Newsletter from Tel Aviv - Part I

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Poster by Franz Kraus: “SPECIAL OPERATION FOR A BESIEGED NATION”  Tel Aviv. 1947

Shalom Aleichem from Tel Aviv,

The French fablist and poet Jean de La Fontaine famously wrote:

“A person often meets their destiny on the road taken to avoid it…” 

(“On rencontre sa destinée - Souvent par des chemins qu'on prend pour l'éviter.” Fables, VIII, 16: L'Horoscope) 

This short phrase sums up for many the road to Jewish consciousness–a road that’s getting more and more crowded each day.

There has never been a time in my life like now, during these weeks following the October 7 Hamas massacre, where I, along with many other Jewish people, feel as though we are in the midst of an unsolicited and unexpected change of consciousness. So radical and transformative that the magnitude of our uncertainty of what will come of it is matched by the conviction that it will be utterly different than before October 7.

Our status as full-fledged members of the human family–a position that we knew was hard fought and earned–was suddenly thrown into question as we witnessed the support and defense of the perpetrators of atrocities that we thought were relegated to the realm of black and white photos.

Image from BLMChicago of Hamas murderers who parachuted into the Nova peace festival and murdered, raped, and kidnapped the partygoers.

I revisit texts written during a war or revolution that I had encountered and engaged with before October 7, and feel like however I understood them previously was like a child’s conception of an adult matter.

The following two texts come to mind. The first from Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919):

“...every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.” (Reform or Revolution. 1908)

In the past, I had seen this “seed breaking through the husk metaphor” as something that was largely driven from within, emerging from the efforts of self-growth–an outlook informed by the privileged position of growing up in the largely supportive, loving, comfortable and accessible world of the West–whose citizens, for the most part, shared the same ethical and humanist values that I took for granted before October 7. 

Now, I feel, it is the external events and circumstances of the moment that have broken the old husk. The values that I thought we shared (and argued about what best manifested them) are no longer shared in a world that calls live-streamed murder, rape and torture legitimate acts of “decolonization.”

For now, we blindly and clumsily rely on the explanations and worldviews of yesterday to understand what is happening today. Soon, we will have a new language and worldview.

The second text I revisit, perhaps one of the sources that influenced Luxemburg, is by the young Karl Marx (1818-1883):

“…we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to. The reform of consciousness consists only in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in awakening it out of its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions.” (Letter from Bad Kreuzenach, September 1843)

Israel Communist Party (MAKI) poster. Circa 1950 (before the Soviet Union broke ties with Israel). “Youth unite in the struggle for an independent Israel, democratic and seeking peace, that guarantees youth rights and a happy future!”

Re-reading Luxemburg I see a new consciousness is rudely forced into existence. Marx reminds us that the task is ours as to how and where this process unfolds–and now that the dogmas of have lost their usefulness:

“we do not anticipate the world with our dogmas but instead attempt to discover the new world through the critique of the old.' (Ibid)

Poster by Dan Gelbert. Israel Exposition. 1960

We will have to re-examine what “progressive,” “left,” “free,” “occupier,” “colonizer,” “solidarity,” “oppressor,” “Jewish,” “safety”, “home” and many other terms mean. We will have to observe the theories and structures that turned many of Gen-Z into defenders of the narratives promoted by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamist Regime of Iran, and their anti-semitic forebears. 

One of the hardest and most painful experiences for me (and many of my Jewish friends) is witnessing an antisemitism that takes a contemporary, young & progressive form. Rising up in the language, people, spaces and pages that we thought were immune to the ancient disease. We had mistakenly assumed that it was limited to reactionary and conservative circles—perhaps forgetting that antisemitism always was most dangerous when it found a host in forward and transformative movements. 

Lenni Riefenstahl. “Poise.” Prologue of Nazi film Olympia. 1938

Fascism and Nazism were not traditionalist movements—but a dark part of the futurist wave of interwar Europe. The young men and women who called for Europe to be free of the Jews did not see themselves as old school Christian theological antisemites. Indeed, they rejected traditional theological justifications for Jew hatred, and instead relied upon the most contemporary of theories in philosophy, law and science. 

Why is today different from any other time? Can the contemporary language of decolonization, anti-genocide, anti-racism and liberation bot be usurped by and infected with antisemitism? Are these ideas and theories magically more immune than Darwin’s evolutionary theories were to the anti-semitism of the Nazis and fascists?

We will also have to re-examine the experiences and ideas of Theodor Herzl and other thinkers who underwent a similar shock to us during the Dreyfus Affair. 

Poster by Yitzhak Prolov. “If you will it, it is not a dream.” 1929

The contemporary historian Benny Morris’s description of this shock may resonate with many of us who have witnessed or seen videos coming out of America, Australia and Western Europe:

“If France—the home of emancipation, progress, and universalist socialism—could be swept up in an anti-Semitic maelstrom, with Parisian crowds chanting "A mort les Juifs!," where could Jews be safe—except in their own land? Assimilation would not solve the problem because the gentile world would not allow it, as l'affaire Dreyfus so clearly proved. The case was a watershed for many Central and Western European Jews, much as the pogroms of 1881-82 had been for Eastern Europeans.” (Righteous Victims, p20-21)

Later in part II, I will touch on the safety I feel in Tel Aviv (despite the rockets), whose name originates from Herzl’s utopian novel, Altneuland.

First, I will share with you a few glimpses of my pre-war and war time experiences here in Israel, and the evolving struggle and rude awakening that many of us are undergoing. Perhaps, along the way, we can observe the passing footsteps of this radical reorganization of consciousness…

Tel Aviv. Friday. October 6, 2023. Sukkot

I had arrived in Israel just eight days before, spending most of the previous days of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in Jerusalem where we had a SHIUR discourse gathering. Throughout the city, every ideological, political, and ethnic division was felt in the most crude way. Secular vs Religious, Leftwing vs Rightwing, Pro-Government vs Anti-Government, Jew vs Arab, and so forth. The feeling was overwhelmingly negative and despondent. There were those I met that genuinely feared for the future of Israel. 

In largely secular and leftist Tel Aviv, I felt less of the factionalism of Jerusalem, but instead encountered the tragedy of a city aping the superficiality, consumerism and elitist social hierarchies of Miami, L.A., and New York. By Friday October 6, the only thing keeping me in Tel Aviv was the SHIUR discourse I was scheduled to give on the 7th. The SHIUR was for young Latin American immigrants to Israel, and would explore the poems of the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik along with other texts. I had planned to stay just a few more days and then return to Berlin.

Poster by Avraham Omri. “Arab Pioneer Youth in Israel: the First Regional Rally.” 1954. Published by HaShomer Hatzair/Mapam party.

Tel Aviv. October 7. 2023. Shabbat/Simchat Torah

The combination of alcoholic drinks from the holiday meal followed by melatonin at bedtime meant that I woke up (drowsily) and fell asleep several times through the night and morning. I don’t remember if one of the times I woke up was due to the war sirens, but if it was, I didn’t notice it. My phone was off due to Shabbat. So when I finally entered the streets, I had no idea why everything was so eerily quiet and empty. It was not until much later in the day that I had the common sense to ask a police officer what was going on.

I will not write here what I saw and learned when I eventually did turn on my phone. Words cannot suffice.

The Pizarnik poems I had selected the day before reflected my feelings:

Fragmentos Para Dominar El Silencio

“La muerte ha restituido al silencio su prestigio hechizante. Y yo no diré mi poema y yo he de decirlo. Aun si el poema (aquí, ahora) no tiene sentido, no tiene destino.” 

Fragments for Subduing The Silence 

“Death has restored to silence its own bewitching stature. And I will not say my poem and I will say it. Even if (here, now) the poem has no meaning, no fate.” 

[...]  Del Silencio

“Lo que se ve, lo que se va, es indecible.

Las palabras cierran todas las puertas.”

[...] Of the Silence

“All you see, all that flees, all is unsayable.

Words close all doors.

Cold In Hand Blues

“voy a ocultarme en el lenguaje

y por qué

tengo miedo”

“i’m going to hide behind language

and why is that i’m afraid”

Every word I spoke after I saw the images felt like a door slamming in my face. 

In the virtual SHIUR I will share with you details of how the rest of the day and night went–of the rockets, the building destroyed just minutes from where I was sheltering, and so on, and about my decision to stay in Tel Aviv and join the volunteer effort.

Haganah (Jewish resistance/underground movement) poster. 1940s

And in the next newsletter we will cover the days after, my experiences with the children and and families who fled from the South, my trip to the border region near Gaza, the changing attitudes within Israeli society, particularly of the Israeli left and progressives (which I believe, may be the last true progressives remaining), Jewish and Arab relations during the war, Jewish/Non-Jewish relations outside of Israel, further exploration of post-October 7 Jewish consciousness, and more.

I look forward to seeing you at the virtual SHIUR today.

Sending you all love and wishes for peace from Tel Aviv,

Micki