“When I was a graduate student in anthropology, it was my immature ambition to investigate bands of Eskimos who were reported to have chosen to starve rather than eat foods that were abundant but under taboo. How much, I asked myself did people yield to culture or to their lifelong preoccupations, and at what point would the animal need to survive break through the restraints of custom and belief? I suspected then that among primitive peoples the objective facts counted for less. But I’m not at all certain now that civilized minds are more flexible and capable of grasping reality, or that they have livelier, more intelligent reactions to the threat of extinction. I grant that as an American I am more subject to illusion than my cousins. But will the Israeli veterans of hardships, massacres, and wars know how to save themselves? Has the experience of crisis taught them what to do? I have read writers on the Holocaust who made the most grave criticisms of European Jewry, arguing that they doomed themselves by their unwillingness to surrender their comfortable ways, their property, their passive habits, their acceptance of bureaucracy, and were led to slaughter unresisting. I do not see the point of scolding the dead. But if history is indeed a nightmare, as Karl Marx and James Joyce said, it is time for the Jews, a historical people, to rouse themselves, to burst from historical sleep. And Israel’s political leaders do not seem to me to be awake. I sometimes think there are two Israels. The real one is territorially insignificant. The other, the mental Israel, is immense, a country inestimably important, playing a major role in the world, as broad as all history – and perhaps as deep as sleep.”
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From To Jerusalem and Back by Saul Bellow.
yourothermotherhere said:
Interesting.
Jessica said:
Netanyahu is fully awake and savvy. Wish he were our president. I like to follow Joel Rosenberg’s blog (and we’ve read all his books, fiction and non-fiction) because he gives the inside story behind world events focusing on the Middle East. He worked in the White House, he knows Israeli leaders (like Netayahu) personally and he knows Arab leaders personally–and they all seem to respect him. His novels always lead the news (like a kamikaze air attack against America, discovering oil off the coast of Israel, Iran developing nuclear weapons, etc.) by a few months to a year; his knowledge enables him to make uncannily accurate predictions.
jrbenjamin said:
That was exactly my thought; Netanyahu is certainly awake — it’s just not for sure whether he woke up too groggy or not. (Not to over-extend Bellow’s subtle metaphor.)
Thanks for commenting and thanks for reading.
jrbenjamin said:
By the way, I know of Rosenberg’s work and we actually have some very close mutual friends. Cool to know you’re a fan… I need to check out his stuff.