Raised in Brooklyn, New York, through the depression years and coming to adolescence during the turbulence of World War II, Art Katz, in his quest for the meaning of life, began a journey toward Truth that climaxed significantly and symbolically in Jerusalem. Through the diversity of Marxist, pragmatist, and existential ideologies and philosophies, as well as merchant marine and military experiences, Art was brought to a final moral crisis as a teacher, able to raise, but not answer the groaning perplexities of the modern age and his own heart. During a leave of absence, on a hitch-hiking odyssey through North Africa, Western Europe and the Middle East, the cynical and unbelieving atheist - vehement anti-religionist and anti-Christian - was radically apprehended by a God whom he was not seeking. The actual journal, Ben Israel - Odyssey of a modern Jew, recounts the breaking into consciousness and ultimate apprehension of an unsuspecting and resistant 'son of Israel.'