i­tu­al leader of Shaarei-Beth El Con­gre­ga­tion of Oakville, Ontario and wrote this book to show stu­dents Israel’s role as a bene­fac­tor to the whole world.

Israel: Repair­ing the World is writ­ten for ages 8 – 12 and is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed for both for school use and also as a resource for read­ers of all ages and reli­gions to see what huge con­tri­bu­tions Israel has made to the world.