Leivick in Eretz Yisroel 1937, Part 1

Why I Traveled to Eretz Yisroel

A quick note here: As a follow up to H. Leivick’s trip to Israel in 1957, I’m presenting his trip of 20 years earlier, in 1937.

It was, of course, officially Mandatory Palestine then. But I’m keeping Leivick’s own designation of ‘Eretz Yisroel’ — a distinction he continues to make later, after the modern State of Israel is founded, between the state and the historical/religious concept.

If, by chance, you like what I do and want to hear more, I will be giving a short talk on ‘Bad Yiddish’ in Leivick’s Der Poet Iz Gevorn Blind (The Poet Went Blind, 1934) on 3 February, at this year’s Farbindungen conference online.

The Paris Congress — Leivick is easy to spot: just above the leftmost man sitting on the ground at the front.

Why I Traveled to Eretz Yisroel

I traveled to Eretz Yisroel from Paris immediately after the Cultural Congress, which took place between the 18th and 22nd September. ¹

I had decided to travel from Paris to Israel while still in New York.

It was my longstanding dream. Then, I received an invitation from the Hisdarut. I accepted the invitation with joy. Certain people expressed doubt at the combination: Culture Congress — Paris — Eretz Yisroel. They asked if there wasn’t a contradiction in that combination.

Culture Congress, Yiddish, Yidishism, participation of Communists and — Eretz Yisroel. Was there not a contraction in this, that I went there immediately after the Congress, even when I when as an individual and not as anyone’s emissary?

(Fools and ordinary gossips spoke and wrote that I went on a mission from the Cultural Congress and the mission was: To fight against Hebrew. What can occur to fools! Do I indeed have no more to do than occupy myself with Quixotic notions?)

No, there was no contradiction in this, but on the contrary, a necessity, a completion.

As I looked into my own soul, I heard an eternal voice within me:

Go and greet Jewish life in all of its forms, in all its expression, as much as it allows, where it allows; be a part of it — a part of its today, a part of its dreams and hopes for later and a part of its past and if you can — be a vital part, look into the bright and also bloodied eyes of its history and of its struggle and mingle together with them, and most essentially — love Jewish life.

The Cultural Congress was thoroughly good and successful. Yearning for Yiddish creative culture ruled everyone who took part — the delegates, the public.

The poison of conflict, which was borne by many sides, did not poison our hearts. We had, at the Congress, sought the positive aspect, the elevation of the Yiddish word, and we found it at many moments.

The most profound cry of the world— and in particular the cry of our nation — is the cry of our word.

At the Cultural Congress it occurred to me to speak in my lecture of the balance which has been destroyed and which must be rebuilt between the socialist and the nationalist themes in our culture and literature, and also about the peace, about the synthesis with must be found between Yiddish and Hebrew — themes which have not allowed us to rest for years already; themes which, should you but touch upon them, all the party-aligned people, all the party-leadership immediately leap up in a panic, igniting themselves in a blaze, and all the zealots, whether Yiddishists or Hebraists, are instantly ready to pull the swords from their sheaths.

What can I help it: I must confess that in my heart there had not been any restfullness regarding those themes a long while, and my life contorts, and the speech of these committed men no longer works upon me, and the words and the images which are revealed to me in minutes of disturbance of the soul call me to reconsideration.

I sense Jewish life within me like a oneness, but below and above that feeling — so many fractures, so many splinters, so many tears which run with blood.

Today Eretz Yisroel itself…

Don’t be ashamed to pull apart your clenched lips and speak with your whole mouth.

Cast aside all fears!

Why such an anguish, such a crowd of prejudices which fall beset you like a swarm of locusts, when you say that word aloud?

From where do such prejudices come to attack your mind and your heart?

Such an intimate experience, that the words ‘Eretz Yisroel’ evoke — so near, warm — became so distant, cold. A shiver of holiness became hostility, became war, piercing as a thorn.

Now it tears from the depths of my soul and fills me with warmth, and again there are the prejudices which attack and cover everything with darkness.

Go and see! Go quickly!

From Paris — to Marseille. In Marseille — the ship. Mariette Pacha. The Mediterranean Sea.

The sea is peaceful. The sea is still and smooth. Indeed, like a mirror. The sun pours light into it.

Many passengers. But I don’t concern myself with them. I am too occupied with myself; I cannot reconcile myself and the unsettledness of my soul.

I look at faces and do not see them. Particularly the first couple of days. I have already seen many faces in my life. I have also traveled over the sea many times already. If I were to talk with the passengers about the disturbance of my soul, they would not receive it as it needs to be. Even those of them who travel to Eretz Yisroel, as I also do, for the first time.

Just now there comes suddenly to my ear a sound of Hebrew, a word, a name. Now I am suddenly engulfed by a wave of Hebrew language. Residents of Israel travelling. Pioneers travelling.

I take in through my ears the Hebrew sounds, words. They envelop me, they wrap themselves around my face. Now they give a sting, and now — a stroke, like velvet, and now a waft, like a hot wind.

I listen to the sounds, but I still don’t look into the faces. I am pre-occupied with myself, entirely with myself. The day is stingy to me — at night I lie on my bed in the cabin and do not sleep. Beyond the cabin wall glimmers the sea. Great stars float above it.

By this I am reminded of Judah Halevi.² He lifted his senses and turned away no more. Every Jewish person who travels to Eretz Yisroel for the first time probably remembers Judah Halevi, and certainly every Jewish poet who travels to Eretz Yisroel for the first time remembers him.

It’s good and warms the heart to think that he too, perhaps, sailed through this place on the sea.

And it’s good and warming to envision the image, that he is stood on the deck, and with burning, profoundly sorrowful eyes, gazing there, where the land lies, and singing to himself his captivating song.

Romantic. Thoroughly romantic — well, yes. But what’s the matter with romantic? — And why should I kill the heart of the word ‘romantic’ with irony, with a poisonous little smile?

I go out of my cabin to the upper deck. Indeed, it is exactly so. The sea is filled with silver and the stars sway above it.

The other passengers on the ship do not bother me again. I am submerged in myself still more and more. My eyes sway together with the stars over the nocturnal sea, and my thought is strained: a Yiddish writer, when he travels to Eretz Yisroel, is he not, then, travelling as a tourist?

To take a look at the land and — he is finished. Just then, when he takes a look — only then will it begin. In him, in his spirit, in his blood, the true journey will begin. His entire inner world sometimes turns upon such a voyage: Either a new sense of the entire complex which called itself Jewish life arrives, or a new hole in the heart, a new tear — in the soul.

No good welcome, no good reception will help if the heart is wounded to the very depths.

A whole life one dreams of seeing Eretz Yisroel. And this itself, that the dream is an old and deep one, is connected with thousands of childhood dreams from cheder on, from the Chumash years on, with the greater Jewish history — this is enough to fill you with a seething fire and a sort of fear of it that must reveal itself before you.

With no lies will you be able to deceive yourself. And perhaps you are sometimes able to fool someone else, but yourself — not ever.

And now there arises in me that burdensome theme:

As a Socialist and as a Yiddish writer, who has undergone the path and the thought-process of the modern Jewish radical world-drama, I need — correctly said — I must — once and for all in myself stand fast, psychologically agree: if Jews today have a right to Eretz Yisroel.

I was, at the time of Tsarist Russia, in the Bund and have a strong affection for the Bund now, too; I carried within me the idea which says that Eretz Yisroel no longer has any connection with us, because it no longer belonged to us, but to the Arabs, and that we Jews need to build our Jewish lives in the lands where we live, build and fight for the lives which we build and the right which is due to us everywhere we are not allowed to be and that we need to free ourselves from the concept of ‘exile’ — however, about the first part of the thesis, I never had full certainty.

Regarding the second half — in particular about our rights in the entire world and about our need to free ourselves from the notion of ‘exile’ — there was no doubt in me and there is none now; but regarding our connection and right to Eretz Yisroel, I always carried in my heart many hidden doubts. And the doubts did not let me rest. And in this detail I did not want to depend on anyone, on anyone’s impression. One needed to come himself and see himself and decide for himself: If Jews have a right — a moral, not merely a historical right — to come to Eretz Yisroel, buy land, till land, and to say: We are rebuilding our home.

The approach of the Bund and of the Communists to this matter — although I am in agreement with much of their fault-finding and critique of Zionism — did not, in truth, entirely please me.

In the depths of my soul I felt some abnormality was occurring here, a warping. I would have said: A violation of an idea which is in its essence pure, sublimely all historically and moralistically pure.

And however much the Yiddishist in me endeavoured to be opposed to Eretz Yisroel on account of its aggressiveness and certain reactionary tendencies from the Hebraists, I never in truth could succeed is believing that Eretz Yisroel was gone, no longer there, not there historically, not there morally, not there artistically, no longer there even as an idea.

I give a start from my tense thoughts. I feel as though something in me will be tortured, and as if something in me will be liberated.

I suddenly recall the personal motive of my trip:

A sister of mine lives in Haifa, and a brother, who do not know me and whom I do not know.

Thirty-one years ago, in 1906, when they arrested me at home, in Ihumen, Minsk Governorate, and took me away to Minsk Prison and then to Siberia in katorga, — my sister, who now lives in Haifa, was only two or three, and my brother younger still. Of him, I remember nothing. At the time of the world war, when the entirety of the Minsk region was on fire and in the commotion of flight, they, almost children still, underwent the wandering that all refugees went through then, and wandered away to Eretz Yisroel, and in all the years since then I have heard very little of them.

Recently — heard nothing from them. Those letters which I did have in the span of twenty years mostly came from my brother. My sister did not write. Three of our family are found in the Soviet Union. I haven’t heard from them either in roughly the last ten years. They do not write. But I know them, I remember their faces. I saw them when I was in Soviet Russia in 1925. But the ones who live in Haifa, I don’t even know their faces.

Our family is certainly not the only one which is spread across all countries. In Jewish life of the twentieth century, the scattering, tearing-apart, and spreading out of families is an ordinary thing.

Nevertheless, when I think about it now, standing in the deck of a ship, embraced by bright-glowing stars, great, showering stars, which seem as if they will strike you in the eye with a spear of light — nothing appears so simple.

H. Leivick, Tog, 5 December, 1937

Onward to Part Two.

1. More about Paris here: ‘A Quest for Yiddishland: The 1937 World Yiddish Cultural Congress’ by Gennady Estraikh

2. Yehuda HaLevi, poet, constant touchstone for Leivick on his trips to Palestine/Israel.