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Friday, December 27, 1985 • THE bET140IT JEWISH NEWS
FOCUS
Why Don't I Live In Israel?
BY ELIE WIESEL
Contributing Editor
If someone had told me formerly, in my
childhood, that in my lifetime I would see
the resurrection of a free and sovereign
Jewish state, I would not have believed it;
but if they had then added that a Jewish
state would be reborn and that I wouldn't
live in it, I would have believed it still less.
And yet, for reasons which escape me, I
do not live there.
Ambiguous situation, complex and even
painful, that some Israeli friends refuse to
understand. For them, the Diaspora con-
stitutes an aberration that it would be
easy to eliminate: it would suffice that all
Jews loving Israel go live there. Those who
refuse are regarded as feeble, cowardly, or
skeptical. "Come on," the Israelis tell us,
"how much time are you going to pro-
claim: 'Next year in Jerusalem?' What pre-
,
vents you from making this wish a reali-
ty?"
Utopian dream? It has always been one.
Invited by Cyrus to return to Judea, Ezra
and Nehemiah were able to convince only
about ten thousand exiles to join them in
the movement toward repatriation. The
others — and they were the majority —
chose to remain in Babylonia. Since then,
there has neven been a total concentration
of Jewish people in the land of their ances-
tors. Should we complain? On the contra-
ry, said a Talmudic sage: better to rejoice.
"It is a service which God renders to the
Jews by dispersing them among the na-
tions," he insists. Result: flourishing com-
munities were multiplying across the Ro-
man, Greek, and Persian empires at a time