--- title: A Tale of Love and Darkness and The Real 1940s Jerusalem description: The Natalie Portman film, based on a book by Amos Oz, arrives in U.S. theaters on Aug. 19. Read TIME's description of its real-life setting. canonical: https://time.com/4444186/jerusalem-tale-of-love-and-darkness/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-19T12:30:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T23:50:55.572Z article:section: History og:title: 'Electric Tension' in the Real Jerusalem in the Time of 'A Tale of Love and Darkness' og:description: The Natalie Portman film, based on a book by Amos Oz, arrives in U.S. theaters on Aug. 19 og:url: https://time.com/4444186/jerusalem-tale-of-love-and-darkness/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8a328be30f07cae4/6988a19cf887dcd99ee97009/atolad_by_ran_mendelson_aab0900_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: A Tale of Love and Darkness og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Electric Tension' in the Real Jerusalem in the Time of 'A Tale of Love and Darkness' twitter:description: The Natalie Portman film, based on a book by Amos Oz, arrives in U.S. theaters on Aug. 19 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8a328be30f07cae4/6988a19cf887dcd99ee97009/atolad_by_ran_mendelson_aab0900_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'Electric Tension' in the Real Jerusalem in the Time of _A Tale of Love and Darkness_  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Aug 19, 2016 12:30 PM UTC  A scene from 'A Tale of Love and Darkness' A scene from 'A Tale of Love and Darkness'Ran Mendelson—Focus World  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Aug 19, 2016 12:30 PM UTC _A Tale of Love and Darkness_, [Natalie Portman’s](http://time.com/3849064/natalie-portman-oscar/) directorial debut film, is based on a true and very personal story: the Amos Oz [memoir](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/books/review/a-tale-of-love-and-darkness-motherland.html) of the same name. But it’s also set within a larger true story, the tale of life in the area that was not yet Israel. When the film picks up in the mid-1940s, though World War II and the Holocaust were only just drawing to a close and thus drawing attention to the plight of the world’s Jewish population, the story had already been developing for decades. Since 1923, Palestine had fallen under the [British mandate](http://time.com/3445003/mandatory-palestine/), in a system that gave the British the responsibility for creating a Jewish homeland in the region. Oz’s parents were among those Jews who came to Palestine between World Wars I and II, as a mass of Jewish immigration “flowed out on to the desert,” as TIME would later [put it](http://time.com/vault/issue/1946-08-26/page/1/). [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) But the question of who controlled the land, and especially of the holy city of of Jerusalem, was immediately a bloody one. The film picks up in 1945, and the “electric tension” that “gripped” Jerusalem at that time was the subject of a lengthy TIME [cover story](http://time.com/vault/issue/1946-08-26/page/1/) almost exactly 70 years ago, on Aug. 26, 1946: --- > “” --- Many years later, writing for TIME in 1993, Amos Oz would [describe](http://time.com/vault/issue/1993-09-20/page/44/) the way in which that conflict had remained ever-present in the decades that followed: “The case between Israelis and Palestinians is a tragedy precisely because it is a clash between one very powerful claim and another,” he wrote. “Israelis are in the land of Israel because there is not and cannot be a national homeland for the Jews anywhere else. The Palestinians are in Palestine because their ancestors have been here for more than a thousand years. Where one powerful claim clashes with another, there can be either an endless cycle of bloodshed or a somewhat inconsistent compromise.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4444186/jerusalem-tale-of-love-and-darkness/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4444186/jerusalem-tale-of-love-and-darkness/"},"headline":"'Electric Tension' in the Real Jerusalem in the Time of A Tale of Love and Darkness","datePublished":"2016-08-19T12:30:31.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T23:50:55.572Z","description":"The Natalie Portman film, based on a book by Amos Oz, arrives in U.S. theaters on Aug. 19","url":"https://time.com/4444186/jerusalem-tale-of-love-and-darkness/","keywords":["movies","Israel"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8a328be30f07cae4/6988a19cf887dcd99ee97009/atolad_by_ran_mendelson_aab0900_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8a328be30f07cae4/6988a19cf887dcd99ee97009/atolad_by_ran_mendelson_aab0900_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"A Tale of Love and Darkness","caption":"A scene from 'A Tale of Love and Darkness'","creditText":"Ran Mendelson—Focus World","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4444186/jerusalem-tale-of-love-and-darkness/","name":"'Electric Tension' in the Real Jerusalem in the Time of A Tale of Love and Darkness"}}]}] ```