Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question

The first Jew Julian Treslove ever met — at least, that he knew was a Jew — was a boy at school, Sam Finkler. For Julian, Finkler became the prototype Jew and The Finkler Question is “The Jewish Question.” (Reminds me of the old conundrum about the elephant and the Jewish Question.)

Julian seems to have spent much of his life looking for an identity and his future true love, the “Juno” a fortune teller promised him. On the way to Juno he tries Joanna and Josephine and considers Judith — and also fathers two sons in whom he takes minimal interest. Meanwhile he contemplates Finklers and tries on the identity for himself. After seeing a particularly outrageous play condemning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians,

Hard to go on feeling outrage for people who behaved to you exactly as they were accused of behaving to everyone else precisely because of which accusations you were outraged for them. Hard, but not impossible.

Julian’s wishy-washy nature and disorganized seeking make him an effective foil for the Jewish characters in the novel: Finkler himself with his shame over Gaza, Libor in mourning for his deceased wife and deceased Prague, Hephzibah (aka Juno) who plays the Jewish mother to Julian. At one point Julian struggles through the hundreds of pages of Maimonides’ Guide for the the Perplexed in vain search for understanding. I’ve been there myself and could have told him that Maimonides offers yet more perplexity. What can come is the feeling and sometimes Julian almost gets it. Almost.

Jacobson has a nice light touch when dealing with ethnicity and the contrariness of the religion / tribe / culture that is Jewish life in England. The story  scrapes near the bone when Finkler joins a group ASHamed of the actions of Israel. Jacobson tries for humor but we have to feel the pain:

By what twisted sophistication of argument do you harry people with violence off your land and then think yourself entitled to make high-minded stipulations as to where they may go now you are rid of them and how they may provide for their future welfare?

Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness

Amos Oz was an Israeli before there was an Israel. He gives a view of Israel in his novel Don’t Call it Night that I found unsympathetic, detached. Now that I have read his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, I comprehend his view of Israel through his own experiences.

Amos Oz was born as Amos Klausner in Jerusalem in 1939. He was the son of two young people who came in the Third Aliyah, in the years of rising antisemitism in Europe. In a leisurely pace he remembers the last years of the British mandate, the isolation of Jerusalem during the War of Independence, and his family life during the subsequent years. His views today derive from  bitterness developed during the years of Israel’s formation.

In the lives of individuals and of peoples, too, the worst conflicts are often those that break out between those who are persecuted. It is mere wishful thinking to imagine that the persecuted and the oppressed will united out of solidarity and man the barricades together against a ruthless oppressor. In reality, two children of the same abusive father will not necessarily make common cause, brought close together by their shared fate. Often each sees in the other not a partner is misfortune but in fact the image of their common oppressor.

Political views are interesting, memories of the formation of Israel are instructive, but the moving part of the memoir is his account of his mother’s last years. The Zionists who came into the land in the 1930s were idealistic and middle class, motivated to create new, more perfect society. The Jerusalem in which Amos grew up was populated by middle European Jews, people who could not go back but who also could not fully accept the “oriental” environment.

My grandmother Shlomit arived in Jerusalem straight from Vilna one hot summer’s day in 1933, took one startled look at the sweaty markets, the colorful stalls,  … she saw the shoulders and arms of Middle Eastern men and the strident colors of the fruit and vegetables, she saw the hills all around and the rocky slopes and immediately pronounced her final verdict: “The Levant is full of germs.”

Oz’s parents were educated and aspired to intellectual life. His father, with his knowledge of history and ability to read 15 languages, could not find work as a lecturer when there were more lecturers than students. He worked as a poorly paid librarian, while Oz’s mother kept house in a two-room basement apartment and took students when she could. — and drifted into despair. We know from early in the book that she took her own life, but do know how or why.  The suspense builds when, in the last pages of his memoir, Oz alternates memories of his early years on the Kibbutz with memories of his mother’s last days. Until now, his mother’s role of his life has been suppressed. He remembers his father, after the funeral:

We never talked about my mother. Not a single word….

I have hardly ever spoken about my mother till now, till I came to write these pages. Not with my father or my wife, or my children or with anybody else. After my father died, I hardly spoke about him either. As if I were a foundling.

In this memoir, Oz reclaims that past, experiencing the darkness, feeling the love.

Amos Oz, Don’t Call It Night

I may have read some of Amos Oz’s journalism, but this is the first novel.

Theo and Noa live in a town in the Negev. Although they have been together for years, they are not married. They are of different ages and temperaments; they irritate each other and bicker. Oz tells of a summer in their lives when Noa, a teacher, struggles to set up a drug rehabilitation center in honor of a dead student and Theo looks on, pessimistic and concerned. We also learn of the town and, through flashbacks, how Noa and Theo met and built their life together.

I neither liked not disliked the book and its characters. The cool tone of the writing made if difficult to feel involved with them. Perhaps my detachment is intended by the author. I can step back and see these two as emblematic of Israel in the 1990s, when Oz was writing.

Theo fought in the War of Independence and that is still the bond that he has with anyone he meets. When he and the dead students father get together, they speak of a commander from that war.

It turned out they had both known him well and been opposed to his tactics, whereas I had never even heard of him, but when they offered to explain to me in what the particular greatness of this legendary commander consisted, and in what way his tactics had been faulty, I said, Thank you, but I am not interested in the subject, and besides, I haven’t got the background. In fact I found it pleasant, even enjoyable, to sit between them and listen to them conversing in low voices, like a pair of conspirators hatching a secret plot…

Noa is almost a generation younger. She didn’t experience those years and doesn’t really want to know the details, but she respects those who were involved. She complains of Theo’s passivity but resists letting him help with the drug center project. Her own life is sometimes empty, perhaps boring.

As her friend observes,

Our real tragedy is that we’re not truly desperate to do anything. That’s the real disaster. When you’re not burning to do anything any more,  you cool down and start dying. That’s what Linda says and I think I agree with her. We’ve got to start wanting things. To hold on with both hands so life won’t run away, if you get my meaning. Oterwise it’s all over.

Noa is looking for something to want. She befriends a young student and considers adopting a kitten. She and Theo take a walk, plan a trip, and wait for the summer to be over.

To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought

This book by David J. Goldberg is relevant. I was curious about the Zionists and their opinions. Besides Herzl, I knew very little about the others. Goldberg does a workmanlike job of describing Herzl’s immediate predecessors and then tracing Zionist thought as well as Zionist action through until about 10 years ago.

The return to Zion is not a new idea; it was a dream the Jews of the diaspora never lost, but its appeal as a cause of action waxed and waned with local circumstances. The 19th century brought emancipation to the Jews of western Europe, while the Jews of eastern Europe suffered through oppression and pogroms. Herzl showed both groups how to channel their longings for a national homeland. Alternative visions existed: religious and spiritual renewal and/or the building of a socialist society in which all would benefit.

Facts on the ground impacted the national, the religious and the political dreams. Early efforts to attract settlers were overwhelmed by the refugees from the Holocaust and, later, the Soviet Union. Ironically, had Israel never existed, it probably would not have also been the refuge for displaced Jews from Arab lands,  forced out by Arab reactions to the creation of Israel. Even so,

Zionism’s lack of success in attracting significant numbers of immigrants from the countries of the western hemisphere would suggest that after two millennia of learning to survive without a state, integration abroad and not nationality in Israel if the normative aspiration of most Jews.

Goldberg treats seriously the question of the claims of the Jews to build their own state on land already occupied by the Palestinian Arabs and concludes that “none of those vindications is satisfactory or has withstood the evidence of events.” It is the same problem as the claim of present-day Americans to the land of the Indians. Facts on the ground! We are here and so are they and we have to work it out together.

The Israel which has emerged is somewhere between Jabotinsky’s call for military discipline to create a state and Ben-Gurion’s implementation of a national educational and social network to build a national identify. Goldberg clarifies the myths that underlie both efforts and Zionism’s contributions to those myths.