Sometimes you go looking for donkeys and find royalty. The punch at the end is worth the journey. It starts a week and a half ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of the cabinet meeting, "Wheat will grow again." This reference was an echo of the mythical poem "The wheat grows again" written by Dorit Tzameret, a member of Kibbutz Beit HaShita. Tzameret wrote the song in 1974 after the Yom Kippur War, after 11 members of Kibbutz Beit Hashita fell in battle.
The prime minister also tweeted, "Wheat will grow again." In response, Dorit Tzameret's granddaughter tweeted: "My grandmother hated you, just so you know." Her comment received thousands of likes. And my heart pinched. "Wheat Grows Again" taught me to love my kibbutz wife. It really is a song full of secular Zionist comfort. Although I came from a completely different area code, I respect and appreciate the contribution of the kibbutz movement and also appreciate the secular kibbutz spirit in the song.
It sucks that even an attempt at rapprochement, reaching out for reconciliation during war, is met with a derogatory statement. We will take comfort in the fact that the biography of the poet who was a woman of the extreme left in her twilight years is less relevant, both her likes and her hatreds, because poems have a life of their own. But the poetic discussion that took place on Twitter and all the symbolic hatred for Netanyahu made me think about Shalom Hanoch.
As a teenager I was Tim Shalom Hanoch. Rough rock and roll and protest songs that don't have subtext in the Sultan's pool. Shalom and the whole group of chicken coops were the land I longed for, my cultural reference. Despite, and probably because, I had nothing to do with them. Shalom from the kibbutz, from the Nahal band, from "Snail", was and still is the voice of the first, just Israel of the working settlement.
"Therefore, just as it is always darkest before dawn, so God chastises His faithful servants with the greatest suffering before aiming for their rapid advancement."
Shlomo Artzi, the nemesis, was perceived at the time among music critics and connoisseurs as less qualitative than Shalom Hanoch. In retrospect, of course, this was a huge mistake because today there is no dispute that Shlomo Artzi is a tremendous creator, and no less important. Shlomo Artzi is a singer of all Israelis, the first and second Israel. If you ask me, it's because he has love of Israel. Peace has none.
Shalom remains the singer of the first Israel. He will appear in protest. He is the hardcore of secular Israeliness. And this is not necessarily because of his kibbutz origin. There are enough prominent examples of kibbutz artists who preserved and relied on Jewish sources in their work. First and foremost, Naomi Shemer, and of course Shalom Hanoch's kibbutz member, the righteous Gaon Meir Ariel. Enoch unconsciously relies on a Jewish text. Is it?
Anyway, in an attempt to understand the days we are going through and how we got this far, I returned to peace, to two songs he wrote and performed in the '90s. In 1991, at the end of the Intifada, just before Oslo, the album "In This Incarnation" was released, with the song "Just Like You".
A strange person is / your enemy - just like you / suddenly he also wants to be - just like you / suddenly he gets up and faces you / insists on living / this is your enemy / this is your enemy / just like you / just like you /
exactly!
Yes, just like us. An enemy that rapes women, murders and beheads babies and children, burns houses with their inhabitants. Destroys and loots. Just like you.
In 1997, after Rabin's assassination and Netanyahu's rise to power, Shalom Hanoch released his album "Arab Eve", including the song "Don't Call Me a People".
If you pass through our neighborhood / You'll see an old inscription on the wall there - /"God save me from faith" / There is no virtuous people There are only individuals / Not everyone is stupid and not everyone admits / These are Jews and these are Jews / A person remains a man, don't call me a people / Again you ride when blood is spilled here / Again you think you're smart / If you haven't noticed I exist too / What do I have with you What do I have with them /
A person remains a man, Don't call me a people
If you ask me, these two songs crack something about an Israeliness that dislikes God, settlers and "Shoko has a big knife," but seeks reconciliation with the enemy who is just like you. This is the "cultural" version of Oslo and the concept to this point.
This is where the text would have ended, had it not been for a quote by Shalom Hanoch from an interview he gave Raz Shechnik in 2015.
"'It's always darkest before dawn' wasn't invented. I heard it in some American movie on TV and thought it was a cool sentence," says Hanoch. "I know this line is used to cheer and it's very funny. Who said that if the craziest thing is now, it means it's going to be better?"
The beautiful poem "Against the Wind" includes this line, the origin of which Enoch does not know. So we'll tell him and you, because it's very symbolic. Very much. The origin of the sentence is not an American film but the 17th-century English theologian Thomas Fuller. Fuller wrote it in his book "Mirror of the Peak of Palestine" (1650), a historical and geographical account of the Land of Israel. The book contains a full-size map of the Land of Israel and maps of the division of territory of the 12 tribes of Israel. Probably the first modern Bible atlas.
And inside the book appears the line of Shalom Hanoch. "Therefore, just as it is always darkest before dawn, so God chastises His faithful servants with the greatest suffering before aiming for their rapid advance." And Thomas Fuller wrote the sentence in connection with the story of King David and the raid on Tsqlag in the Book of Samuel.
David, fleeing from Saul, receives from Akhish, king of Gat, the city of Tsqlag in the northern Negev. Four months later, I will put David to war against Saul. Fortunately for him, the captains of the Philistines oppose his inclusion. When David returns to Tsqlag, he discovers that Amalek raided the city: "And David and his men came to the city, and behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives and their sons and daughters were captured." David's people are angry, they want to hurt him: "And you will be very sorry for David, because the people told Scalo that the soul of the whole nation is bitter over his sons and daughters, and David will be strengthened in the Lord his God." And of this moment, when David was almost murdered by his men, Fuller writes: "It is darkest before dawn."
After receiving God's blessing, David follows the Amalekites and finds them celebrating in the stream of the Annunciation (Wadi Gaza in Arabic): "Behold, abandoned all over the earth, eating and drinking and celebrating with all the great spoils which they took from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah." He raids them: "And David from the banquet until the evening of the next day, and no one escaped from them," he releases all the women and children: "And David saved all that Amalek took and David saved his two wives. And they were not absent from the small to the great to the sons and daughters, and from the spoils to all that they took away, David replied."
So here, Shalom Hanoch saw an American movie, wrote something cynically, but it's a line that originally deals with King David, Amalek, kidnapped to Wadi Gaza, consultation with God, victory and liberation.
The people of Israel live.
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