Leivick in Israel 1957, Part 4

The Problems at the Ideological Conference in Jerusalem

Part 3 is here. The whole series starts here.

The Problems at the Ideological Conference in Jerusalem

What did the ideological conference which took place in Jerusalem between the 8th and the 16th of August accomplish? And what did I, as a participant in the conference, carry away from it?

In order to answer this, one must first pose the question: What was wanted from the conference? Why was it called?

As it was the first time it was called, a first attempt, an experiment, it seems — I am inclined to say that its achievement, firstly, was the attempt itself. It wanted to be a coming together of Jewish people — representatives of all sorts of Jewish movements and Jewish institutions — national, cultural, religious, literary.

They are always divided from one another, they are scattered across countries, and in those countries they are separated from one another, have almost no contact with each other and, in truth, no influence over each other — here there should be made an attempt for them to come together under one roof, sit at the same table, stand on one and the same dais and speak to one another, revealing their opinions, beliefs, their conception of how they view the Jew in themselves and in others today; and not only to present opinions, but also even moods, emotional outpouring. And why this ‘also’? — Perhaps it was precisely the desire for an outpouring of the heart that was the chief longing of everyone who travelled to the conference. — Even when they are the representative of a ready, formulaic ideology regarding Jewish continuity and existence, their desire is, through the effect of a celebratory Jewish climate of ideas, not only to present their ideology, but particularly their mood, their inner world, which is today, more than ever, in a state of excitation, in longing for connection and frank truth.

Because coming to such a conference with speeches which are always ready in hackneyed pocket, which have already been given more than once and which could even be given asleep — makes no sense. And I believe that a great portion of those who spoke at this conference did all that they could to guard themselves from banality. Each of them tried to say something new and also a bit different, even if not all of them succeeded. Each of them strove according to their ability, that their words should not only be expression of thought but, above all, expression of experience.

If I have wherefore to find fault in certain speakers regarding they, themselves, and their opinions — it is that they lacked in experience.

It isn’t my task to tell about the contents of the speeches and tally out who gave the speeches. This, the interested reader will discover in the book with the full stenographic report of all the speeches and debates which the Jewish Agency, the organisers of the conference, will certainly soon publish. What interests me — not only what the speakers said at the conference, but also how they said it and from whence they took their words, from the heart or from the pocket.

At this conference, it needed to be the heart, and in a large portion it was the main source from whence the speech came.

If this is correct, with this alone, in a certain sense, the question of what the conference wanted and what it achieved is answered.

I must say that the press in Israel had, in parts, not treated the conference in an excessively  manner. It remonstrated against it, both justifiably and unjustifiably. It did not, however, desire to evaluate the essential fact of its occurrence. It wanted to prove its arguments, it had, though, begrudgingly approached it with a bit less warmth than it spared for less important things, and even things which were, from a cultural standpoint, unimportant. It didn’t receive the conference as an event in and of itself. And this, both the representatives of the greatly diverse press in Israel and the organisers of the conference need to consider at length.

I claim the right for myself to say that such a conference should have been the centre of attention, even when the intent of the organising was to avoid the noise of advertising, as well as the commotion of a disagreement of words in an quarrelsome area.

Where the source of the not-too-great interest of the Israeli press in the conference lies is not clear to me.

The press showed great interest in a portion of the guests come from abroad, particularly a portion of of the guests from America, and this may certainly be noted with satisfaction, to the praise of the Israeli newspapers and periodicals, both Hebrew and Yiddish. This was an interest toward the guests personally, toward their roles in the cultural world and in the literature of our people, and eve to their speeches at the conference — but not toward the very fact of the conference, for which the guests had come.

One argumentative moment at the conference did summon great interest in the press and in journals. And argument which, in my opinion, did not need to happen at all at the conference, but it did occur and it took up almost the whole of three days which it should not have occupied. And this, the press seized upon and broadly and thoroughly wrote about, is a sign that the explosive material of words, not only of simple dynamite, is the stuff of merriment everywhere. And merrier than the quiet, theoretical material. Because of certain verbally explosive moments, nearly all the remaining moments were obscured. This was the argument which was summoned forth by the head of the government, Ben Gurion, saying that he is not a Zionist, but a Jew. He said it in his long lecture which he held on the second theme of the second point of the day’s schedule: ‘The State of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora.’ In his lecture, he spoke about many other problems of Jewish history, of Jewish messianism, redemption and fulfilment, how to receive and weigh the generations of lives in exile, how they are or are not received, etcetera. In another place, an exchange of letters between him, Ben Gurion, and Dr Rotenstreich on the basis of his negation of exile and of his conception of state, uttered the terrible idea about leaping over the thousands of years of exile, skipping over them, making them void, and leaping into the very earliest biblical times. These statements, when they come from such an important person as Ben Gurion, must naturally provoke passionate arguments, and these arguments are necessary and can be and must be productive. They must be productive. If not, it only turns into upset and irritation. Beyond that, when the ears of a tried and tested Zionist leader are assailed by the statement of a Zionist premier that he is no longer a Zionist, only a Jew, and this statement becomes the entire core of the further argument — such an argument must send the conference off its rails and down the line of a Zionist congress. For an argument about whether one must be a Zionist today or not belongs entirely to a Zionist congress and not to a conference which was called for entirely different conversations.

The conference was indeed led away down other, long well-worn paths: The argument around Ben Gurion’s statement took on passionate partisan forms and became, willingly or not, the main theme of colleague writers in the press.

It was, first and foremost, a mistake, — a push of the conference to the threshold of near-failure. I say: near. And good that I can say it, and that in the heart there might remain a feeling that failure was avoided.

I am almost certain that Ben Gurion did not exactly intend for his statement to become a main point of contention at the conference. He said it, in my opinion, in the passing, with the intent of needling the Zionists in America why they make do with formally loving Zion and do not make aliyah to Israel. I, personally, maintain that regarding American Zionists, he is one hundred percent correct. But his remonstration to them needs to come from a different dais, at a more appropriate opportunity, and perhaps also in a different form and tone. One cannot treat such a historic, complicated, rarefied situation as is the Jew’s current being at home in America dismissively, capriciously, with angry retorts. It is like striking one’s own head in anger. A blow which brings contrary results. But he is correct, Ben Gurion, on that point. The anger had summoned forth from him a harsher statement, that if a Zionist can also be one who can get by without Zion, he doesn’t wish to be such a Zionist and wishes only to be a Jew who lives in Zion.¹

The chief mistake, though, in the argument at the conference around Ben Gurion’s statement consisted, I believe, in that the conference was not called to formulate what it means to be a Zionist today, but to converse about what it means to be a Jew today. What does it mean to be a Jew today in the diaspora and what does it mean to be a Jew today even in Israel? Does the Jew’s living in exile negate their being Jewish and does the Jew’s living in the State of Israel take for itself the entire share of being Jewish, not only its own share, but the share of those Jews in the diaspora? And can it not be portrayed that a Jew in Israel, if they feel themselves as though ‘there is none like me,’ tearing and removing themselves from the historical and intellectual fates of the Jews outside of Israel, do they not entirely cease to be a Jew in Israel?

What it means to be a Jew today is not merely a rhetorical question, but an explicitly sharp and important one. It stands equally sharply before the cultural worker, the educator, the governor, the politician, no less than before the poet. It stands today equally sharply before the old as before the young. And for the young — still more. It stands sharply today before the young generation outside the country and no less sharply before the young generation in the State of Israel. It should not be thought that in the State of Israel, on their own soil and beneath their own sky, the young generation feels itself free and clear from Jewish seeking and Jewish problems, that they, the problems, are only the lot of the young generation in the diaspora.

And it should not be thought that the ethical issues which have arisen in Jewish life since the founding of the State of Israel matter more to the insignificant critics who stand outside the borders of the state, rather than the internal ones who live in the new, physical and intellectual processes of the Jewish state.

H. Leivick, Tog, 30 November, 1957

Onward to Part 5

Ben Gurion in 1957. Not, however, at the Ideological Conference.

1. This point, in particular, is what Leivick will respond to in his speech for the conference, ‘The Jew — The Individual’ where he also proclaims himself not a Zionist. But that statement reads very differently when taken out of the context of being a response to Ben Gurion!