COMMENT

e'Cficuyim

The later years are a time to come alive in every sense. A time to
try new things and to continue growing, learning and experiencing
all that life has to offer.
The community is cordially invited to attend a unique educa-
tional experience offering challenging courses and an oppor-
tunity to learn and explore.

Senior University

Wednesday, January 17, 1990
Thursday, January 18, 1990

10 a.m. - 3:15 p.m.

gia t_he

ATHERWOOD

22800 Civic Center Drive
Southfield, Michigan

Course Topics

Estate Tax Minimization • Medicare Today • Food & Drug Interaction • Con-
temporary Clayworks • Stampout Curiosity • Healthy Choices In Today's Diet
• Moving Tips • Vision Screening • Citizens Against Crime • How to Talk
to Your Doctor • Timeless Creations • What's In Your Future • Investments
For the Future • Pharmacy Overview • Wine lasting • Cholesterol Screening
• Housing & Healthcare • Southfield—The Center of It All • Dance Lessons
1 Day $10
Registration Fee:
2 Days $15
(Includes Lunch)
Join us for 2 days of exciting courses and challenges! Come grow with us!
For Further Information Contact:

Steve Helsel or Linda Janower
350-1777

Call or Mail in coupon before January 8th and receive $1 off registration.
Name
Address
City, State, Zip
Phone

DELTA THAI IMPORTS PROUDLY PRESENTS
THAILAND'S FINEST HILLTRIBE HANDICRAFTS

MADE BY THE
HMONG HILLTRIBE
PEOPLE OF THAILAND

"From an early age, Hmong girls learn the art of Pa ndau —
sophisticated sewing without machines, pins or patterns — which
produce 20 virtually invisible stitches to the inch."

NUMBERED
ONE-OF-A-KIND
BEDSPREAD/COMFORTER
KING/QUEEN SIZE
WHOLESALE WELCOME

Represented in the
Metro Detroit area by

DELTA THAI IMPORTS

110 FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1990

Barry Garon
545-0783

Israel's East European
Roots Stirred By Events

SHLOMO AVINERI

Special to The Jewish News

T

he recent de-
velopments in Central
and Eastern Europe
may have implications for
Israel beyond their im-
mediate political context.
These developments relate
to Israel's self-identity as a
nation-state.
The Zionist movement and
the Jewish national
renaissance in the 19th and
20th centuries developed in
Eastern Europe, and were
nurtured by the political, so-
cial, intellectual and
cultural forces which have
formed East Europe.
While the roots of Zionism
relate, of course, to the
sources of Jewish history,
and Israel is located in the
Middle East, the forces
which brought it into being
have to be understood in
terms of Central and
Eastern European history.
It was the impact of de-
velopments mainly in
Russia and Poland on
Jewish consciousness which
gave rise to the Zionist
movement.
The revival of Hebrew lit-
erature in Eastern Europe in
the 19th century —from
Abraham Mapu and I.L.
Gordon to Chaim Nachman
Bialik and Shaul Tcher-
nichowsky — has to be
understood in terms of
Polish, Russian and German
romantic literature.
The very revival of the
Hebrew language has its
origin in the great linguistic
national revivals of Eastern
and Central Europe — where
nations which had been sub-
dued for centuries
rediscovered, and sometimes
re-invented, their linguistic
traditions.
Even the complex links
between nationalism and
religion — so vexing to many
Israelis — have their origin
in the complex intertwining
of ethnicity and religion in
Eastern Europe: Polish na-
tionalism was never severed
from Catholic ingredients,
just as Russian nationalism
had its links with Russian
Orthodoxy, and even the
largely secular Czech na-
tionalists looked back to Jan
Huss as a forerunner of their
movement for self-
emancipation.

Shlomo Avineri is professor of
political science at the Hebrew
University and author of "The
Making of Modern Zionism."

The Israeli political
system — a multiplicity of
parties divided by
sometimes minute
ideological differences — is
quintessentially Eastern
European. It is for this
reason that the Israeli polit-
ical system looks so arcane
and incomprehensible to
anyone coming from the
very different Anglo-Saxon
tradition, with its pragmatic
and purely instrumentalist
views of politics.
If Israel is — or has ever
been — related to Europe, it
was to this Europe that it
was related: Our roots were
in Warsaw and Vienna, in
Prague and Odessa, in
Bessarabia and Lithuania.
The Europe of Paris and
Brussels, let alone the in-
tellectual frame of mind of

Real Israeli links
with Europe were
cut off brutally.

London and Manhattan, had
very little to do with the real
European links of Israeli
culture, politics and
Weltanschauung.
These real Israeli links
with Europe were cut off
brutally twice in the last
half-century. First by
Nazism; later by Commu-
nism. The Nazi annihilation
of European Jewry, made
Eastern Europe into the
mass grave of the Jewish
people.
The imposition of Commu-
nist rule on Eastern Europe
in the wake of World War II
only compounded this
tendency. If the Soviet revo-
lution put an end to
autonomous Jewish life in
Russia proper, the extension
of Communist rule to central
Eastern Europe did the same
to Jewish life — or its rem-
nants —in Warsaw, Prague,
Bucharest and Budapest.
Israel, in a very profound
sense, was cut off from its
historical and cultural roots.
How could one identify, even
indirectly, with countries
which were the scenes of
massive Jewish death, and
then continued, in a Com-
munist guise, to vilify the
Jewish people and the
Jewish state?
Other ingredients of
Israel's population, hailing
from Middle Eastern coun-
tries, did not experience a
similar alienation. But
because the Israeli social
and cultural heritage was so
much influenced by the
Eastern European experi-