Amos Oz, "Dear Zealots" 에서

 

 

 

 

Amos Oz, "Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land" (2017. 영역판 2018)

 

I. Dear Zealots

 

"The fanaticism in almost all of Jewish-Israeli

society... arrived in Israel with the Jews of Europe.

From Eastern Europe we received the revolutionary

fanaticism of the founding pioneer generation, bent

on remolding the Jewish people... in order to rebuild

a 'new Hebrew.' Europe was also the source of our

nationalist fanaticism, with its worship of militarism....

Also from Europe: ultra-Orthodox fanaticism....

Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern and North

African countries, conversely, brought a generation-old

heritage of moderation, relative religious tolerance, and

the custom of living in good neighborly relations even

with those who are different. Indeed, the various

forms of European fanaticism are now erasing

the moderation of Middle Eastern Jews.

 

"We all aspire to influence those close to us, to

varying degrees, and sometimes we also want

to influence those far from us. There is nothing

wrong with that, as long as we always remember:

influence without meddling. Persuasion, without

our kneading others into our own mold."

 

 

II. Many Lights, Not one Light

 

"In its good times, the Jewish civilization is one of

doubt and disagreement. For thousand of years, Jews

added layer upon layer of texts that refer to the texts

that preceded them.... 'Refer' does not always mean

merely adding on another level ... Very often, the new

text aims to undermine its predecessors, to show

them in a different light, or to suggest a change,

an improvement, or a replacement.

 

"When a Jewish boy celebrates his bar mitzvah,

he is not asked, 'What did you learn at school today,

my boy?' ... on the contrary: 'Give us a new idea,'

he is told. Meaning, tell us something original.

Something that is yours.

 

"[O]ur calling card: books and family meals. Books

and stories that a father and mother read with their

children around the holiday dinner table.

 

"The Jews as a people are not disposed to

obedience. Never have been,

 

"The nation fights incessantly with the prophet;

the prophets fight with God while also squabbling

with the people and the kings.

 

"Jewish culture at its finest is a culture of give

and take. Of negotiating.... Of acuity and

powers of persuasion. Of 'both these and

those are the words of the living God.'

 

"Many lights, not one light. Many beliefs and

opinions, not one.

 

"To me, blind obedience can never be moral.

 

"What does Jewish culture comprise? ...

A certain type of humor and a tendency to

wisecrack.... A blatant inclination to be critical and

skeptical, to be ironic, self-pitying, and sometimes

self-righteous. A particular pragmatism tinged with

fantasy. Ecstasy diluted with doubt. Euphoria

blended with pessimism. Melancholy cheerfulness.

And a profound, healthy suspicion of authority.

A measure of stubborn resistance to injustice.

 

"The revival of Hebrew, and its transformation

within three or four generations from a sleeping

beauty into daily spoken language of more than ten

million people, is a spiritual occurrence no less vital

to Jewish history than the emergence of the Talmud.

 

"Isaiah 55:8-9 says, 'For My thoughts are not your

thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, said the

Lord'... We have no pope. And that is a good

thing. We should all be cautious of anyone who

purports to have deciphered a divine plan.

 

"Secular Jews are also the heirs of Jewish Culture....

And heirs should not be slave to their inheritance.

On the contrary: legal heirs are entitled to discard

parts of their inheritance and to emphasize

other parts, as they see fit.

 

 

"[W]e secular Jews believe that our past is

committed to our hands. We are not committed

to our past's hand."

 

 

III. Dreams Israel Should Let Go of Soon

 

"My Zionist point of departure, for decades

now, has been a simple one: We are

not alone in this land.

 

"There must be compromise between Israel and

Palestine. There must be two states. We must

divide this land and turn into a duplex.

 

"I think that in the lives of families, neighbors, and

nations, choosing to compromise is in fact

choosing life.… The opposite of compromise

is fanaticism and death.

 

"A few days after the great victory in the Six-Day

War, I was already writing about the 'total moral

devastation that prolonged occupation engenders

among the occupier.' And even then I feared

that the occupation would also corrupt

the occupied people.

 

"I am afraid of the fanaticism and the violence,

which are becoming increasingly prevalent in

Israel, and I am also ashamed of them. But I like

being Israeli.... Each of us has our own personal

formula for redemption, or at least a solution.

Everyone shouts, and few listen.

It's never boring here."

 

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Halacha: the body of Jewish laws derived from

the Bible and from its rabbinical interpretations.

 

Shulchan Aruch: literally 'The Set Table,' a

sixteenth-century collection written by Joseph

Caro and widely considered the principal

codification of Jewish law.