The scholar and columnist Barry Rubin underwent a remarkable intellectual transformation. In examining his legacy on the first anniversary of his death, Martin Kramer tells the story:
Barry had no Zionist upbringing whatsoever—no youth movement, no summer camp, no family trip to Israel. “When I attended one-day-a-week religious school at Washington’s premiere Reform synagogue,” he later wrote, “we were told that Jewish history began with the discovery of the New World. Hebrew was taught without any reference to the existence of the state of Israel.”
During his college days, Rubin was an admirer of Fidel Castro, a far-left activist, and an anti-Zionist. Yet, in the space of a few years, his views had changed radically:
By the time I met Barry in 1979, this was only a few years behind him. But he had already learned “what it’s like to believe in the totalitarian left, to be misused and disillusioned, to go through difficult internal struggles, and finally to emerge from this dark period.” . . . The newly liberated Barry Rubin was about to forge a new persona as a serious researcher.
Rubin went on to distinguish himself as a careful scholar, a prescient observer of the contemporary Middle East, and a passionate defender of the Jewish state. Later in his life he moved to Israel and, in Kramer’s words, “found his place amidst his ancestral people.”
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/02/03/barry-rubins-improbable-journey/