"It allowed them to connect back to a common point," a source close to Rice said. "It was very, very helpful."

Her father, Presbyterian minister Reverend John Wesley Rice Jr., was an assistant dean, and Benzion Netanyahu, a professor of Hebraic studies, shared an interest in religion. One year her family even joined the Netanyahus at their Passover Seder.

Rice wrote about that incident in her new memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, which she is currently promoting on a book tour. The book, the first of two volumes of an autobiography she will be releasing, focuses on her family and upbringing and ends just as she becomes national security adviser for former president George W. Bush.

The second volume is expected to cover her time in the White House and at Foggy Bottom, where she dealt with the thorny issues of Iraq, Iran and the Middle East peace process.

Her first book does detail some of her earlier experiences in Washington, particularly her time on the National Security Council under president George H.W. Bush, when she served as a Soviet adviser.

She speaks warmly of her former boss, then national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, whom she "adored," and his deputy, Robert Gates, who would go on to serve as defense secretary while she headed the State Department.

"I was drawn to Robert M. Gates, the deputy nat

Tourists to the Holy Land walk right past one of the most important sites in Christian history without realizing its significance.  Noted archaeologist and author Shimon Gibson claims that the place of the trial of Jesus is not near the Antonia fortress, as the route of the Via Dolorosa (the "Way of Suffering") marks, but rather in a completely different part of Jerusalem - now a small, unmarked park near the Jaffa Gate. 

In his newly published book, The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence, Gibson claims that the starting point of the Via Dolorosa, which has been walked for centuries, is incorrect and reflects "a tradition with no historical basis whatsover."