Amos Oz, Israel's greatest living novelist, has long been known for political views that might be considered out of step with the majority of his fellow citizens. A recent profile in the New York Times describes him as an "avatar of an old-school liberal Zionism that many in Israel now deride as too dreamy and idealistic." Offering both a startling reinterpretation of the story of the despised disciple Judas Iscariot’s role in Jesus' crucifixion and an implicit defense of his own lifelong commitment to reconciliation between Jews and Arabs, Oz’s elegiac new novel, JUDAS, showcases that contrarian temperament.

Oz's protagonist, Shmuel Ash, overweight, asthmatic and sensitive, is a graduate student in Jerusalem in the winter of 1959. His fitful work on a master's thesis about Jewish views of Jesus has stalled, and when his family's business collapses and his girlfriend leaves him for another man, he impulsively abandons his studies. Answering a cryptic bulletin board ad, he finds his way to a Jerusalem neighborhood where, in exchange for an attic room and a small stipend, he's hired to serve as a conversational companion to Gershom Wald, an elderly, ailing intellectual who spends his evenings arguing with identified friends on the telephone, listening to news broadcasts and reading.

The house at No. 17 Rabbi Elbaz Lane, where Gershom lives, is haunted by memories of two men: Micha Wald, his son, a soldier murdered in an ambush a few weeks before the declaration of statehood in May 1948, and Shealtiel Abravanel, a one-time member of the Council of the Jewish Agency and Zionist Executive Committee, summarily ejected from his leadership positions for his heretical opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state. Connecting their lives is Atalia Abravanel, Shealtiel's daughter and Micha's widow, a beautiful and enigmatic woman who shares the house with Gershom and Shmuel and becomes a source of fascination for the young man after he accompanies her on several nighttime walks through the streets of a wintry Jerusalem that Oz describes in scenes of captivating beauty and occasional strangeness.

"[Amos Oz's novel] [o]ffer[s] both a startling reinterpretation of the story of the despised disciple Judas Iscariot’s role in Jesus' crucifixion and an implicit defense of his own lifelong commitment to reconciliation between Jews and Arabs..."

As Shmuel learns more about Shealtiel's futile advocacy for stateless coexistence between Arabs and Jews (a utopian vision to even the most optimistic observer), the linkage between Abravanel's story and that of Judas gradually comes into focus. Shmuel advances a new narrative for the biblical account, arguing that Judas, far from betraying Jesus, was in fact his most ardent believer and loyal follower, an answer to the historic condemnation of the Jewish people that has been the consequence of the bible's portrayal. As pointed out in a recent profile in The Guardian, Oz has had a lifelong fascination with this subject, spurred by a book written by his great-uncle, Joseph Klausner, in 1921 that "reclaimed Jesus as a Jew."

Oz spins out this radical theory in a poignant chapter told from Judas' point of view, describing his guilt over urging Jesus to travel to Jerusalem to spread his teachings when the crucifixion Judas masterminded failed to offer proof of his master's divinity. In this vivid account of Jesus' death, an anguished Judas describes how he "believed in him much more than he believed in himself." The loyal disciple's suicide when Jesus died, far from convicting him of betrayal, instead revealed his profound and singular grief.

Atalia's father was no less passionate in his advocacy against the establishment of a Jewish state, and no less a traitor in the eyes of its supporters. As recounted by Gershom, Abravanel contended in vain with David Ben-Gurion, Israel's principal founder and first prime minister in 1948, that it was "still possible to reach an agreement with the Arabs about the departure of the British and the creation of a single joint condominium of Jews and Arabs, if we only agreed to renounce the idea of a Jewish state." Gershom admits, "with no sense of shame," that he stood firmly in opposition to Abravanel's point of view.

Even if he doesn't necessarily share Abravanel's prescription for peaceful coexistence, Oz, who long has opposed the occupation that followed the Six-Day War in 1967 and has advocated for the so-called two-state solution, understands that the conflict that has endured for nearly six decades without any end in sight reveals the prescience of his fictional creation's pessimism about the course events would take. While he links the narratives of two men branded, for radically different reasons, as traitors, Oz is too serious a writer to offer even a hint of resolution of the complex and controversial arguments that comparison evokes. Instead, the restrained, elegant way in which he presents those claims in this somber novel allows them to resonate for readers long after they have read the final page.