does, having no thought for the minutes and hours that are my only treasure, and that are seeping away."
When he arrived in Jerusalem, Uncle Joseph served as secretary to the Hebrew Language Committee, before he was nominated to a chair of Hebrew literature in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which was opened in 1925. He had hoped and expected to be put in charge of the department of Jewish history, or at least of the teaching of the Second Temple period, but, as he said, "the grandees of the university, from the exalted heights of their Germanness, looked down on me." In the department of Hebrew literature Uncle Joseph felt, in his own words, like Napoleon on Elba: since he was prevented from moving the whole European continent forward, he shouldered the task of imposing some progressive and well-organized order on his little island of exile. Only after some twenty years
was the chair of history for the Second Temple era (536 bce to 70 ad) established, and Uncle Joseph was finally put in charge of this subject, without relinquishing his position as the head of the Hebrew literature department. "To absorb alien culture and to turn it into our own national and human flesh and blood," he wrote, "that is the ideal I have fought for most of my life, and I shall not abandon it to my dying day."
And elsewhere he wrote, with Napoleonic fervor, "If we aspire to be a people ruling over our own land, then our children must be made of
iron
!" He used to point to the two bronze busts on the sideboard in his living room, the raging, passionate Beethoven and Jabotinsky in his splendid uniform and his resolutely pursed lips, and say to his guests: "The spirit of the individual is just like that of the nation—both reach upward and both become unruly in the absence of a vision." He was fond of Churchillian expressions like "our flesh and blood," "human and national," "ideals," "I have battled for the best part of my life," "we shall not budge," "the few against the many," "alien to his contemporaries," "generations yet to come," and "to my dying breath."
In 1929 he was forced to flee when Talpiot was attacked by Arabs. His house, like Agnon's, was looted and burned, and his library, like Agnon's again, was badly damaged. "We must re-educate the younger generation," he had written in his book
When a Nation Fights for Its Freedom
, "we must clothe it in a spirit of heroism, a spirit of steadfast opposition....Most of our teachers have still not overcome the submissive defeatist Diaspora spirit, whether of the European or the Arab Diaspora, that lurks within them."
Under Uncle Joseph's influence my grandfather and grandmother also became New Zionist Jabotinskyites, and my father actually grew close to the ideas of the Irgun—the paramilitary underground—and its political wing, and Menahem Begin's Herut Party, even though Begin actually aroused in such broad-minded, secular Odessan Jabotinskyites rather mixed feelings, mingled with a certain restrained condescension: his Polish shtetl origins and his excessive emotionalism may have made him appear somewhat plebeian or provincial, and however indisputably dedicated and stalwart a nationalist, he may have appeared not quite enough of a man of the world, not quite
charmant
enough, too lacking
in poetry, in the ability to radiate the charisma, the grandeur of spirit, that touch of tragic loneliness, that they felt became a leader possessed of the qualities of a lion or an eagle. What was it Jabotinsky wrote about the relationship between Israel and the nations after the national revival: "Like a lion confronting other lions." Begin did not look much like a lion. Even my father, despite his name, was not a lion. He was a shortsighted, clumsy Jerusalem academic. He was not capable of becoming an underground fighter, but made his contribution to the struggle by composing occasional manifestos in English for the underground in which he denounced the hypocrisy of "perfidious Albion." These
When he arrived in Jerusalem, Uncle Joseph served as secretary to the Hebrew Language Committee, before he was nominated to a chair of Hebrew literature in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which was opened in 1925. He had hoped and expected to be put in charge of the department of Jewish history, or at least of the teaching of the Second Temple period, but, as he said, "the grandees of the university, from the exalted heights of their Germanness, looked down on me." In the department of Hebrew literature Uncle Joseph felt, in his own words, like Napoleon on Elba: since he was prevented from moving the whole European continent forward, he shouldered the task of imposing some progressive and well-organized order on his little island of exile. Only after some twenty years
was the chair of history for the Second Temple era (536 bce to 70 ad) established, and Uncle Joseph was finally put in charge of this subject, without relinquishing his position as the head of the Hebrew literature department. "To absorb alien culture and to turn it into our own national and human flesh and blood," he wrote, "that is the ideal I have fought for most of my life, and I shall not abandon it to my dying day."
And elsewhere he wrote, with Napoleonic fervor, "If we aspire to be a people ruling over our own land, then our children must be made of
iron
!" He used to point to the two bronze busts on the sideboard in his living room, the raging, passionate Beethoven and Jabotinsky in his splendid uniform and his resolutely pursed lips, and say to his guests: "The spirit of the individual is just like that of the nation—both reach upward and both become unruly in the absence of a vision." He was fond of Churchillian expressions like "our flesh and blood," "human and national," "ideals," "I have battled for the best part of my life," "we shall not budge," "the few against the many," "alien to his contemporaries," "generations yet to come," and "to my dying breath."
In 1929 he was forced to flee when Talpiot was attacked by Arabs. His house, like Agnon's, was looted and burned, and his library, like Agnon's again, was badly damaged. "We must re-educate the younger generation," he had written in his book
When a Nation Fights for Its Freedom
, "we must clothe it in a spirit of heroism, a spirit of steadfast opposition....Most of our teachers have still not overcome the submissive defeatist Diaspora spirit, whether of the European or the Arab Diaspora, that lurks within them."
Under Uncle Joseph's influence my grandfather and grandmother also became New Zionist Jabotinskyites, and my father actually grew close to the ideas of the Irgun—the paramilitary underground—and its political wing, and Menahem Begin's Herut Party, even though Begin actually aroused in such broad-minded, secular Odessan Jabotinskyites rather mixed feelings, mingled with a certain restrained condescension: his Polish shtetl origins and his excessive emotionalism may have made him appear somewhat plebeian or provincial, and however indisputably dedicated and stalwart a nationalist, he may have appeared not quite enough of a man of the world, not quite
charmant
enough, too lacking
in poetry, in the ability to radiate the charisma, the grandeur of spirit, that touch of tragic loneliness, that they felt became a leader possessed of the qualities of a lion or an eagle. What was it Jabotinsky wrote about the relationship between Israel and the nations after the national revival: "Like a lion confronting other lions." Begin did not look much like a lion. Even my father, despite his name, was not a lion. He was a shortsighted, clumsy Jerusalem academic. He was not capable of becoming an underground fighter, but made his contribution to the struggle by composing occasional manifestos in English for the underground in which he denounced the hypocrisy of "perfidious Albion." These
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