THE INN: Twists and Turns in a Desert Oasis
by Arye Dreyfus
In a rocky, half-forgotten part of the Negev, an isolated inn shelters people who feel they have let themselves waste away. The battered site doesn’t offer the amenities of a structured therapeutic doctrine or the benefits of a sage’s wisdom. There are no political or religious allegiances or any public financial support—no inhibiting barriers taint Neve Dror, and every morning its visitors succeed in creating a new human mosaic. Amazingly, the inn’s unwritten motto, “You are all you have,” comes true more often than not. Men and women, young and old, international celebrities and social underdogs, agnostic Jews and devout Christians, self-made local businessmen and rich foreign heirs all rub shoulders with one another as equals in their foster desert home. Each visitor is too wise to the ways of the world to expect the scars on his or her back to quickly melt away in this strange new haven. And yet, despite the harsh surroundings, dreams breezily transform into reality and resignation becomes heresy. In this distant part of the world, at the desert inn, nothing is illusory, not even an impossible love story between a Vatican priest and an Israeli hairdresser. The inn at Neve Dror, however, is not another invented legend; this tale is a mere description of events. Arye Dreyfus, a teacher born in France, describes dire facts, but his Israeli nature doesn’t let these facts merge into an apparently hopeless situation. He is an accomplished educator and envoy to various discreet missions, mainly in Europe and Africa. He doesn’t condemn or condone, he just eloquently unfolds a story of a decadent society that fifty years later doesn’t seem ready to come to terms with its own inconstancy. An English-language eBook Edition was published in mid-2018. 266 pages, 14X20.5 cm.
