To the Editor:

I would like to comment on Shlomo Avineri’s “Rethinking Israel’s Position” [June] in which he discusses my book, Israel and the Crisis of Western Civilization. (The book, incidentally, which was published in Hebrew by Schocken in 1972, will be issued in an English edition by the Jewish Publication Society of America next year.) Mr. Avineri, whose moral and political philosophy is very different from mine, is entitled to disagree with my views, but I feel he has evaded his critical responsibility in his use of vague, pejorative phrases such as “quasimystical,” “grandiloquent,” etc. Let me cite some concrete examples of his errors both of fact and of judgment.

Mr. Avineri states: “Livneh is basically a secular, rationalist intellectual nurtured in the Russian-Jewish radical tradition.” But in saying this he seems to have missed the essence of my book, which was written in a spirit of belief far removed from any secular tradition, including that of Russian-Jewish radicalism. Nowhere in the book do I say that “the Jewish people . . . burst upon history as a full-fledged civilization,” but, following Yehezkel Kaufmann, I describe Jewish monotheism as “an eruption . . . without roots in the surrounding world”—quite a different proposition.

Nor do I offer the view that the “Jews have throughout the millennia pursued a separate and self-contained history.” How could I believe this of a people whose land lies at the crossroads of warring continents and whose history in the Diaspora brought them in contact with hundreds of different lands and peoples?

I mention several times the immense Jewish sensitivity to non-Jewish civilizations (“the ways of the Gentiles”), and the recurrent necessity for Jews to reject the attractions of the non-Jewish world which, if indulged in, would destroy the moral fiber of the people of Israel. The sages of the Talmud performed this task when Israel was faced with the seductions of the late Hellenistic period. I make this point in the book also with reference to our own time and to contemporary Israeli society.

I do not describe current Israeli society as “an island of virtue standing outside of and apart from the decadent civilization of the West,” but I do stress its vulnerability to Western influences: “The young generation is open to winds blowing from the outside world—libertinism, commercialized pornography, pop art”; “nothing is yet decided, everything is in the balance . . . the dangers are immense. . . . The State of Israel will not survive if it discontinues the civilization of Israel. . . . Israeli society will disintegrate and the state will collapse under external pressure.” Perhaps the West can survive these trends of disintegration and degeneration, but they are deadly to Israel.

Mr. Avineri further states that, “according to Livneh, Western culture means ‘the pursuit of pleasure and the attachment to the passing moment, the worship of material abundance, sexual exhibitionism and total permissiveness, the sprawling megalopolis and alienation from humanity and from the Creation.’” This, of course, is utter nonsense. The passage he cites deals with present trends in Western society. I do not share what is termed by Mr. Avineri “Spenglerian heights.” Spengler’s views are discussed and rejected both on historical and methodological grounds. The chapter in the book concerned with the West is not called “Decline” but “The End of the New Era.”

I do not believe Israel is “self-contained,” but I see it as a civilization different from that of the West (which is not universal), and therefore not necessarily bound up with Western development. Judaism escaped the disruption and collapse of the ancient West, after the decline of the Roman Empire. The fall of the Roman Empire did not have the same meaning for Israel as it had for the peoples of Europe. The centuries corresponding to the European Dark Ages (5th-10th) were full of creativity and progress in Jewish life. Surely “the historical cycle of dispersion and return is an exclusive Jewish phenomenon,” and so are the different stages of the dispersion.

The modern Return to Zion in the 18th century—whose current phase is called Zionism—is essentially a link in the chain of the unique Jewish historical cycle. The Return started early in the 18th century in the wake of internal stress and disintegration in the creative and autonomous Jewish community in the dispersion. A growing number of Jews—both in Europe and in the Ottoman domains—were losing the will and the patience to live the confined existence of the galut, without either the wholeness of Jewish life in the Land of Israel or the attractions of a full-fledged Gentile political society. The Sabbatean movement—almost universal in its spread throughout the Diaspora—was a token and an alarm. Two developments emerged out of this Jewish crisis: in one direction, acculturation-assimilation-emancipation, and the Return to the Land of Israel in the other. In the beginning, the first trend was immeasurably larger; the second trend (starting with the aliyah of Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid in 1700) was a mere trickle. The first culminated in the European Holocaust; the second grew and developed into 19th-century Zionism. Both are historically and sociologically quite different from European nationalism and cannot be understood without an understanding of their dialectical interdependence. The deep and shattering disillusionment with emancipation on the part of acculturated Jews turned into a basic impulse toward Zionism. Acculturation was a breaking away from creative Jewish tradition; Zionism in turn was a breaking away from acculturation. Secular Zionism, however deeply influenced by the European experience (nationalism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust), is but one phase in the process of physical return (shiva) toward spiritual realization (teshuva). The beginning of the modern Jewish return to the Land of Israel preceded European national movements and cannot “be seen as a specific form of modern nationalism,” as Mr. Avineri seems to assume.

My critic informs American readers that “Herzl, Pinsker, Borochov, and other early Zionist thinkers are hardly mentioned in the book, while scores of obscure rabbinical pronouncements on the Return to Zion are cited frequently.” In fact, all those Zionist thinkers are mentioned repeatedly, and Pinsker is quoted at greater length than any modern Jewish personality. Neither the rabbis cited nor their pronouncements are obscure. Indeed, they are as “obscure” as Thomas à Kempis, John Knox, or Ulrich Zwingli for educated Christians. Why should a distinguished Jewish intellectual be unaware of his own tradition, even if he does not follow it? . . .

I wonder at the gloomy political predictions of Mr. Avineri. . . . Why should the traditional Jewish conception about the uniqueness of Israel prevent “realistic chances of peace in the Middle East”? Since the beginning of the Zionist Return there has never been more real peace in the Land of Israel—for Jews and Arabs alike—than there is today. . . . Though surely not perfect, this is not an inconsiderable achievement. And let us not forget that the perfect has always been the worst enemy of the possible. . . .¹

Eliezer Livneh
Jerusalem, Israel

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To the Editor:

I wonder whether Shlomo Avineri is right in claiming that the usual English translation of Eretz Yisrael ha-Shlema as “Greater Israel” is not entirely objective. “Great” is used here not as in “Moses was a great man” but as in “Greater New York,” “Greater London,” etc.

Rhoda Gold
Bayside, New York

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Shlomo Avineri writes:

What Eliezer Livneh and I basically differ on is our understanding of the nature of Zionism. I see it as a secular, modern, national movement which would have been inconceivable without the impact of the European Enlightenment and Western nationalism on the Jewish community. It obviously drew on the Jewish religious heritage, just as Greek nationalism drew on Greek Orthodox Christianity, Irish and Polish nationalism on Catholicism, and Arab nationalism on Islam. But both in its ideology, and in the social composition of its early thinkers and practitioners, Zionism was and is a secular movement.

Mr. Livneh, on the other hand, sees Zionism basically within the framework of a religious metaphysics whose premises are slightly fuzzy when they come from a person of his intellectual background. I made it clear in my article that it would never occur to me to deny that the rabbinic tradition was instrumental in keeping Jewish yearning for the land of Israel alive over 2,000 years. But it was basically a passive tradition, and it wasn’t the rabbis, but those who rebelled against the rabbis who developed an active political ideology of immigrating to Palestine and establishing a secular Jewish national commonwealth there. If it hadn’t been for this secular rebellion against the religious tradition, the rabbis would have continued to say “Next year in Jerusalem,” just like so many millions of Diaspora Jews today; though they may believe in the ultimate messianic redemption, they continue, like their ancestors, to reside in exile, although an affluent exile. That there were individual rabbis who left their homes and went to Israel is obviously true, but they were the exception. The building of Eretz Yisrael occurred toward the end of the 19th century as a result of the secular impetus which fought the traditional rabbinic passivism and de facto accommodation with the galut. I hope no one will be offended, but the religious Jewish belief in the ultimate Return to Zion, is, in historical terms, on a par with the Christian chiliastic belief in the Second Coming of Christ. Both beliefs were deeply held, but neither one moved many people to change their way of life. If the rabbinic belief in the Return to Zion had been effective, the Jewish population of Palestine would not have been so sparse before the late 19th century.

The paradox in Mr. Livneh’s position is that it looks almost like a caricature of the Arab propaganda portraying Zionism as a religious, theocratic movement.

Since Mr. Livneh’s book will soon be available in English, I shall refrain from a battle of quotations with him. The English-speaking reader will soon be able to see for himself whether I misrepresented his opinions. But there is one case where it might be of general intellectual interest to point out that Mr. Livneh is somewhat hesitant in sticking to his guns.

He suggests that “nowhere in the book” does he offer the view that “the Jewish people . . . burst upon history as a full-fledged civilization.” But Chapter II, characteristically called “The Uniqueness of Israel,” begins as follows (my translation and my emphasis):

One cannot understand the history of the Jewish people in the last generation . . . without identifying its source—the uniqueness of the people of Israel. The Jewish people is not a people belonging to one of the great civilizations—the Christian-humanist, the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the Muslim—but is a human phenomenon unto itself. The Jewish people determines its own modes of confrontation with its natural and human environment, and demands a special way of life from its sons and daughters. . . .

When did this outburst called Israel occur? What is the nature of its beginning? . . . What is its history? Just as its beginning is unique, so its cycles of history are different from those of any other people. The people of Israel did not appear on the stage of history through slow evolution out of the depths of prehistory, out of a primitive, barbarian reality. It burst on the apex of ancient Oriental society at the highlight of its development. . . .

Reading this one may also understand why I feel such views present a danger to realistic chances of peace in the Middle East, a position Mr. Livneh cannot comprehend. The reason is simple: if we wish to achieve peace, blasting away on Jehovah’s trumpets isn’t going to be a bit helpful. Since Mr. Livneh denies that the Wesern—or universal—periodization of history is relevant to Israel, it is useless to point out to him that an ideology fit for Joshua’s conquest of Canaan is out of date in the 20th century. For Mr. Livneh the essence of the people of Israel remains unchanged throughout the generations, the movements of history do not engulf Israel: history is for the goyim, while the Jews live outside of time, in a blissful ethereal sphere in which all historical developments are nothing but so many external klipot (husks) that will fall off sooner or later.

The reasons for the absence of peace in the Middle East are deeply rooted in the Arab refusal to accept Israel’s reality and legitimacy. If there is ever a chance for peace, it will not be based on Mr. Livneh’s claim of Jewish uniqueness but on a mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs that our two national movements, each unique in its own way, will have to respect each other and recognize the common human denominator in both of them. This will, of course, become feasible only if Arab Palestinian nationalism will abjure its murderous terrorism; as long as this does not occur, the chances for peace are very dim indeed. But peace will also require, on Israel’s part, an attachment to universalist values and not to the New Ghetto, of which Mr. Livneh is such an eloquent prophet.

Rhoda Gold is mistaken in her belief that the connotation of “Greater Israel” is analogous to that of “Greater New York.” For those with more relevant historical associations, it recalls, alas, the Greater German Reich. The false translation, initially introduced by pro-Arab journalists in 1967, was maliciously slanted with that analogy in mind. Interpretations and historical associations aside, the standard dictionary translation of shlema is “entire” or “complete,” and not “greater” or “great.” So let’s stick to plain language.

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To the Editor:

I read Robert Alter’s article, “The Masada Complex” [July], with great interest, and I recalled that Chaim Weizmann had delivered a speech on the same subject . . . in December 1946:

We came to Palestine to build, not to destroy; terror distorts the essence of Zionism. It insults our history; it mocks the ideals for which a Jewish society must stand; it sullies our banner; it compromises our appeal to the world’s liberal conscience. It is futile to invoke the national struggles of other nations as examples for ourselves. Not only are the circumstances different, but our purposes, too, are unique. Each people must apply its own standards to its conduct, and we are left with the task of weighing our actions in the scales of Jewish tradition.

Nor must our judgment be dazzled by the glare of self-conscious heroism. Masada, for all its heroism, was a disaster in our history. It is not our purpose or our right to plunge to destruction in order to bequeath a legend of martyrdom to posterity.

Zionism was to mark the end of our glorious deaths and the beginning of a new path leading to life. Against the “heroics” of suicidal violence I urge the courage of endurance, the heroism of superhuman restraint. I admit that it requires stronger characters, more virile nerves, than are needed for acts of violence. Whether they can rise to that genuine courage, above the moral degradation of terrorism, is the challenge which history issues to our youth.

Meyer W. Weisgal
The Weizmann Institute
Rehovot, Israel

¹ This letter, and Shlomo Avineri’s reply (below), were written before the outbreak of hostilities in October.—Ed.