Morde­cai Chertoff came to Pales­tine in 1947 as a twen­ty-five-year-old, deter­mined to make his con­tri­bu­tion to the emerg­ing Jew­ish State. Between 1947 and 1950 he was var­i­ous­ly local news edi­tor, for­eign news edi­tor, and war cor­re­spon­dent for The Pales­tine Post, sol­dier in the Haganah, and res­i­dent of Jerusalem. 

In vivid and often mov­ing let­ters to his fam­i­ly (anno­tat­ed and con­tex­tu­al­ized by his son), Morde­cai describes the news of the UN vote for par­ti­tion, the siege of Jerusalem, the bomb­ing of The Pales­tine Post, the dec­la­ra­tion of the State of Israel, his trav­els along the dan­ger­ous Jerusalem – Tel-Aviv high­way, and, inevitably, the loss of friends. 

The cor­re­spon­dence, filled with details of every­day life in Jerusalem, and meet­ings with famous and soon-to be famous peo­ple, include his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion nev­er before dis­closed, and ranges from pas­sion­ate dis­cus­sions about Zion­ism, to the more per­son­al dra­ma of his search for a mate. 

The book also reflects the per­son­al jour­ney under­tak­en by the author to bet­ter under­stand a cru­cial peri­od in Jew­ish his­to­ry, as well as his father as a young man.