Читать книгу Voyage into Savage Europe - Avigdor Hameiri - Страница 20

Chapter 8

Our Two Faces

I begin to understand that the “imprisoned young girl” is not a “character,” but a “personality type,” in the language of aesthetics. A personality with a strong, exceptional character—but for all that, just a personality. I come to understand that Hilda’s impatience, together with her constant searching, revulsion for her surroundings, attraction to primitive African tribes and their traditions—is the personality of a public daydreamer. I gradually see that the Jewish soul—especially that of the youth—has two faces. One face looks toward a Europe that is wild, full of life, dancing in the latest fashions, whose motto is: “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.”

“Tomorrow there will be a new world war, so we might as well enjoy the present.”

The second face looks out into the unknown, towards a tiny escape valve through which to flee from the lunatic depths in which it finds itself. The image of Jerusalem sometimes appears in this dream of refuge.

To avoid misunderstandings: I am not saying that Jewish youth is simply divided between Zionists and assimilationists. I haven’t had enough time to properly get to know Vienna’s Zionist youth: those I do know are all from Eastern Europe: an ingathering of exiles from ghettos in Russia, Galicia, Romania, and Bessarabia.¹

I find a family so large that it almost reaches the level of a good-sized tribe, living—at least for the sake of appearances—in the middle of European Vienna. The people are honest and truthful in sickness and in joy, but live their spiritual lives in the Land of Israel. These scions of an ancient tribe live in a constant state of waking nightmare, in which the dreamer tries with all his strength to loosen and burst out of the invisible chains that immobilize his entire body in one place.

They imagine their lives, trance-like, in the righteous, beautiful, well-developed, moral and aesthetic Land of Israel, whose secular name—Palestine—those living in the impure continent of Europe are not even fit to pronounce.

These are not the kind of Jews who create the problems. These spiritual citizens of the Land of Israel are the kind of citizens needed in the Diaspora, in the same way that Germany, Italy, France, and England are in need of their scattered settlements in Africa, America, even in the Land of Israel.

These Jews are “acceptable,” thank God.

The problem lies in the “two-facedness,” which puts assimilated Jewish youth in continuous, almost electric, tension between two worlds. Half of these souls wallow in celebrations of their current condition, the other constantly yearns to sprout wings and flee for their lives to a better place, perhaps the Land of Israel.²

Hilda is a distillation of the second personality of this confused Jewish youth looking for direction. Most of the time I spoke with her, her entire being resolutely turned outward to some unknown better place—like a bird imprisoned in a narrow, asphyxiating cage yearning to fly free.

“Dictatorship! That’s the answer!”

Whenever assimilation comes up in conversation, whenever I emphasize that what Herzl knew resides in the depths of every assimilated Jew’s soul—a fiery enthusiastic Jew rises from the mist, all eyes and ears to hear news from the Promised Land.³ These subjects appear to be more important to them than anything else in the world. Every little detail “from there” is of interest. Please give us all—even the tiniest —details: don’t be stingy with the information! We are hungry and thirsty for news!

I go for a walk with a totally assimilated Jew, who asks me repeatedly:

“Do you have that there as well?”

I sit at a cabaret with a family who know nothing about Tallit and Tefillin.

“Does Hebrew—the holy language—also have rhyming couplets?”

My friend Dr. Sam Wolf, a past pioneer, invites me to the house of one of his rich assimilated friends. He warns me on the way:

“Please, my friend, don’t speak a word about the Land of Israel in that house. They are the kind of people who aren’t interested in it.” I promise not to talk about Mars, the Dalai Lama, the Opel motor car, or the Western Wall. But the beauteous, dolled-up hostess frustrates Dr. Wolf’s request: hardly have I arrived at the door and withdrawn my lips from her delicate hand, when she says with a beaming face:

“I am very pleased indeed to meet you! Tonight we will hear from your own lips all the latest news from Palestine!”

A scant half an hour later, all the beplumed, bejeweled guests sit openmouthed, greedily swallowing every word about Tel Aviv, settlements like Rishon Lezion, Nahalal, the Rutenberg project, Rav Kook, Esther Raab, Hannah Rovina, Bartonov, even simple things like children calling each other names in Hebrew.⁴

Please don’t blame me for any of this!

Not only do they hang on my every word, but they express worry, cast doubts, and fear that we might, God forbid, not succeed in establishing a Jewish state.

Forgetting that I promised my friend on the way not to propagandize for the Land of Israel, I burst out:

“Ladies and gentlemen—this depends on you!”

“Why? What can we do?”

“Very simple: if you support our funds and foundations—we shall succeed.”