After the publication of his book "The Only Daughter", the author brings to the fore his confrontation with Diaspora Jewry • "I change the order of priority: first of all the homeland", he clarifies • "In the Diaspora there is no binding relationship between Jew and Jew; here, Rabbi Kanievsky is also my brother" • Explains why it is not advisable for Arab writers to write in Hebrew
"My political views are one category, and I count. We are complex people."
AB Joshua
Photo:
Joshua Joseph
Before our meeting, AB Yehoshua wanted to make sure that the conversation would deal with literature and not "politics", as he puts it. But as it is difficult to separate his public presence as a writer and a political man, even in conversation with him , And more precisely to his long-standing critique of the Jews in the Diaspora, who cling to their lands and refrain from immigrating to Israel.
Not that this political critique is detached from the literature. Intention to return to Israel, but as usual with Joshua, and as was revealed against the background of the publication of his previous books such as "Standing", there is a gap between his literary writing and the explicit ideological positions.
AB Yehoshua in a special interview: "A Jew is a partial thing; Israeli is a full thing "
Joshua has been voicing his views on the Jews in the Diaspora and their refusal to immigrate to Israel in various forums for many years.
In 2006, a great storm arose after he spoke at a meeting of the American Jewish Committee in Washington and spoke of the Jews in the Diaspora in terms of "partial Jews," as opposed to "full Jews" in Israel.
Therefore, his choice to place his new book in the Diaspora, in Italy, and to paint the lives of Italian Jews as a quiet and relaxed life - could be read as a kind of correction or softening of those positions.
But Joshua makes it clear in a conversation with him that he still refers to the Jews in the Diaspora as "partial Jews," except that by "Jew" he does not mean a religious identity, but a national identity.
If you were to tell Jews in Washington, you are not full Israelis, they would have no problem.
But you used the term "Jew," which they understand differently from you.
"Like me, they mean a national identity. At its core, Judaism is a national identity, it is not a religious identity. I can go to the rabbi, burn a Bible before his eyes and then ask - am I a Jew in your eyes, my lord rabbi?
And he will say yes.
I'm not religious, I do not believe in God.
I am a Jew according to Halacha.
Actually Israeli.
And a full Jewish identity is an Israeli identity. "
So what is left of a" Jew "?
" What is left of a '
Jew
' is the partial thing.
This is the person who lives outside of Israel and his national identity is very partial.
Most things in his life are under the control of Gentiles.
It is found in a gentile land, in a gentile landscape, and it lives in a religious or semi-religious enclave.
I want to change the order of priority: first of all the homeland.
First of all territory.
First the whole country.
I want to transfer the identity to the national level only.
It is no coincidence that Jews are not satisfied with this partiality, and assimilate into the gentile being.
At the end of the Second Temple period there were about 2.5 million Jews, and after 1,800 years there were only one million.
The Jewish people in the Diaspora are constantly declining. "
There is Jewish life abroad beyond observance.
Community life for example.
"I deal here in Israel with a thousand times more serious questions than what will happen on Saturday night in the community. I deal with questions of peace or war, the IDF code of ethics, tax policy, social security grants, how to behave with an occupied population.
They were mad at me then when I told them in Washington, you are partial Jews.
I told them, I live every day in a system that determines very important parts of my being and the lives of my family and friends - all these things are determined in the Diaspora by the non-Jews within whom the Jews live as a tiny minority;
Can you say that my Jewish identity is not much more complete and complete than yours? "
The Defect of the Jewish People
Are you angry with the Jews of the Diaspora?
"I am angry at the Judaism that gave them this option. I am in bitter pain for the millions of Jews we lost in assimilation, pogroms and the Holocaust, because of this option. After all, the Jewish people were not born in their homeland at all. Bnei Yosef came to Goshen - why did you not come back? "You got food, take the food and go home. But they did not come home. They sat there until they had to be rescued.
" This is the only people in the world who were not born in the territory.
He did not even receive the Torah in his homeland but in the desert.
Then Moses says to the people: You are entering the land, taking houses that you have not built, fields that you have not planted.
If you behave well you will stay, if you do not behave well, I will spread you.
Only after you are worthy - will you return. "
That is, everything is conditional.
" Yes, it was Moses himself who gave the Jews the option of the Diaspora, already at Mount Sinai.
And that is the problem. "
Perhaps this is the true identity of the Jewish people - to be divided between a spiritual and a physical homeland?
" What is there in this spirituality?
There is no spirituality here?
We have lost six million because of this 'spiritual' illusion. "
Homeland does not necessarily protect a people from extinction.
" It could be.
But when you are at home you control all the components of your life, you have all the tools to prepare for the threat and defeat it. "
Emotionally, do you not have a feeling of brotherhood towards Jews in the Diaspora?
" Yes, but it is a sisterhood that can do nothing.
Six million were killed and they did nothing.
This is theoretical sisterhood.
If there is anti-Semitism in Poland, let them get out of there.
I hate the marble hatred of death.
I do not at all want Jews to travel the world, after receiving the biggest blow in history. "
But here, too, we are not entirely sure, there are rounds of wars, terrorist attacks.
" There is no absolute security for any people.
Both France was conquered and Germany was destroyed.
But in all those years the State of Israel was killed as it was killed in half a day in Auschwitz. "
But in those years in the Diaspora, since World War II, even less were killed. Precisely since World War II, existence in Israel is more dangerous.
" If not the State of Israel, if not the Zionist movement , There were simply another 320,000 Jews killed in the Holocaust.
320,000 Jews were here during World War II, and had nowhere to go.
"The gates of the USSR closed, the gates of Europe closed, the gates of America closed. Then they would have been captured there, and instead of six million, six million and 320,000 would have been killed. Zionism was the only one that saved them."
America also saved them.
"But America closed its borders in the war!"
Within its borders were Jews.
"But they closed the borders. Most of the 320,000 who came to Israel came here because America did not accept them. They did not want to come here at all."
And he adds: "The most terrible are the Mizrahi Jews who did not come here."
Do you know that throughout history, the Eastern Jews were the ones who came here in the largest rates, compared to their number out of all the Jews?
The late Yitzhak Bezalel showed this in his book "You were born Zionists."
"So few came that it was not worth talking about. I am an Oriental Jew. When my ancestors came to Palestine from Thessaloniki in 1848, there were 10,000 Jews here. When few came. Oriental Jews - it was easiest for them to get here. They were part of the Turkish Empire. They spoke Arabic, and the landscape was the same - and yet they did not come. They sat in their places, like all the Jews, and did not come. They had to be brought in at the end, after the State of Israel was established, and almost killed. And then they complain why they were deprived. "To them - why didn't you come, you would sit in Dizengoff, who asked you to wait like that? I have a Moroccan grandfather who came here in 1932."
Why did he come?
"Because he understood the moral claim of Zionism from the Jew to be responsible for all elements of his life, like any other people. Even my ancestors who came from Thessaloniki, or the ancestors of Reuven Rivlin who came from Eastern Europe, came because they took 'next year in Jerusalem seriously'. "They knew that nationality starts with territory. They were healthy people. They were religious, but if there are religious people who travel the world and think that the Land of Israel is just speech, they had something else in religiosity, the understanding that territory is also needed."
Why do you call it "healthier"?
"Because they understood what a homeland is. The deepest defect in the Jewish people is that they do not understand what a homeland is."
A Jewish man born in America, why is Israel his homeland?
"Then he would cancel 'Next year in Jerusalem.' After the Six Day War, some of the secularists in the labor movement thought that there would be a huge immigration from the Diaspora, so the territories should be annexed. The opposite happened - the Jews did not come, and the Palestinians doubled and tripled their numbers. A choice but to be dragged into a binational state. "
To sway between identities
as stated, Joshua's new book, "The Only Daughter," revolves precisely around Jewish existence in the Diaspora, which in conversation with him he strongly opposes.
It describes the life of a wealthy Jewish family in Italy, almost assimilated (the father married a Christian woman who converted to Judaism), who does not intend to immigrate to Israel, and lives a fairly comfortable life there.
The big cloud that obscures the life of the protagonist, Raquela Luzzatto, not yet 12 years old, is the disease of her father, whose head reveals a tumor.
Although in the background she is dealing with some conflicts regarding her identity as an almost single Jew in a Christian environment.
For example, she wants to attend a Christmas show in the role of the Holy Mother, and her father forbids her, or she prepares for the bat mitzvah ceremony, which includes a prayer against the Gentiles - "We must praise the Lord of all ... that we did not do as the Gentiles" - which may offend Christian grandparents.
And at the same time, in my reading, these conflicts do not interfere too much with the life of the loving family.
The problematic prayer is soon replaced by another prayer, and the prohibition on participating in the play is accepted by Rakla with understanding and completion.
And above all: life in Italy is described in the book in soft colors and gliding movements, between a skiing holiday in the snow and gentle shakes on the water in Venice, so much so that in the book it was thought that Joshua changed his positions, and suddenly imagined, and even identified with, Jews sitting outside Israel .
When I brought up to Joshua the idea that there is a gap between his views on the Diaspora and the way it is described in the book - he revolted.
After the interview he called me again and again demanding that I change my interpretation of the book and my questions, and finally handed me a new version, in writing, of some of the questions asked in the interview.
In the book you describe a very relaxed life.
"I am amazed at such a superficial reading of the book. How do you talk about a relaxed life? The book describes three months in Rikla's life, when her father's illness begins, and she comes to his bed and says, you leave me alone. She is very attached to him. She belongs to a rich family, she has no anguish and no problems? What's more, she oscillates between the Christian and Jewish identities in her family. But her search is not for God. She wants to feel at home. She wants a brother. And a real brother, not a biological brother, only in Israel. Israel. We are brothers. "
There are no brothers in the Diaspora?
"In the Diaspora there is no binding relationship between a Jew and a Jew. Here, too, Rabbi Kanievsky is my brother to the nation. He is responsible for me and I am responsible for him. I want him to keep the rules of health so as not to endanger me. He also demands from me. "
"I do not write pedagogically" The
question of whether this authority between a Jew and a Jew in Israel is also asserted in some value, in some Jewish essence.
Or it is completely transparent.
"The difference between a Jew and an Israeli is that a Jew is a partial thing and an Israeli is a full thing. Israeli identity is the full Jewish identity. We came from the Diaspora as Jews to become Israelis. The word Israel is the key word - God in heaven! It is the name of the land. 'Israel' is the real word related to Jewish identity , Because the people are called 'Am Yisrael' and the land is called 'Eretz Yisrael' and in the whole Bible there is no word 'Yehudi' in the sense today, and Moshe Rabbeinu was 'Yisraeli', and King David was 'Yisraeli' .
That's our name. "
Rakla is going through a crisis, but I did not understand her as a tormented figure, far from it.
" A good material life does not mean a good mental life.
Her father is about to die, and in the face of her father's illness she is swinging between the identities. "
She lives with these identities in peace.
" What in peace?
Have you read my book or any other book?
Her father does not allow her to play the Madonna in the school play, does not allow her to enter churches and monasteries, and she has to say in her bat mitzvah a hard and insulting prayer against the non-Jews in the presence of her non-Jewish grandparents. "
So she replaced the problematic prayer. .
"You describe it with ease.
But she will encounter in her lifetime some many such awkward and violent prayers, and no one will replace them for her.
In Israel, life is a full life, a life in which you are not in tension with Gentiles who hate you.
"
Are there any tensions in Israel?
" It is a different kind of tension.
There is some anti-Semitism seeping through.
Ben-Gurion said at the end of World War II, 'And anti-Semitism, what is it that we will complain about?'
And Jabotinsky said, 'If we do not eliminate the Diaspora, the Diaspora will destroy us.'
And justice. "
So you are afraid of it, of anti-Semitism?
" I am not afraid, I am angry. "The
Holocaust was. Are you afraid that she will return? Why should Rakla immigrate to the State of Israel?
" So that her identity is complete, that she speaks her language. "
She speaks her language. , Italian.
"She wants to speak Hebrew, not to be tense, the only Jew in a Christian class.
She wants to be at home. "
But you describe her existence as a stable existence in Italy. It is not urgent for her to immigrate to Israel.
" Let her come to Israel.
The good life is not just about food. "
In Rechela's book of existence it seems to me very unified. As if when you imagine her you can yes imagine her existence as a comfortable existence, and now in conversation you can not.
" It is not a pedagogical book.
"Am I a German soldier in Crete (as in 'Mr. Money'; KD)? Did I make a 'journey to the end of the millennium'?"
In your book suddenly things in conversation language are not possible, yes possible.
"It's a story. When I write 'Mr. Money', I write five types, my political views and my ideological views are one category - and I count. We are complex."
The beloved scene from "The Heart"
Joshua was born in 1936 in Jerusalem, the son of Jacob Joshua, who was a prolific Orientalist, and although he failed to integrate into academia, he wrote many books and articles on Arab and Spanish culture.
Although the writer's son never learned Arabic, he was disappointed when the father moved his interest from Arab culture to Ladino culture and Spanish life in the Old City, because in his eyes it was more politically important to engage in Arab culture.
I ask him if his famous story, "In Front of the Forests" (1968), can also be read as a self-portrait of someone who grew up in the home of an Arabic expert who did not have the Arabic language, who was an Arabic "cut-off".
"At that time," he replies, "in the 1960s, the Arabs did not speak. The majority usually does not speak the minority language. It is natural that the minority learns the majority language. I am so happy that in the face of the phenomenon of declining Hebrew language learning in the Diaspora One million or more Hebrew-speaking Arabs. "
However, Joshua rejects the possibility that Arab writers writing Hebrew - such as Anton Shamas and Sayed Kashua - will undermine the national identity of Hebrew literature.
"Why do they have to write in Hebrew?", He asks, "They have a billion people reading in Arabic. That's their language. Why not write in Arabic? I really liked Anton Shamas' 'Arabesques', I was friendly with him. He got all the biggest compliments. "And yet he did not go on."
Why do you think he did not continue?
"Because of the whole issue of linguistic identity. A lot of people know two languages, Yael Dayan also wrote in English, so what, does that make her an English writer? Then the big argument between us, me and Shamas started, when he said the 'Law of Return' should be eliminated. I did not agree. So I still believed that a Palestinian state would be established, in the meantime this option went down. I told him, this is an Israeli Jewish state, you are a national minority and if you want a state, take your belongings, and walk 100 meters to East Jerusalem, and you will have the full Palestinian identity there. "We wanted two states then - fifty years I fought for it. But if he wants the full Palestinian identity, in which Arabic is spoken, and that the national identity is Palestinian, he should move to the Palestinian state."
Now this is no longer a real possibility, in your eyes.
"The two-state solution was the right solution, but the Jews completely torpedoed it by the settlements. And the Palestinians, with their stupid shots from Gaza and their crazy tunnels, showed they don't want anything independent, that they want to go home. Two peoples are stuck like that. So now the solution "The only one is one country, a binational state. And the name knows what awaits us here. But it is no longer my business, I will not be here."
When we talk about his father and Arabic, he explains that so far he has never felt the need to write memoirs or autobiographies.
"There is nothing special in my life, and I have enough imagination. Amos Oz would say all the time, 'I have a wound.' I have no wound. But today I think I will write memories from my first years as a child in Jerusalem."
Here Joshua tells of his favorite scene in his new book, which is related to Da-Amichi's book "The Heart" which he has loved since childhood.
"It was the book that made me a writer. My father read it to me at the age of 5 and I loved it so much, and I cried. I loved his emotions, and the non-sentimental tone. The part I like most about 'The Only Daughter' is when Rechela goes to visit her old teacher. She does not want to visit her, but her grandmother forces her, and suddenly a bond is formed between them, and she sleeps there. She tells her about two stories from 'The Heart', one of them, 'The Little Halbler from Florence', was very important to me at the time, because he "Was the basis for the story 'a poet's continuing silence. In any case, she goes to the teacher knowing that the teacher will prepare her, with the help of the' heart ', for the terrible thing that is going to happen to her - because the father is the center of her identity."
Do you like this scene because it depicts the power of literature on your protagonist?
"Certainly. I believe in the power of literature, that's why I became a writer. Because I saw that literature can make you cry and laugh, and can bring you to such deep identities with those you never thought you could identify with in life."