In searching for any answers to the new Zionist question of why a Jew should tie his fate to that of a state in which he is not a minority, we must go back and look at the last hundred years of Jewish history. A century passed between the Russian pogroms of 1881 and the riots of the 1987 Intifada. What an extraordinary hundred years! No one would have put his money on this sick horse in the 1880s, and no one would have guessed sixty years later that this nation would yet persevere, even after most of its members had been wiped off the map. After all, not only was a large part of the Jewish people destroyed, but a no-less-significant part assimilated, and continues to do so. It is hard to believe that after the majority of the Jewish people disappeared or was made to disappear, it arose like a phoenix from the sands of Palestine to create the State of Israel. There is no rhyme or reason to these historical processes. Contrary to historical logic, and against the expectations of the original Zionists, who believed they had fulfilled the hopes of past generations, the Jews who today come to Israel of their own free will have become fewer and fewer, while many others have left it of their own accord. On the other hand, many have made aliya in spite of themselves. Jews, and mainly Israeli Jews, simply do not understand the historical opportunity made possible in this time and place. Sometimes it seems as if the dark prophecy of Haim Hazaz is coming true:

Hazaz predicted that those living in Zion would miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that history had granted them. Today, seventy years after he uttered those prophetic words, it seems to me that he foresaw the future all too well. And how utterly tragic, since it cannot be denied that what was built here is the last chance for a people with a troubled past to secure a future for themselves.

Surprisingly, the Jews have yet to be wiped off the map. If in the past, Jews and other people complained about Jewish weakness, at present Jews and Gentiles alike (and here we should perhaps say, “thank God”) complain about Jewish strength. I will permit myself to say that it is better this way. Today, when Jews reflect on their present condition, they should remember how far they’ve come in the last hundred years, and recall Herzl’s adage that if they will it, it will be no dream.

 

It seems to me that the two answers to the question posed at the start of this essay are always present in the background of Jewish and Israeli culture. Even in radical post-Zionist texts that rail against the tenets of Israeli and/or Jewish existence, we find traces of historical memory and hints of that stubborn pride—the sense that despite everything, the people that was supposed to be wiped out still exists.

Many Zionist conventions are no longer acceptable to a significant number of Israelis and diaspora Jews. There are those among the post-Zionists who do not adhere to the national model, and wish to erase it in favor of a foreign, specifically Arab, narrative. But we still preserve a residue of Jewish historical memory, though it may be somewhat blurry and prone to growing aphasia. Nonetheless, this residue is the only basis for sustaining the continued existence of Jewish identity. One must wonder whether the generations that still remember the past can bequeath their memories—the source of and primary reason for the Zionist venture in the Land of Israel—to the generations to come. A realist cannot hide from himself and from others his fear that this hope is nothing but a pipe dream. If the presumption that collective memory, conscious and unconscious, is more powerful than all countervailing forces proves to be false, then all that has been said here is no more than the idle talk of an aging immigrant trying to justify his aliya (which was forced on him) and his continued hold on this land, which, though not the country of his birth, has become and will always be his homeland.

Gershon Shaked (1929-2006) was a renowned Israeli literary critic. This essay was originally published in Hebrew in his A Group Portrayal: Aspects of Israeli Literature and Culture, eds. Giddon Ticotsky and Malka Shaked (Or Yehuda: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2009).