Matti Friedman was born in Toronto, and moved to Israel when he was 17. This makes him a famous Canadian-Israeli authour. He is best known for his meticulously researched and haunting investigations of important events, drawn from Israeli history. His “Spies of No Country,” published in 2019, is a gripping true to life story of Jews from Arab lands who were sent into enemy territory, before the establishment of the state, by the forerunner of the Mossad, to gather intelligence for the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine) on the plans of its enemies.
“Who By Fire”, published in 2022, is a meticulously researched account of Leonard Cohen’s time in Israel during the Yom Kippur war. Friedman tracked down soldiers who remembered impromptu concerts by flashlight for units positioned close to the battlefront. These testimonies were among the few surviving traces of Cohen’s tour of units in the Sinai. Few pictures were taken and Cohen rarely talked of the trip in the years afterward. Friedman examines the impact Cohen’s wartime tour of the battlefront had on the people who heard him and on the course of Cohen’s subsequent career.
Image: Canadian Israeli author Matti Friedmant: — Source: the Author’s web site, photo by Jonathan Bloom
His latest book, published in March of 2026 is “Out of the Sky”. Matti Friedman revisits a well known story from the history of the Yishuv. This concerns the heroic activities of Hanna Senesh and her three companions who parachuted into Nazi occupied Europe after being recruited by British military intelligence. Their goal, according to the British was to help allied airmen who crashed behind enemy lines and prisoners of war who might escape. The four Jews from mandate Palestine had a second mission given to them by the leaders of the Yishuv, which was to help the Jews of Hungary. Unlike the Jews of Nazi occupied Europe, Hungarian Jews had not been sent to their deaths, until a Nazi sponsored coup in March of 1944 effectively put Hungary under Nazi rule.
Image: Out of the Sky: Cover of the edition published by Penguin Random House Canada
When Hannah Senesh parachuted into Slovakia on March 14, 1944, the plan was to infiltrate into Hungary. However, the Nazi coup had occurred just when the mission began and the infiltration of Hungary was then deemed too dangerous. Hanna insisted on going ahead with the mission, crossing into Hungary in spite of the order not to go in.
Three other Jews from the Yishuv were trained with her and joined the mission. “Out of the Sky” follows the stories of all four of them, including Haim Charmesh, who was the only one to survive. Chaim was from Kibbutz Kfar Glickson which happens to be a place where I spent nine months in 1974-75. When I was there, Chaim was a respected elder of the settlement who spoke to us once about his experiences in the war.
As in his other books, Matti Friedman brings out poignant and disturbing aspects of the story of the four heroes which are not part of the standard narrative. He reveals that the Nazis were aware of the mission from the start because the network that smuggled the volunteers into occupied Europe had made contact with “partisans” who were actually agents of the Nazi regime.
He acquaints us with the personal qualities of the young agents along with their human weaknesses. In the end we are left to ponder the difference between the real human beings who went willingly to their deaths and the heroic archetypes that were constructed around them by the leaders and writers of the young State of Israel.
We also get to know some of the other people who played a part in the events described in the book, including their commander who dispatches himself into the maelstrom after sending them in, and the British commander who recruited and trained the Jewish volunteers. Likewise, we meet some of the loved ones left behind when the heroes head off on their perilous assignment.
Friedman asks us to ponder the mindset of young men and women willing to give their lives for the Zionist cause, depicting them as jumping from the airplane to serve the state, secure in the belief that the establishment of the Jewish state would solve the Jewish problem once and for all. He contrasts this with a contrary image where the parachutist jumps from the plane, not to glory, but onto another plane whence they must once again jump for the sake of the cause. He imagines an endless series of such jumps, with the contemporary realization that the establishment of the state has not put an end to antisemitism or enabled the Jews to finally live in peace.
Out of the Sky is another engrossing narrative by a gifted chronicler of some of Israel’s notable historical events. I’m happy to recommend it, along with Matti Friedman’s earlier notable books.
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