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PDF FormatWe have yet to delve deeper into why many rational young Israelis leave their homeland. The principal reason is that Zionist ideology has created historical absurdities. The land that was meant to serve as a shelter for the oppressed has turned into a place where Jews are simultaneously persecuted and persecutors, on account of their ongoing struggle with the land’s other residents. It has become clear that Herzl’s Zionism did not provide a satisfactory solution to the Jewish problem that became all the more acute after the Russian pogroms of 1881-1882, the Dreyfus affair in France in the 1890s, and the Kishinev riots in Bessarabia in 1903. It has become clear to Zionists that the land they chose for historical reasons was not empty of people, but rather already settled. Ironically, those who wished to realize the national dream in their historic homeland catalyzed an Arab nationalist movement that was their own mirror image. Those who wished to settle the land of their forefathers became—in the eyes of the world and, at times, in their own—colonists. They conquered a foreign territory and a foreign people who, far from greeting them with open arms, rejected them out of hand.
Jews have been dreaming for a long time of developing their own culture in their own homeland. The great Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’am, for example, viewed the development of a secular Jewish society in the Land of Israel as the principal mission of world Jewry. He believed that the goal of a renewed Jewish “spiritual center” should be not the establishment of a state, but rather the creation of a new Jewish culture, one that would provide content and meaning for the diaspora. And indeed, the shoots of such a culture were soon sprouting all over the land. Hebrew became the residents’ official language, leading, through all manner of lowbrow and highbrow publications, to the development of both popular and elite culture. Music, the visual arts, etc., all blossomed, along with institutes of education and research (schools, colleges, and universities).
Despite this Jewish cultural efflorescence, the best and brightest of today’s Israeli society prefer a Western lifestyle to that of their culture of origin—which is already highly Westernized as it is. The elite of Israeli youth inevitably find their way overseas, where they excel in all imaginable fields: technology, sports, medicine, science, and even Jewish studies and Jewish literature.
To be sure, every one of these emigrants has good reason to feel disappointed in Israel. Despite these good reasons, the question remains: Do Jews have any values that can withstand the temptations of money, fame, and ease of life, which are so appealing to the young? What values can help prevent the abandonment of the Land of Israel in favor of greener pastures elsewhere?
Many of the arguments in favor of Zionist ideology are no longer universally valid. Israel is not, for instance, a safe haven for the Jewish people, and the sense of historical belonging to that “land of our forefathers” now resonates mainly within the national-religious minority. The majority of Israelis can accept living within the boundaries of the “Green Line,” and feel no qualms about forgoing the option of visiting the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. They are more than happy to do without placing notes on Rachel’s or Abraham’s tomb. Even the connection they feel to the Western Wall is nationalist-sentimental at best.
This is not surprising: Zionist education sought to replace the Western Wall, which signified the fall of the Jewish people as a national entity and its condemnation to exile, with a new collective symbol, that of Masada. This last vestige of the Zealots’ war for freedom, of their readiness to fight until the bitter end and their refusal to accept the alternative of slavery in a foreign land, aroused fervent identification in Zionist thought. The semiotic meaning of the ruins at Masada turned the site into a symbol for various youth movements, the ultimate expression of a nation fighting for its freedom. It became a place of ritual and pilgrimage, where Hagana units were sworn in prior to the War of Independence and IDF units afterward.
Since the 1970s, however, even Masada’s mythological significance has decreased. It has been damaged by a trend of demystification and a depletion of national values, as have other iconic Zionist figures and sites (such as the tomb of Yosef Trumpeldor at Tel Hai). This shift has been reflected in modern Hebrew literature, which attempted to subvert the image and stature of the “new Jew,” ready and willing to sacrifice himself on the altar of his homeland. We find its expression in various literary parodies,4 such as this satirical description of the myth of Masada in Yoram Kaniuk’s 1981 novel The Last Jew:
Henkin investigated the history of the Falashas. The story of Joseph de la Rayna, Masada, and Yavneh. Survival versus the fever of revolt. He wrote about the greatest heroic speech written in the history of Judaism, the patriotic speech every Israeli student learns by heart, the speech of Eleazar ben Yair atop Masada, written by Josephus Flavius—that is, Yohanan the Traitor, who commanded the siege of Yodfat, surrendered, joined the Romans, and… with his own hand wrote the speech of great hope, the dying speech of Eleazar ben Yair. Only if you steal the victory from the Romans will you be remembered, and that is how the Jewish memory was born. The Last Jew is its last product, or perhaps not the last.…5
This new narrative presents the patriotic final words of Eleazar ben Yair, the hero of Masada canonized in Zionist myth, as an imaginary speech invented by Josephus Flavius and attributed to the Zealot leader in an effort to “steal” victory from the Romans, thus glorifying the Jews. Clearly, this modification of the traditional narrative diminishes its symbolic value in the eyes of the reader. Such has been the fate of most other sacred national myths nurtured by Zionism but depreciated by Israeli life and literature.
