1. Week after week, high-ranking (and junior-level) representatives of what is considered Israel's cultural elite talk down to us, spit at us, shame us and scorn us. Week after week, we hear how much they abhor us and consider our existence contemptible and useless, and how all that has been done here is one big failure.
Last week, it was the turn of poet Nathan Zach. There is a good reason his abominable statements appeared in Yedioth Ahronoth -- they are the hidden DNA of that newspaper. "Who can sing, with the situation in Israel the way it is-" Zach asked, even as he continues publishing poetry even today. "Not even the birds sing here anymore." And if no birds are singing, then death walks here, and we had better get out of here fast, as Yoram Taharlev wrote in his lyrics to his song "The Ballad of Yoel Moshe Salomon," about the founding of Petach Tikva. In Taharlev's song, Dr. Mazaraki, the Greek physician, who had been brought to see whether a settlement could be built in the heart of the Um-Labbes swamps, utters those words. Contrary to his negative diagnosis, the pioneers of Petach Tikva, the "Mother of the Moshavot (rural settlements)," believed the land was good. Since they knew that the swamps were not a decree of fate, they stuck to their land and broke a "gate of hope" (Hebrew: Petach Tikva) through the dormant Jewish consciousness. But Zach is no pioneer; he is a lamenter.
"We were told we would have a land of milk and honey, and look what happened." Later on: "The best years of my life were my 13 years in England. I left England... and came back to a country that relied on the sword. If I had known, it looks like I would not have come back. Our culture today is a catastrophe.... It is like in the final days of Rome.... Here, the only things that are taught are hatred and getting ready for the atom bomb."
Where are we headed? Flattered the interviewer. And Zach replied: "Herzl said: Go to Uganda. First get out of here as quickly as you can. Go to America or to Germany. The Jews were always smart enough to go to all kinds of countries, until they fell in Germany. But now Germany is a different world." They only "fell in Germany." Now Israeli colonies can be re-established there.
That is why Zach urges young people to leave Israel. "Today I wouldn't recommend that anyone come here.... No. It's perfectly fine. If you want to go to Berlin, go to Berlin. For your own good, your own pleasure. Go to any place where you can have a better life. Just get out of here." Indeed, in his latest book of poems, he seeks "to be a Jew in exile once again. ... Oh that I could be once again a Jew in exile, who has no need for either sword or fire, and surely does not come here to fall into despair." Am I the only one who finds these words reminiscent of the whining of our ancestors, the freed slaves, who said, "Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt" (or Berlin)? This is unbelievable pathology -- to send the victims' descendants back to the very site of the catastrophe.
2. Zach is responsible for having created a revolution in Hebrew poetry in the 1950s and onward. He and his colleagues rebelled against the previous generation of poets -- Avraham Shlonsky and, mainly, Nathan Alterman. As Zach sharpens his curses and imprecations with the passage of time, we realize that the rebellion was not purely about literature. While it is true that the younger poets threw off the constraints of rhyme, meter and other poetic conventions, the main issue by far was the difference in the way Zach and Alterman approached reality and history. Alterman was too Jewish, too Zionist and too devoted to the Land of Israel for the members of the younger group that launched the journal Likrat ("Toward"), with its new direction in Hebrew poetry, in the 1950s.
When I had to look over all of Zach's writings several years ago, I spent hours reading three thick volumes of his poetry. Unlike Alterman, few of Zach's poems are great creative works. His poetry, which is highly contemporary, does not contain the inspiration that would allow it to last for posterity. Zach writes a great deal about small human experiences, and that is the secret of his charm. The more of his work I read, the more a single word took control over the textual space. That word was "I." People continually write about the transition from poetry written in the collective "we" to the poetry of the individual "I," but for Zach it is an obsession. I, me, and no one else. And if that "I" becomes the poet's own deity, why should Israel -- or Berlin, for that matter -- mean anything to him-
In any case, the difference between Alterman's poetry and Zach's has nothing to do with poetics or technique, but a fundamental principle. Alterman believed in his people and in the return to Zion. Even in the darkest days of the 1940s, he set out to lift the nation's spirits, regard reality with eyes that transcended history and transform curses into blessings. He accomplished this in his work "Joy of the Poor," in which he wrote about the fall of the besieged city (the city as a symbol of the Hebrew yishuv or for civilization as a whole). Even in the abyss of catastrophe, Alterman saw the glimmer of light breaking through. "Let a glad song arise, for the night has passed/and for Abaddon's rejoicing dawn has broken./O, the night has passed; O, ancient joy;/ O Brothers! Perhaps once in a thousand years,/our deaths have meaning!" (in Hebrew the word "shachar" is both dawn and meaning)
Three years later (1944), he completed his work "Songs of the Plagues of Egypt" with the key poem "Ayelet" which ends the creation. Ayelet is "Morning Star." This is the last star seen in the sky at the end of the long night, as the dawn begins to break: a highly significant symbol of Israel's redemption at the close of the terrible exile. "For in a world of sword and silver,/the hopes of generations will blow like wind through the leaves." From this perspective, Zach's statement that Alterman had no homeland is a sad joke.
3. Alterman predicted the intellectuals' betrayal, their impatience towards historical processes and their tendency to force the issue. He foresaw the Israeli death wish to destroy everything and return to exile, since, as Zach said in the interview, "We thought we would change the world. We truly thought we would succeed in establishing something here, but we didn't succeed," and actually, "Nothing will grow here." This awful wish was put into words In "The Joy of the Poor," when Alterman wrote the terrifying words: "Always, always/like a bird flying to its nest/my daughter, my daughter,/your heart goes out toward its knife,/my daughter, my daughter." Zach offers no vision. It's doubtful that he ever has. "Peace" is not a vision; it is only a means to an end.
Left-wing spokespeople, who torment us as they do with whips and scorpions, have become infatuated with the position of the prophet of doom. That position is pathetic and false. The media love to quote them as part of the demoralization effort that states that the worse things get, the more we will realize that there is no alternative and we must make peace (it is also part of the left wing's arrogance, this time about the region's Arabs, to say that everything depends solely on us and on the brilliant plans we propose). Unlike the false prophets of doom, the true prophets wisely incorporated words of consolation in their rebukes. The prophecies of destruction were not the only ones fulfilled; the prophecies of consolation came true as well.
So wrote Jeremiah, the prophet of destruction, whose words of anger and reproof stemmed from true love for his people and a belief that they could improve: "All who devour you will be devoured, and all your enemies, every one of them, shall go into captivity. Those who plunder you will be plundered, and those who prey upon you I will give for prey themselves. I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, says the Lord, because they called you an outcast: 'That is Zion; no one cares for her.'"
Until recently, Zion was called "outcast," and no one cared about it. Then a movement to seek Zion woke within us, and this movement, named for Zion, brought us home. We have had enough of false prophets who torment us through no fault of our own. We need those who truly care for Zion.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו