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PDF FormatYet the identification of the majority of those born in Israel with their homeland does not depend on the Zionist narrative, or on any symbols of the past. The “new Jew” has, we are led to believe, broken free of the marks and dilemmas of the “old Jew” who immigrated here. Therefore, native Israelis adopted symbols largely associated with the land itself, some ancient (the Old Testament, Masada, etc.) and some modern (the Jezreel Valley, the pioneers’ “tower and stockade” settlements, and so on). They did not feel like those who came to the country in order to build it and fulfill the Zionist dream, but rather like natives, for whom Israel is their natural home in the world. Their self-identification with local society and the Land of Israel was born of a physical connection to their environment.
Israeli authors have expressed, some humorously and some seriously, the relationship between sabras, or native-born Israelis, and the hevre—their circle of friends, the “guys”—and their land. This phenomenon is mockingly depicted by Amos Keinan, who describes young Dani as a youth who “learned to do everything with everyone together: sing, dance, travel, think, speak, write, etc.,”6 and by S. Yizhar, who defines the sabra as “one who hates to be left alone. Who cannot be left without the group. With everyone, he is someone too. And that, no matter the price to pay, cannot be questioned. Anything else can be. That cannot. All sorts of values are here today, gone tomorrow. Doctrines and ideologies are like clouds drifting in the eye of a storm. But the team, the hevre, is there forever.”7
The poet Haim Gouri’s self-identification with the Israeli landscape also stands apart from the original Zionist narrative in terms of history and collective memory. Gouri’s hero, the first-person narrator, is a “new Jew,” a product of the land itself:
To whom did you belong?
I belonged to the dunes, to the sycamore trees, to the sea. I loved the sea the most toward evening, when the sky is crimson-gold and the waters are tainted the color of ink. When it is somber and magnificent. I loved the fishermen on the mossy rock. I loved the sailboats, traveling off toward the horizon or moving southward toward Jaffa; the quiet hour, settling into tranquillity. I loved the salty smell of our sea, the scent of seaweed, the vast, open spaces. I belonged to the shadowy orchards past the sycamore lanes, the well houses of Jaffa, the clanging pump, the sandy lane cooling off as the burning sun’s summer reign ends. To the donkeys and the camels, to them did I belong; to the shadowy women, adorned in nose rings; to the bells of the flocks and the flutes of the shepherds. I belonged to the early rising builders who wash their faces outside, under the faucet, in a loud din, dragging their feet and sighing; to these sturdy men, emigrants from Russia. I belonged to the rising moon, the blossoms of the evening primrose, the sleepless’ balconies.8
The things to which the author responds almost viscerally, and which he perceives as extensions of his own identity, reflect his deep attachment to the typical Israeli scenery. The sands, the sycamores, the acacias, the sea, the dark orchards, the donkey, and the camels are synechdochal representations of the space around him.9 This space, however, is not the old landscape inhabited by the pioneers. In truth, it is closer to the setting described by S. Yizhar in Plain Stories (1963) and Benjamin Tamuz in The Golden Sands, or the “Semitic space” for which the Canaanite movement yearned. What is more interesting are the characters and sounds that Gouri’s hero recalls: the dark women with piercings, the bells of the herd, the shepherds’ flutes, and “those strong men born in Russia.” He creates an instinctual linkage between Arab women and the heroic Russian pioneers, who are perceived as powerful Gentile characters instead of weak Jewish ones. This idealized connection between the mysterious Middle East and Eastern Europe echoes the Berdichevsky-Canaanite idea of the “new Hebrew” while expressing, to a greater or lesser extent, the ideal self-image of the mythical sabra.
The myth of the Canaanite-Semitic space and the loyalty to one’s hevre were of great significance to the so-called 1948 generation. The narrative of this generation cherished the biblical site of Tziklag—where the intense fighting described in S. Yizhar’s magnum opus takes place—much more than it related to Dreyfus and Basel. While this narrative was for a time very powerful, and influenced a large part of Israel’s social elite, it, too, lost some of its appeal from the 1970s on.
Many of this generation’s offspring can now be found in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto; the children of some of its leaders are sitting on the banks of the Hudson, feeling a pang, perhaps, when Maccabi Tel Aviv loses the European Basketball Cup. The skyscrapers, the Grand Canyon, and Lake Michigan are dearer to them than the sand, the sea, the orchards, the donkeys, and the camels. The landscape and its inhabitants have lost their sense of magic and their attraction. The space and those who inhabit it no longer inspire either the newcomers to Israel or the native Israelis who choose to emigrate to the land of milk and money. Most Israelis who live in the United States do not feel trapped there, nor do they fear a new Holocaust. Our brothers across the sea and our sons and daughters who have joined them say that they have never had it so good. Indeed, the Jews have never experienced a better exile.
American Jews have become the leaven of the American Wonder bread, with Israeli immigrants competing for the title of better-assimilated. Many Israelis who have managed to become an important part of the American economic and intellectual establishment “made it” in much the same way as did Jewish emigrants from Europe from the nineteenth century onwards. They came to that fabled land where life is safe, and all is possible: They can buy an apartment in Manhattan, own a home in the suburbs, go on vacation in Europe, and perhaps stop by the Old Country once in a while, to visit their cousins back home.
The United States has been transformed from a source of olim (immigrants to Israel, literally “those who move up”), or at the very least Zionist inspiration, into the pure and simple antithesis of both Herzl’s and Ahad Ha’am’s vision. It has become the main shelter for Middle Eastern and Eastern European Jews, attesting to the failure of the Zionist narrative.
