By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Alan S. Lerman is best known as a medical specialist in gastroenterology and hepatology. However, he has long had another interest: writing. This interest began in high school. “When I didn’t make the cut for the Erasmus Hall High School basketball team (being 6’3” tall and not being able to dunk probably predicted that outcome), I started writing for the sports section of our high school paper,” he said in an e-mail interview. 
In 2023, Lerman published a different type of work: his first novel, “Black Mossad” (Newman Springs). The book is a political thriller featuring Daniel Black, a Mossad agent, who becomes involved in a secret mission after an assassination attempt on the president of the United States. The work has been called “an expertly paced, action-packed adventure that will leave readers in suspense as Agent Black’s mission unfolds, and dark political secrets are revealed.” This is only the first of many books Lerman hopes to publish: he noted that he has ideas for more than 20 others and is currently 25 percent through his next book, which is tentatively titled “The Cure.”
“Black Mossad” is based on the real life story of Operation Solomon, when 14,325 Ethiopian Jews were saved from persecution in their homeland and flown to the safety of Israel over 36 hours from May 24-25, 1991. “In the novel, one of the Ethiopian Jews, who led his village to the safety of the airlift, Daniel Black, was found to have extraordinary physical and intellectual gifts, and is recruited by the Mossad,” he said. “He is mentored by an African American, Isaiah Breadworth, who converted to Judiasm and made aliyah from Brooklyn to Israel, eventually becoming the chief of Mossad.”
One of the reasons Lerman wrote the book was to portray Israel in a positive light. “As the proud son of a Holocaust survivor (my father will be 101 years old on February 23, 2025, and still reads The Wall Street Journal everyday), I have watched the evolution of nearly universal admiration for Israel in the western world devolve into nearly universal condemnation,” he noted. “The transformation has been startling and frightening based on outright lies about Israel, as well as unmasked and accepted hatred of the Jewish people.” 
He still remembers the excitement that was felt during the Six-Day War, which took place in 1967 when he was a seventh-grader at Ditmas Junior High School in Brooklyn. “My very reserved and always impeccably dressed Israeli history teacher, Yehuda Steinberg, jumped into the air with joy, double pumping his right arm, as the news media reported Israel’s decisive victory over her enemies,” Lerman said. “Remember, the state of Israel was only 19 years old at the time, younger than many of the Binghamton University students who may be reading this article.”
He saw different reactions during the 1973 Yom Kippur War when he was a sophomore at Binghamton University, then called Harpur College. “Israel was unprepared for the invading armies, and, after grievous losses, Israel was able to turn the tide of the war,” Lerman noted. “General Ariel Sharon encircled the Egyptian Sixth Army, leading to the end of hostilities, negotiated by Henry Kissinger. I recall sitting in the Kosher Kitchen at Binghamton University, commiserating with other students as Israel survived this existential threat. One student protested Israel’s ability to thwart her enemies again. Wearing the requisite peace button (1973 was the height of the Vietnam War), this upper classman decried the ‘brutality’ of Ariel Sharon’s treatment of the Egyptian army.”
Lerman noted that this was his “first exposure to wokeism, before there was an official wokeism. Israel was being attacked by a Jewish student, because of her success in surviving an existential threat. General Sharon did not obliterate the Egyptian army, although he had the power to do so. Ariel Sharon cut off their supplies, food and water until hostilities had ended. The Egyptian army was then allowed to retreat to the safety of their homeland.”
Lerman believes that “Israel’s standing in the world may have reached its zenith after the miraculous rescue of 102 of the 106 hijacked hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, in July 1976. Since that time, it seems there has been a steady erosion of Israel’s reputation in the world, carefully and skillfully cultivated by the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.” 
According to Lerman, “the portrayal of Israel as a colonial, repressive, apartheid state is without merit or truth, but [which is] widely accepted. My book is a minuscule attempt to reverse that tide.”