6 Friday, January 1, 1982
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Between Right and Right' —Yehoshua's Israel View
By BETTE ROTH
Aleph Bet Yehoshua is
one of Israel's foremost
literary artists. His novel,
"The Lover," has been
translated into at least four
languages and places him
among writers of interna-
tional aclaim.
"Between Right and
Right: Israel: Problem or
Solution?" (Doubleday) is a
collection of five essays
written within the past 15
years. It is a polemic for
Zionism and the right of the
state of Israel to exist.
Yehoshua, a sabra born
and nourished on Israeli
soil, is as comfortable with
his biblical past as he is
with the exigencies of mod-
em Israeli life. His essays
carry one message: that the
Golah or Diaspora experi-
ence is abnormal — that the
Jew can only be truly whole
in Israel.
With this sentiment he
strongly believes that all
Jews must accept Israel
as a political state with all
of the imperfections of
any other political state,
that she should not be
expected to be somehow
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a perfect social system
made up of perfect
human beings. Implicit in
this feeling is of course
the concomitant idea
that Jews and non-Jews
do in fact place unrealis-
tic requirements and ex-
pectations on the Jewish
state, fearing that if she is
flawed she will somehow
not be permitted to sur-
vive.
His essay "The Golah:
The Neurotic Solution," ex-
pands upon this idea in a
presentation of a theologi-
cal mythic paradigm so
original that it holds our
minds in utter fascination.
Yehoshua says that the
Jew has always been able to
return to his homeland,
Eretz Yisrael, but has con-
tinually followed the same
path as did Abraham, the
first Oleh, and his grandson
Jacob, both of whom were
yordim. Jacob, he reminds
us, asked that his bones be
brought back to Eretz Yis-
rael for burial. And the
author asks, "Is that the
secret destiny of the land, to
be a burial ground for
Jewish bones, or is it also a
land of life?"
Yehoshua goes on to re-
member that the Jewish
people was created in the
Golah, the Torah was given
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A. B. YEHOSHUA'
to us not in Israel, but in the
desert in "no-man's land."
And he says that the Jew
always reseeks the desert
for spiritual renewal in
preparation for- re-entry
into "the land."
"The entry into the
land," he tells us, "has
tremendous significance.
It is not only the physical
conquest of the land by a
nation of nomads, it is
also a conquest imbued
with spiritual signifi-
cance.
"Stringent conditions are
laid down together with the
promise of the land, for
might alone cannot assure
retention of it. The nation
can maintain its hold on the
land only if it pays heed to
the voice of God and ob-
serves His commandments.
"If it does not meet these
conditions it will be subject
to the harshest punish-
ments, the ultimate of
which is expulsion from the
land, Exile.
"The land is conceived
of as sacred; the sins of
the nation will defile it
and then the land will
vomit up the people from
it. In these early texts (bi-
blical) the fundamental
principle is already es-
tablished: The people
takes precedence over
the land in every sense."
Monotheism
was
achieved by the image
that it was God whO gave
birth to the people, or
"put differently, that the
father alone and exclu-
sively, and not the
mother, gave birth to the
people." And he found
Abraham purposefully
because "He had to as-
sert his supremacy over
the feminine element, the
homeland, by picking out
an individual from out-
side Eretz Israel and up-
rooting him from his
natural and true home-
land," Canaan.
The same story, he says,
recurs at the nation's incep-
tion:
"The nation is born in the
Golah, not in its homeland.
Its natural homeland
(Egypt) is not its true home-
land. That will be given it
by the father after an exclu-
sive covenant is sealed with
him.
"How great is the sym-
bolism that the covenant is
made in an intermediate
region between the Golah
and the true homeland, in a
place that is no place, that
cannot be identified physi-
cally and be linked as a
place, as a land, to the cove-
nant. And all that to estab-
lish the father's absolute
supremacy over the mother
"When the relationship
between the son and the
mother deepens, the jealous
father immediately inter-
venes and claims not only
that 'they abandoned him'
but that they are 'desecrat-
ing' the mother . . . Noth-
ing is more abominable in
the sight of the prophets
than the cult of the earth.
"All the agricultural
rites had to undergo
transformation, screen-
ing, and sublimation by
the godhead system. The
word homeland itself is
very little used in Jewish
terminology. It is one of
Judaism's more neg-
lected concepts."
(2)
Yehoshua sees the Golah
as both the neurotic solu-
tion to the mythic domi-
nance of the father over' the
mother in Judaism and a
the cause for anti-Semitisi
And he echoes both Pinskei -
and Herzl when he says that
only a return to the home-
land can cause the non-Jew
to see the Jew as "normal"
and can cause the Jew to act
with dignity and self-
respect.
In the Golah, the Jew
both despises himself and is
despised.
Yehoshua's essays all ad-
dress the problem of "nor-
malcy" in Jewish life. In
fact, the literal translation
of the Hebrew title to this-
collection, is "For Nor-
malcy."
He feels that Jews can
become liberated from
the fears of "indepen-
dence" only by returning
to "the land" and living
as normal human beings,
and he encourages us to
give up the idea of cho-
senness or uniqueness in
an effort to become nor-
mal citizens of a political
state.
His collection of essays is
a significant contribution to
modern Jewish thought for
he presents an Israeli Wel-
tanschauung which pro-
vides needed insight into
the workings of the modern
Israeli mind and gives the
reader an understanding of
the dynathics of decision
making in the modern
Jewish state.
:75z-
The Story of Entebbe Hero
Is Published in Paperback
For Yehoshua, the Jewish
people's relationship to Is-
rael is one of fear, fear
that "it will not be •able to
The story of the Entebbe
live up to the difficult condi-
rescue operation by Israel
tions God places on its
will remain memorable in
existence in the land."
Jewish and world history.
Yehoshua shows in this
At a time when many na-
essay a thorough knowledge
tions cringed in fear of ter-
of both biblical and Dias-
rorists, Israel dared the re-
pora Jewish history and this
scue mission at Entebbe,
combined with his extraor-
the airport of Uganda.
dinary imagination pro-
The hero of that opera-
duces the thought that Jews
tion, the only fatal Israeli
have always experienced a
casualty, was Lt. Col. Yona-
conflict between the de-
tan Netanyahu.
mands of statehood and the
He had written the classic
demands of religion and
letters which created a sen-
that the solution has been to
sation in the volume "Self-
absent themselves from the
Portrait of a Hero," which
land in an effort to achieve
became a best seller when
the ideals inherent in any
published in hard cover by
religious system of beliefs,
impossible in a real political
JNF Planning
context.
Arts Festival
He goes even further to
NEW YORK — In cele-
give the problem a
psychoanalytic interpreta-
bration of its 80 years of
tion:
land reclamation and af-
God is seen as equal to the
forestation in Israel, the
Department of Education of
concept of "father" and "the
the Jewish National Fund is
homologous concepts
sponsoring the first JNF
`earth-land and mother-
land' are parallel to the con- _National Art Festival.
cept 'mother. The phenom-
Scheduled to open on erev
Tu b'Shevat — Feb. 7 —the
enon of the Golah is," in his
festival exhibit in New
view,"a disturbance of the
York will feature the origi-
proper and harmonious bal-
ance in the consciousness of
nal artwork of students
a people between God and
from nearly 300 Jewish
homeland."
schools across the country.
C)
YONATAN NETANYAHU
Random House in 1980.
Paperbacked, pub- _
lished by Valent4
Books, the volume
draws attention of all
English readers who
have the manuscripts in
translation from the
Hebrew by his brothers,
Benjamin and Iddo
Netanyahu. The text is
annotated by the trans-
lators;
The introduction by
Herman Wouk adds signifi-
cance to this deeply-moving
book which reveals the
high-calibered character of
the martyred hero.