The End of Jewish History?
Promise and Fulfilment.
by Arthur Koestler.
Macmillan. 335 pp. $4.00.
Promise and Fulfilment, Arthur Koestler’s story of Israel’s rise to nationhood, is a difficult book to review, largely because it must have been an easy book to write. The material was at hand, both in the form of impressions gathered on the spot during last year’s fighting, and in the no less alluring shape of a profuse literature from which a wealth of factual and anecdotal illustration could be extracted with comparative ease to sustain the author’s thesis. If the result is unsatisfactory the explanation lies at least in part with the extreme lack of organization resulting from Koestler’s impressionistic treatment of a subject which needs to be approached with the greatest care and tact.
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The book, in fact, suffers from attempting too much. In 335 pages even a better historian or a sounder scholar could not have dealt satisfactorily with a range of topics indicated by chapter subheadings such as “Jewry as a Freak of History”; “Attractions and Repulsions in the Psychological Triangle”; “The Marxist View of Palestine History”; “Social Structure of Arab Society”; “Relativity of Ethical Judgment”; “The Little Death-Ships and the Rise of Terrorism”; and “Mr. Bevin’s 18th Brumaire.” Koestler, neither a historian nor a scholar, fails on all counts save that of descriptive writing, and in addition spoils a good case by over-emphasis—a weakness attributed by him, with good cause, to other Zionist propagandists. Lack of care in preparing the manuscript, moreover, exposes him to factual errors, among which the attribution of the titles “Caliph” and “Prince” to Arab personalities innocent of such distinction is only the most blatant. No wonder that British reviewers, who have had the book under consideration since early September, have almost without exception refused to take it seriously, a reaction shared by the critics of Mr. Bevin’s Palestine policy.
As an indictment of Britain’s record in Palestine since 1917, Promise and Fulfilment, despite the occasional violence of its tone, is the dampest of damp squibs, if only because it undertakes to defend Zionism purely in terms of Realpolitik, extols the terrorists at the expense of the Left, and virtually adopts the ground occupied by the “integral” nationalism of the Maurras school: “right” and “wrong” have no place in judging a nation’s struggle for survival. On these terms, a consistent appraisal of the three-cornered struggle for Palestine is impossible.
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If the book nonetheless has a certain topical importance, it is owing to its author’s capacity for dramatizing his personal conflicts. “One who has been a supporter of the Zionist Movement for a quarter century, while his cultural allegiance belonged to Western Europe,” Koestler, in a valedictory passage addressed to the Jewish world at large, urges his fellow-Jews to make the choice between settling in Israel or finally deciding “to go their own way, with the nation whose life and culture they share, without reservations or split loyalties.” This exhortation concludes a lengthy and curiously envenomed study of the new Jewish state, viewed at close quarters, with all its crudities and eccentricities suitably high-lighted and most of its positive features rather dimly perceived. It is the special mark of Koestler’s ambivalent relationship towards Zionism that, notwithstanding his marked dislike of the Israeli reality, he shares the conviction that Israel in its present form is the fulfilment of Jewish history.
This is more than the customary myopia of those who overestimate the importance of events taking place in their own generation. It points to an unresolved conflict on a level which subtends the political: for Koestler, Jewish self-hatred (masked as hatred of “the ghetto”) is legitimized by Zionism. The establishment of Israel terminates Jewish history, both because the sabras are “un-Jewish” (“Within a generation or two Israel will have become an entirely ‘un-Jewish’ country”), and because, from now on, assimilation is no longer flight but the only honorable alternative to settling in Israel and becoming a “provincial chauvinist.” Israel will probably become “Levantine,” and in any case will not amount to very much, but its existence will continue to render legitimate the decision of Western Jews to slough off the bonds of tradition. Thus Zionism is approved because it implies the long-delayed end of Judaism. The Jews, having become “like other nations,” will cease to present an object of persecution.
Koestler makes it quite clear in which direction he intends to seek the solution of his own problem.
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There is, however, a hint of an opportunity missed by Zionism in rejecting the leadership of “a remarkable and much misunderstood figure in Jewish history, Vladimir Jabotinsky . . . a National Liberal in the great nineteenth century tradition, a revolutionary of the 1848 brand, successor to Garibaldi and Mazzini.” Jabotinsky, if fate had willed it, might have directed the movement along sound lines, away from “the ghetto” which official Zionism has reconstituted under a somewhat different form. Unfortunately, “the Jews were not ripe for their Garibaldian revolution”:
Dr. Weizmann’s background is that of the Eastern Jewish masses. He was born in the small provincial town of Motl near Pinsk, was brought up on traditionalist lines, and speaks the language to which the Jews of Pinsk are prepared to listen. Jabotinsky came from the intellectual center of Odessa, was brought up in a cosmopolitan environment, hated everything connected with Pinsk, and spoke all his eight languages with the accent of an Italian opera baritone, which is anathema to Jewish ears. He fought for the latinization of the Hebrew alphabet, for the Westernization of Israel, which was to become the seventh Dominion of the British Commonwealth, for a change in the spirit of Jewish education from the Talmudic seminary to the British public school. In short, while the psychology of official Zionism represented a continuation of Eastern Jewish tradition, Jabotinsky and his Revisionists represented a complete break with it.
Jabotinsky, the Westemizer, was defeated—although he is also said to have been posthumously vindicated: “In the light of present events, with the Jewish state an established reality, almost every point of Jabotinsky’s program has either been implemented by official Zionism, or vindicated by the trend of events—except his stubborn fight against the Partition scheme.” Immediate victory, however, went to his opponents who had the masses behind them. “The gap in Jewish social history . . . the telescoping of centuries of social evolution into a few decades, left no room for a true national-liberal party: it was crushed between ghetto and Utopia.” (The latter is Koestler’s all-embracing term for the socialist movement in Israel which, it is fair to recall, did most of the pioneer work, as well as most of the fighting when war came.)
The result has been to deliver Israel to the mercies of a coalition between dull trade unionists and scheming clericals. There are few redeeming features. The towns are petty-bourgeois, their architecture is suburban, their culture is provincial, and the young generation lacks the finer social graces. Nothing less like the Florence of the Renaissance could well be imagined. At this point, the reader, however reluctantly, is driven to wonder exactly why Zionism should be viewed through, of all things, the idiosyncratic prism of Koestler’s personality. To point out at length that Israel is in every respect quite unlike a British public school is not after all a very rewarding occupation.
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It is also by no means clear why Koestler expects the Jews in general, and not merely a few intellectuals, to find the road to complete assimilation eased by the establishment of a Jewish state. Talk of “choice” sounds unconvincing when addressed to masses of people for whom no real choice with regard to assimilation exists. Koestler has simplified the problem to a degree that is to be explained only by a set concern with purely private and individual problems.
His book, despite its parade of historical and sociological jargon, is a confession of faith (or faithlessness) rather than an analytical treatise. As such it has its merits, particularly the merit of showing the length to which conflicting ideas can be pushed, for there is hardly an opinion—liberalism, socialism, integral nationalism, Zionism, anti-Semitism, hatred of British policy, admiration for British institutions, contempt for the Arabs, appreciation of Arab culture—that is not taken up, pursued, controverted, stood on its head, and reduced to absurdity in this fascinatingly egocentric and often unbearably pretentious essay-cum-pamphlet-cum-pseudo-historical treatise. Koestler has strong opinions on a large variety of subjects and he rings the changes on them with his accustomed virtuosity. In short, Promise and Fulfilment is worth reading but it tells one more about the author than about his subject.
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