When you try to make peace, either for yourself or between two other people, expect setbacks. They are part of the process.
Many people are happy, even excited, to make peace when they see steady progress. Even if progress is slow, they are patient. But when they are faced with setbacks, they easily give up. When you realize that setbacks are an integral part of making progress, you realize that this is just another step that you have to make. It's like climbing a mountain path. The path doesn't always go straight up. At times it goes around the right and at times it goes around the left but the focus is on eventually getting to the destination. And therefore even if part of the path seems to be descending, it is a descent for the sake of ascent. This, too, is getting you closer to where you want to end up.
Love Yehuda
On Saturday night I saw a documentary called Killing Kastner. It is the family's side of the story of their father and grandfather from the Kastner's side of view. From watching this movie I had the privilege to talk with my friend Mr. Middleman who is holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia and one of the most brilliant men I have ever met. He told me a different side of the story is in the famous book by Ben Hecht which was banned in Israel for many years. I got it last night and I don't know what my final read on the story will be, but the introduction, from which I quote from below, is very powerful. Let me know what you think.
From the book Perfidy (meaning treason according to Webster's dictionary) by Ben Hecht.
There were scores of these dream salesmen, all men and women of purity of mission. They were out to change the identity of the Jews from a people of the Torah, to a people of the Zion, a nation. There was much outcry form the orthodox at this seeming demotion. During the centuries in which other peoples had taken turns riding in armadas of power, the Jews had remained forever bobbing along on a raft of a book, their Torah. They were reluctant to leave the raft, to exchange the only greatness they had known-the words of G-d for some dubious political status.
The dream of a new land of Israel had flickered in the Jews for the nineteen centuries of their search for unmenacing places to live. The sighed the phrase, "Land of Israel," during this long time and felt refreshed. And certain that G-d would return them to their original habitat and make them a great nation again.
I have sometimes wondered, while reading their histories, how the Jews could believe themselves the Favored of G-d despite the calamities that endlessly fell on them. But it is not a Jewish quirk, alone. Christianity is based on the belief that the crucifixion of Jesus proved him the Son of God. By a similar logic the Jews have remained convinced the the crucifixion of their kind was proof that they were very dear to G-d.......portions of page 11
portions of page 12
During the creating of Israel by the Herzl Zionists, the Jews of the world heard rumors. Their basic reaction was that something absurd and a little sad was going on in Jerusalem. And possibly a little dangerous. This reaction was only natural for their had been no good tidings for Jews out of Jerusalem since the crucifying of one of their young rabbis—by the Romans. The Jewish hell born of that misreported incident had never cooled off.
Hearing dimly of a new Zion being hatched in that same territory, and of the trickle of settlers heading for the new Zion, the Jews of the world stuck to their troubles at hand. They remained steadfastly in all the cities of the world were they were not to wanted or too esteemed. They were content to accept the inferiority or unpopularity of Jewishness, rather than to go wrestling with deserts.
I say this with no derogatory overtone. You can't blame Jews for fancying themselves part of the human family, despite its inhuman protests now and then. Protest, pogrom, ostracism, disdain—the Jews accepted these gentile tricks and manners with an indifference that was gift of time.
And Hecht says, "I understand these Jewish world squatters, for I was born one of them, and remain one. I was for the first forty-five years of my life as unaware of Jewishness as I am now of outer space problems. Happily preoccupied elsewhere (AS One of the greatest American Hollywood writers of his time) I stayed out of synagogues, lodge meetings, and the philanthropy get-togethers dear to Jews.
Portions of page 14
Here is the point of my interlude. How different it is now! With all of the Jews of the world who were unaware of the Eretz-Israel, who made no personal sacrifices for it, and who denounced the fighters for its freedom—patting themselves on the back for the State of Israel. Their baby!
I have heard them in London, Paris, Rome, North Africa. I her them constantly in New York, Chicago, Hollywood and wherever else I run into Jews. And not religious or "organization" Jews, but assimilated American ones who usually go to to Temple only in a coffin. They boast of having been to Israel as they used to boast of having basked on the Rivera. Their eyes gleam. They used to feel this way when a Jew became a World's Ring champion or when Einstein's name appeared in the newspapers.
It is a new high in diplomatic representation. Although the State of Israel is a strip of land hardly big enough for a railroad line, it has some eleven million ambassadors-at-large. This is roughly, the number of Jews the Germans left on the planet, counting the dark ones of Africa. And all as ignorant of what is going on-or went on-in Israel as if it were a foothold on the moon. But still Ambassadors.
Here is the problem. Is it better to let illusion thrive than (try to) expose it? Plato wrote that the only sound way to ensure people's happines was to let them sup on sweet lies rather than bitter truth.
It is not entirely bad advice. But it is like a medicine that permits the patient to die without too much pain.
I vote otherwise (says Hecht). I end my interlude with the hope that fraction of the myriad ambassadors may get a clearer line of the their duties after attending the case of "The Government of Israel versus Malchiel Greenwald."
