The Z Word and a Search for Personal Identity
by Norman Berdichevsky (Dec. 2006)
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.
“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:
“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.
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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