at either extreme, most of us are both unwilling and unable to live according to religious law, but at the same time we are not prepared to give it up and to forfeit all the delicacies which go with it - festivals and songs and customs and all those things that most of the tribe considers not necessarily as commandments from God but rather as (agreeable) restraints without which (according to a widespread fear) the tribe would be in danger of disintegrating. Consequently many of us, from our various vantage-points, stand ‘over against’ the Jewish heritage: not quite inside it, not quite outside it, but simply ‘over against’ it. We speak and write a language whose roots are in the Bible and the rabbinic literature. Someone like me, therefore, who does not wish (and is unable) to live according to the religious law, stands in a special relationship to everything that comes to him through the umbilical cord of the Hebrew language: lullabies, folk-tales, Bible lessons and trips to the biblical sites, the city of Jerusalem, ancient ruins, scrolls, books, poetry and its echoes, and all the words without which you would not be who you are.
All this comes from within, from the ‘Jewish heritage’, and I choose to keep whatever I like without thereby accepting the ‘yoke of the commandments’ and without feeling guilty for, as it were, stealing synagogue property and bringing it into my home.
What else have we got, apart from all this? A few synthetic folk-songs from the Jewish Agency, a few hearty gestures from the Palmach, a few memories of pioneering days, the idea of the kibbutz, which is perhaps the only original thing to have been created here, and a strong, almost hysterical sense of justice (or, more precisely, sensitivity to injustice), as well as the tribal solidarity which I have already described. All the rest is imported (and often sub-standard) produce from various countries, in recent years mostly from English-speaking countries. That is all we have. And for the time being we must make do with it, and refrain from drawing comparisons with what we may have had in some ‘golden age’ in the past, or with what other cultures may possess. After all, the great desire of Zionism was to turn over a new leaf. Well, here is that new leaf: it is new and not so new. Continuity, but also revolution. Great achievements (by comparison with the sober prognoses of a couple of generations ago) and abject failure (by comparison with the glorious visions).
This ambiguity, the perpetual question-mark, is what I would call ‘the discreet charm of Zionism’.
We have to our credit certain achievements which have hardly a parallel in history. Not only a piece of territory defended by soldiers and aeroplanes and tanks, but two other aspirations which have been realised, more or less: we have attained a greater degree of responsibility for our own fate, and we have begun the process of curing the Jewish sickness. If we really have.
Anyone who expected us to achieve more than that in the course of three or four generations would be the victim of messianic expectations. Not that any of us is entirely free from messianic expectations.
True, even now we might well bring disaster on ourselves and lose everything we have achieved. But there is all the difference in the world between this and the disasters which have struck in the past. Now, if (heaven forbid!) disaster strikes, we shall have brought it on our own heads. We ourselves - not the church, not the tsar, not the Cossacks, not Hitler. We ourselves, through our own blindness or arrogance or stupidity. True, it does not depend entirely on us, but at least it does depend partly on us, and that is the meaning in a nutshell of political independence.
Independence does not mean that ‘nobody will tell us what to do’ (but we, ‘with God’s help’, will finally tell others what to do). No, independence means that we are capable of achieving, and in danger of losing, that
All this comes from within, from the ‘Jewish heritage’, and I choose to keep whatever I like without thereby accepting the ‘yoke of the commandments’ and without feeling guilty for, as it were, stealing synagogue property and bringing it into my home.
What else have we got, apart from all this? A few synthetic folk-songs from the Jewish Agency, a few hearty gestures from the Palmach, a few memories of pioneering days, the idea of the kibbutz, which is perhaps the only original thing to have been created here, and a strong, almost hysterical sense of justice (or, more precisely, sensitivity to injustice), as well as the tribal solidarity which I have already described. All the rest is imported (and often sub-standard) produce from various countries, in recent years mostly from English-speaking countries. That is all we have. And for the time being we must make do with it, and refrain from drawing comparisons with what we may have had in some ‘golden age’ in the past, or with what other cultures may possess. After all, the great desire of Zionism was to turn over a new leaf. Well, here is that new leaf: it is new and not so new. Continuity, but also revolution. Great achievements (by comparison with the sober prognoses of a couple of generations ago) and abject failure (by comparison with the glorious visions).
This ambiguity, the perpetual question-mark, is what I would call ‘the discreet charm of Zionism’.
We have to our credit certain achievements which have hardly a parallel in history. Not only a piece of territory defended by soldiers and aeroplanes and tanks, but two other aspirations which have been realised, more or less: we have attained a greater degree of responsibility for our own fate, and we have begun the process of curing the Jewish sickness. If we really have.
Anyone who expected us to achieve more than that in the course of three or four generations would be the victim of messianic expectations. Not that any of us is entirely free from messianic expectations.
True, even now we might well bring disaster on ourselves and lose everything we have achieved. But there is all the difference in the world between this and the disasters which have struck in the past. Now, if (heaven forbid!) disaster strikes, we shall have brought it on our own heads. We ourselves - not the church, not the tsar, not the Cossacks, not Hitler. We ourselves, through our own blindness or arrogance or stupidity. True, it does not depend entirely on us, but at least it does depend partly on us, and that is the meaning in a nutshell of political independence.
Independence does not mean that ‘nobody will tell us what to do’ (but we, ‘with God’s help’, will finally tell others what to do). No, independence means that we are capable of achieving, and in danger of losing, that
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