Benjamin Netanyahu’s little brother is a busy man. Not only is Iddo Netanyahu a doctor, but he’s also a novelist and playwright. “A Happy End,” his play about a Jewish couple debating whether to stay in or flee 1930s Berlin, has been performed everywhere from Italy to Uzbekistan and runs through Sept. 19 at City College’s Aaron Davis Hall. Like his brothers, the Israeli prime minister and Yonatan Netanyahu — who died leading the Operation Entebbe hostage-rescue mission — the 63-year-old grew up in a divided Jerusalem. Now he splits his time between Israel and upstate New York, where he works part-time as a radiologist. “I gotta make a living!” he tells The Post.
Here, just in time for Rosh Hashanah, is what’s in this Netanyahu’s library:
The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th-century Spain by Benzion Netanyahu
This is my father’s magnum opus — he worked on it for maybe 30 years. I reread it recently because he started writing an autobiography he never finished, which I plan to complete. What struck me were the parallels between the Spanish Jews and the Jewish family in Berlin, who suffered from a similar blindness.
The Comedy of Sentiment by Max Nordau
I knew Nordau as a famous philosopher who was converted to Zionism by Theodor Herzl. He was also a great novelist. This is about a divorcee who lures a man into a relationship. Does she love him? Does she not? It’s very modern and captivating. I’m seriously thinking of translating it to Hebrew. I hope I won’t botch it up.
The Oslo Syndrome by Kenneth Levin
Levin’s a Boston psychiatrist. His book attempts to show how a whole country can suffer from wishful thinking. A great majority [of Israelis] thought the accords we signed with [Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser] Arafat and his people would bring peace. All it brought was more bloodshed.
The Collected Plays by Terence Rattigan
I first encountered him when I took out a movie called “The Browning Version,” with Michael Redgrave. When I realized it [started as] a play, I ordered this book. Rattigan was an amazing playwright I never knew of! Because he wasn’t an “angry young man,” he went out of fashion, his work was belittled and he was almost forgotten.