by Norman Berdichevsky (Dec. 2006)
Israel‘s Independence Day. In those days of my childhood in the Grand Concourse –Melrose – Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx, support for Israel was universal, the one issue that united everyone I knew.
Israel today – “a world without Zionism” as the Iranians would like to contemplate. Israel cannot be undone and not just because of the heritage of the Bible alone. As early as February 1941 in spite of the wholehearted desire of the American Protestant establishment not to risk involvement in World War II, Reinhold Niebhur spoke out convincingly through the journal he founded “Christianity and Crisis” and sounded a clarion call of warning about Nazism. Its final goals were not simply the eradication of the Jews but the extirpation of Christianity and the abolition of the entire heritage of Christian and humanistic culture. This is the only kind of “World Without Zionism” that the Iranian and many Arab leaders long for. Niebhur based his views not on any literal “Evangelical” interpretation of Biblical promises but the essentials of justice for the nations and also called for some form of compensation to those Arabs in Palestine who might be displaced if their own leaders refused to make any compromise possible.
Oceans of ink have been consumed, spilt and wasted on the subject of Jewish identity. The traumatic events of the last few months have given me great anxiety yet the approach of the 59th anniversary of an independent Jewish state provides a fitting opportunity to take stock and add another few drops in the hope that at this stage of my life (age 63) I can put things in perspective for myself and readers interested in how the success and challenges involved in the creation and development of the Jewish state have affected individual lives in the Diaspora.
My childhood environment of the late 1940s and early 1950s was among the most densely populated Jewish neighborhoods of the largest Jewish city in the world. A look at the school photographs taken at my graduation from P.S. 90 and Junior High School 22 reveals more than 90 per cent and 75 per cent Jewish names respectively; the remainder with Italian, Irish, mixed East and Central European and Puerto-Rican names and also a few black faces. My high school environment was somewhat more cosmopolitan and slightly less Jewish – perhaps only 65 per cent, although its all male student body was drawn from all the five boroughs of New York City,
In retrospect, I can now see that many of the non-Jewish pupils at Stuyvesant High School came from homes with as ancient traditions, and exotic languages as the Hebrew I had acquired in preparation for my Bar-Mitzvah. These other non-Jewish pupils of Chinese, Armenian, and Greek origin as well as a few others with whom I became friends were in many respects typical American teen-age boys who shared the same passions for baseball, popular music and science fiction films with others of our age. I came to understand with heart and soul that through a long perilous history Jews were not alone in having created a rich and ancient culture albeit marked by melancholy. The ability to retain a sense of an historic past and a deep sense of solidarity with a “Zion” state was something I shared with others. Like them, this in no way detracted from the love and pride I felt in being an American.
‘madrichim’ (guides), a farm manager from Israel and the occasional helpful advice and companionship of a nearby Jewish farmer – one of the few remaining in New Jersey from the small number of German-Jewish refugees admitted into America who went into farming just before the outbreak of World War II. Charley was a real farmer with livestock and not just a “chicken farmer” like the other refugees admitted from Germany to America in the late 1930s. It was a wonderful introduction to a life imbued with a love of agriculture and nature.
Battle of the Bulge and came back home with a captured German helmet, I too longed for a sense of the heroic – more easily obtained in Israel than in New Jersey. My personal problems with a girlfriend made me miss the historic March on Washington to hear Martin Luther King’s – “I have a Dream” speech. This was of course, the great idealistic cause of American youth and I had missed this historic event due to my own “trivial” preoccupations with myself and self-pity.
Israel.
new York to Haifa on one of the old Zim ships in November 1963 stopping at Madeira, Gibraltar and Piraeus.
Russia as an old man to realize his dream to die in the Holy Land circa 1895. Mine was to live there.
New Jersey farm. The Kibbutz children were too young and the kibbutz members from the U.S., Canada and Eastern Europe were at least 20 years older than me. So I soon found that the “foreign volunteers” from Europe and mostly non-Jewish were easiest to make friends with. It was among them that I met my first wife – Bente from Denmark. These volunteers in the early 60’s felt a natural sympathy for Israel because of what had happened in Europe during the Holocaust and their support for the Kibbutz idea. My new Israeli identity did not share any of the “hang-ups“ about “mixed marriages“. In retrospect, I probably also had a positive inclination towards the Scandinavian way of life – its healthier approach to social relations, love of the outdoors, modesty, rejection of the hard-sell American approach to commercial success, anti-militarism, humanist traditions, anti-snobbery, and as a psychiatrist would have guessed – beautiful women.
“Ordet” (The Word) and Ditte-Menneskebarn (Ditte-Child of Humanity) based on the book by the great proletarian writer Martin Andersen NexøToday however, it lacks the dynamic attraction and fascination for Diaspora Jews that it once held even for many Christian theologians and clergymen who felt the stirring power of the language they believed God first used to speak to man. This feeling of reverence and power was beautifully expressed by the great German writer Hermann Hesse writing in his largely autobiographical novel Beneath the Wheel:
Israel’s one house legislature – a parliament responsible for much political instability and a succession of “coalition governments” in the country due to its absurd ultra-democratic system of proportional representation.
Israel that made idealism wear thin. The litany of daily frustrations, the pressure of an intense hothouse atmosphere of constant tension, the political involvement of many ultra-Orthodox Jews and their rejection of any other mind-set or alternative form of Jewish identity as well as an aggressive, archaic, obtuse and obdurate bureaucracy exerted a heavy toll and like so many others the “final straw” issues that drove us away had little to do with great political issue of war or peace.
“Zionism” has endured and become not just an outdated Jewish sentiment or whipping boy of the Muslims and Arab world. Throughout the ages, the Christian scriptures have added to the Old Testament in hallowing the longing of the Jews for a return to their ancestral homeland. Hundreds of gospel songs and Negro spirituals equate crossing the Jordan to return to Zion as the realization of freedom for Afro-Americans. The same “Zionist” image resonated in Christian hymns of the English, Welsh, Scots and other peoples as well as the use of many of the “Zion” psalms in much “reggae“ music (witness Bob Marley’s big hit “By the Rivers of Babylon“).
Haile Selassi I, as King of Kings, Lord of Lords and the Lion of Judah in Pslams 68:4 and part of the Holy Trinity (about ten percent of Jamaicans identify themselves as Rastafari). The term comes from Ras Täfäri, the pre-coronation name of Haile Selassie (Amharic for “Power of the Trinity”). This movement emerged in Jamaica among working-class and peasant black people in the early 1930s. It stemmed from Black social and political aspirations, and the teachings of Jamaican black publicist and organizer Marcus Garvey who preached a “Return to Africa“. Political Zionism and the scriptures’ expression of “Longing for Zion” have inspired many Overseas Armenians, Greeks, Irish, Germans, Hungarians, Finns and Chinese as well to cultivate a close tie with their ancestral homelands.
Zion” theme is endeared to countless Europeans by Verdi’s first successful opera, “Nabucco” (Nebuchadnezzar), written in 1842 relating the story of the exiled Hebrews in Babylon in the 7th century B.C. In the opera, the chorus “Va, pensiero” (a paraphrase of Psalm 137) is sung by the exiles on the banks of the Euphrates, lamenting the loss of their homeland. In Austrian ruled Italy, Nabucco quickly became a popular anthem expressing the nationalist sentiments of the Italian People expressing their own longing for political freedom. In 1901, a crowd of more than 25,000 people spontaneously began singing the stirring chorus “Va pensiero“ as Verdi‘s coffin was borne through the streets to his final resting place.
del suolo natal!
del fatidic e fatal!
Le memorie nel peto raccendi
Chi favella del tempo che fu
O simile di Solima ai fati
Traggi un suono di crudo lamento
Che ne infonda al patrire virtu!
Go, my thoughts on golden wings
Go settle on the cliffs and hills
Where the sweet breezes bring
The warm soft fragrances of your native land
From Jordan, the river of salvation
From the desolate towers of Zion
Oh my fatherland so beautiful and lost!
Oh remembrances so dear and so deadly
Golden harps of our prophets and poets,
Why have you changed into weeping willows?
The battered memory in my heart
Which speaks of the time that was!
Either like Solomon to the fates
You present a sound of crude lament
Or the Lord inspires in you a song
Which takes courage into the depths
On Israel’s 50th anniversary my wife and I were in London and at the approach of the 59th we are now in Florida – wandering Jews again ! Even from afar and the inevitable disappointments with this or that aspect of life in Israel today, I retain a pride in having shared in a great historical enterprise – in the spirit of the early pioneers. I retain bonds of friendship with a score of dedicated and generous people who are made of tougher stuff than I and have sunk deep roots so that they will stay and carry on no matter what. It seems to me that Zionism did not attract a random sample of the Jewish People but the more adventurous, high-spirited and daring personality types who came as voluntary immigrants and were not dragged along by the tide of history as refugees. They can be justifiably proud of Israel in spite of all its problems and shortcomings. There is no need to apologize for or hide the Z-word.
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