My generation is going in the way of their ancestors. I met Hanan in the Shomron in the eighties, where I was taken by a collegue. I imagined that I wished to be like him but face to face I realized that he was not my cup of tea. Everybody was called to the minha (the afternoon prayer) and they all prayed extatically and derived visible satisfaction from the ceremony, but I didnt grow up in a Jerusalem yeshive but in Communist Hungary. I abhored "the mystic link of the Jew with the Land" and all that messianic bullshit of Gush Emunim. By now, the religious extasis has cooled down and is forgotten, and the old revolutionaries - because that is what they were - are well to do landowners. That's the way of all successful revolutions. A cancer killed him. Left eleven children and many grandchildren.
17 comments:
Maybe starting to go but don't throw in the towel yet. With modern medicine lots of people last until their '80s and beyond so you may have another couple of decades to go.
One does not have to have grown up in Communist Hungary to be skeptical of religion. Many intelligent people have problems with the idea of running their lives in accordance with invisible magical forces written in a book that predates science.
K
The Gush Emunim movement headed by Hanan was a mystical outgrow of the Rav Kook school. They were the firsts who went out among the Arabs to found outposts in hills of Samaria and emotionally I was with them, but physically couldnt suffer them. It is like you know tofu is good for your health and admire the people who eat tofu, but when presented a plate of tofu you throw up. Their night shiurim (teachings) were bobbe maises, I couldnt suffer it with straight face.
In the end they came ahead of those sensate people like me, they have nice homes, easy jobs in the government and some have accumulated real estate when it was available and cheap.
If that real estate these people accumulated on the cheap is located in settlements in the West Bank, how secure is it an investment long-term? The Israeli government may st some point find itself forced to dismantle the settlements under diplomatic pressure. Alternatively, the Arabs might unexpectedly win back the land in battle.
I'll never understand your weak spot of admiration for these crazy orthodox religious types. If you want long-term prosperity based on technological advancement and rational problem solving, those guys aren't the ones who are going to create it. You need more Dan Schechtman's rather than more black kaftan-wearing rebbe worshippers.
BTW, I realize that Porat wasn't quite as far gone on the religious lunatic scale as the rebbe worshippers.
How secure is owning a house in the Shomron? In the last 30 years its market value has only grown and today you can sell it in 24 hours. What do you prefer to believe in: reality or your nightmares?
Regarding weak spot of admiration: compare Hanan's life with his contemporaries: he lived a full life of idealism and striving, built cities in Israel and had a large family. He left a personal footprint in our small segment of Jewish history. What else can a man aspire to?
Ironically, I am eating a plate of tofu right now as I read this. After the last few days on the stock market, there is nothing more to throw up.
I sometimes think that Jews get on better with Gentiles than with each other.
Anon.
Tofu ! It is good for you, if you are able to eat it. I prefer to fast.
"What do you prefer to believe in: reality or your nightmares?"
Thus the paradox of faith: those who believe (and feel as much as think) are derided as crazies by secularized Jews such as you and K. But their faith gives them the courage to ultimately believe in -- and profit from -- an uncertain reality. They get wealthy, have large families, live long lives. In other words, they are blessed, as G-d blesses the faithful.
Fred, You are absolutely right. For some reason I cannot have big faith so I make do with the small faith called optimism. Americans used to call it "Positive thinking". They were considered famously naive. They did big things, built large dams, long bridges, split the atom, went to the moon.
I will never forgive him for the "purim sameach yehudim" (jews - merry Purim ) after the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.
He was a fanatic man with a mentality of a terrorist.
Who told you that tofu was good and healthy?
"Consumption of tofu is associated with worse memory, particularly among the over 68s"
"Soy products are rich in micronutrients called phytoestrogens, which mimic the impact of the female sex hormone oestrogen. A high quantity of those may actually heighten the risk of dementia."
"But their faith gives them the courage to ultimately believe in -- and profit from -- an uncertain reality."
Or, faith can give them courage that makes them foolhardy. It can be really disastrous. Many of the haredim and hasidim of Poland, encouraged by their rabbis, decided to wait out the Nazis rather than risk diminution of their yiddishkeit in America or elsewhere. Didn't work out so well for them.
You're biased in favor of insane religiosity as much as K and I are biased against it, Fred.
I can tell you that my parents were not insane hasidim (in fact had nothing but contempt for haredim, especially the modern kind that live on welfare) and they made no "decision" to wait out the Nazis. They simply were living in the country in which they were born (and had no real place to go - America's gates were closed after WWI).
K
I wasn't faulting your parents, K, but America wasn't the only place to which the desperate could have tried to escape. Regardless, many of the Polish haredim and hasidim didn't even try to leave. The Polish government had an officially anti-Semitic policy in the 1930's, and Hitler was increasingly menacing towards Poland. Had it not been for their rabbis, more of them might have tried to get out and succeeded.
There were only two small organized escape efforts: the Zionism youth movement which was against mass emigration (they wanted only young farmers in Palestine and no middle class shop owners) and the Communists, to Russia. The large Hassidic communities took a fatal decision: They had lived under German occupation in WWI and there was no reason to think now would be different. So they stayed and obeyed German orders to move into the ghetto.
The Jews of Poland (and Hungary) should have fled en masse for their lives to anywhere that would take them, certainly after Kristallnacht and Munich Pact, if not sooner - the handwriting was on the wall. And yet this is all clear only in retrospect. For a modern analogy, it retrospect it was clear that the 9/11 attacks were coming but at the time they were a complete and utter surprise to 99% of the population, this even though Bin Laden (and Hitler) had made their intentions perfectly clear. De Nile ain't just a river in Egypt - "this is just rhetoric for a domestic audience, he doesn't really mean it, he doens't have the capability to act on his desires, etc. " Denial is a powerful force - there are stories of people escaping from the extermination camps and returning to the ghettoes to tell people what was waiting for them, and yet people refused to believe and refused to resist.
It did not even occur to my parent to immigrate anywhere before the war - there were few places that would have taken them even if they had thought in that direction.
K
We are wise now but in the thirties was considered and rejected by most European Jews. The Zionist leadership Vaad HaHatzalah led by Dr Kasztner succeded in paying off the SS (Eichman) to allow one trainload of Huungarian Jews travel safely to Switzerland. Kasztner relates that there were almost no takers, that many paid for the ticket but got cold feet in last minute for fear of a Nazi trick, so he had to fill the train with relatives from his hometown who travelled free. Effectively, the Swiss train was directed to Auschwitz and only the heroic efforts of the Zionists and courageous promises of personal vengeance (it was the end of the war) succeeded in redirect it to safety.
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