At some point in the 1980s, Dr. Alan Price sat down to research and write a book about Israel in the future — in 2025, to be specific.

A scholar in “future studies” — which he described as “partly a science and partly an art… based on imaginative and creative thinking” — Price set out to present a “coherent analysis in vivid and graphic language” of what Israel might look like in some four decades. His predictions, put forth in “Israel in the Year 2025: A Concise History of the Future,” were based on two years of research on various topics related to demographics, building plans and technological trends, among others.

“It is not a ‘prophecy’ or an ‘exact prediction,’” Price warned in his introduction. “The only prediction that can be made with confidence about the future is that nothing will happen in exactly the way it has been described in this book.”

Price hoped that by better understanding the details of how Israeli history might play out, “we may be able to make preparations that will render ‘dangerous futures’ less probable or less dangerous and influence ‘desirable futures.’”

“As a Zionist, he was always thinking of how to improve things in Israel, and what the future will bring for this young country,” said his son, Prof. Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University, in an interview with The Times of Israel.

Alan Price was born in the White Russian shtetl of Dolhinov amidst the throes of World War I. When he was 17, just four years before the Holocaust, his father took the family to South Africa, devoid of wealth and any significant knowledge of the English language. Within just a few years, though, Price was able to go to medical school and rise to positions of prominence in various organizations.

A devout Revisionist Zionist, Price accompanied Zeev Jabotinsky when the renowned ideological forefather of the Likud Movement visited South Africa prior to his death in 1940. Fresh out of medical school, the young Dr. Price volunteered to fight for Israel’s independence as well, serving as a combat medic in the Givati Brigade during the 1948 war. In 1980, he, along with his wife and four sons, ultimately settled in the state he fought to establish.

Through it all, Price remained an optimist — a trait he unapologetically brought to his predictions about Israel’s future.

“A positive optimism serves both as a practical direction of action to be taken and to counter pessimism and defeatism, which so often unfortunately pass for ‘realism.’ The special virtue of positive optimism is its capacity to transcend the limitations of the present circumstances, to inspire alternative thinking, and to open new directions for political action,” he wrote.

The book covers far more than simply Israel in 2025; it includes details........

© The Times of Israel