Suchergebnisse

Reflections on the Ideological Conference convened by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, Aug, 1957, to discuss the place of Judaism & the Jewish people in the clash of world ideologies & the role of the State of Israel in Jewish life. The conference revealed major misunderstandings & disagreements between Israeli & Diaspora representatives. Thoughtful Israelis are troubled by forebodings as they reflect upon the decline of pioneering, & the growing desire for material comfort among the younger generation. There is a kind of consolation in thinking of the greater guilt of Jews abroad, particularly in America. The failure of those who have not migrated is magnified by the degree to which the comforts of New York are superior to those of Tel Aviv. The Galut becomes a vast distorted counter-image in which Israelis see exposed the deficiencies they are unwilling to examine in themselves. The tendency of Jews outside Israel to think of it as existing to remedy their own weaknesses is merely the obverse tendency of Israelis to judge the Galut by the standard of their own desires. Only by accepting the fact that Israel & the Diaspora exist for their own sake & not to redeem one another will we arrive at a mutally fructifying interchanee of experiences. J. A. Fishman.

The Israeli intellectual scene seems to exhibit a failure of leadership. The older generation has little to offer since it is still living on the intellectual capital of its Diaspora backgound & either regards present-day reality as a falling-off from its original moral values or has sunk into the relative security of running the machinery of statehood (whether in a kibbutz branch or a ministry). The younger generation, born or raised in Israel is torn between the Zionist vision on which it was brought up & the present-day reality which no longer fits it. This younger generation has also been raised as a part of the Western world, but has not yet come into its inheritance, except in the natural sci's. Disinherited of its Judaism it faces the responsibility of choosing a `usable past.' It feels that it has taken part in a great historic enterprise (the creation of the state) but does not have the imaginative power or the perspective in time to invent great myths about it. This is a transitional generation-aware that life is far more complex than its parents thought, but these stirrings of awareness have so far produced only confusion & gropings. J. A. Fishman.