To the Editor
It is characteristic of Professor Patai that he should assume that my only knowledge of the Middle East was acquired in Israel, apparently because I did not introduce irrelevant autobiographical material. . . . In fact, I have spent years in the Middle East and North Africa . . . working in Arabic, and I have written and spoken on the problems of the Arabic-speaking world. . . . Having picked fleas off myself from Persia to the Atlas, I remain keen on helping the inhabitants, and understanding them as fellow human beings, without any neo-Spenglerian mystique generated by those dilettantes (Christian or Jewish) who seek in superficial acquaintance with unfamiliar environments and peoples those values they are unable to appreciate in their own civilization. It is no accident that what Patai praises as “Oriental” virtues, other reactionaries praise as “medieval” European virtues.
As for the quotations. I pointed out in my review that Professor Patai depended “largely on one or two writers like Northrop and Junek, and on his own experiences and relationships in Jerusalem,” then cited the more extreme passages of these writers that he quoted so approvingly as support for his own case. How does this entail misrepresentation? And where did I “tear passages from context”?
How can Dr. Patai claim Dr. Rottenstreich as a supporter? Dr. Rottenstreich in the symposium takes a “stronger” (or as Dr. Frankenstein calls it, more ‘activist’) position than Ben-David, and claims that Israel cannot nor should wish to absorb values from the new immigrants, whom he regards not as a parallel culture but as primitive people. Grol, another of the five contributors, also takes this position, and Ben-David represents, remember, the viewpoint of Dr. Eisenstadt, head of the University sociological department, basing his approach on researches on immigrant adjustment carried out both by the university and Dr. Gutman’s Institute for Social Research.
Nor does Professor Frankenstein ask for the recognition of two parallel cultures, or respect for any of the culture traits which Professor Patai posits. Dr. Frankenstein, a pioneer in social and probation work in Israel, is expressly concerned with aiding the adjustment of the backward immigrants from the East to Israeli society as it is. Dr. Frankenstein stresses, and I agree with him, that the identification of the new immigrants, from a primitive cultural background, with the new Israeli culture must be something organic and springing from their inner self, whereas superficial acceptance of our society’s symbols together with drastic rejection of their own past can only lead to Levantinism and personality disorders. Dr. Frankenstein emphatically rejects Professor Patai’s neo-Spenglerianism as merely confusing a very practical issue.
Professor Patai’s quotation from Ernst Simon is out of context here since the latter begins from the standpoint of an Orthodox Jew for whom religious beliefs and practices are an original good in themselves. Right or wrong his standpoint is outside of scientific discussion. . . .
The only “extreme” viewpoint, besides that of the “Toynbee-ists,” with their rejection of Western spiritual values, is, paradoxically, precisely that of Mapai and the Histadrut, whom Professor Patai praises so fulsomely; the Histadrut, with its crude and pre-scientific dogmas of Socialist-Zionism, is the worst perpetrator of what Dr. Frankenstein calls the “Prussian approach” towards the primitive immigrants, i.e. the certainty that its aims, Weltanschauung, and new personality type are the only worthwhile ones and that everything else is “Galut”. . . .
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In his book Dr. Patai complained that Israel was handling the problem wrongly and misunderstood its whole basis. But now in his objections to my review, he asserts that virtually the whole of Israeli scientific and political circles agree with him, and that only myself and Ben-David take an opposing view. In that case what has he to lecture Israel about?
In fact, neither he nor others who pay lip service to the equal validity of primitive-Oriental modes of life have any practical conclusions to offer from their theorizing. Professor Simon never draws conclusions in the field of education, for instance. We are to imitate (learn from) and strengthen their “religiosity,” but what does this mean in practice? That secularists should begin to take over the Yemenite world outlook? That is obviously impossible. That we should impose clericalism to prevent the newcomers seeing non-religious Jews? That we should accept the literal truth of the Torah? Or just that we should say “how wonderful” and then carry on in the same old way?. . .
And how can we prevent the disintegration of primitive-Oriental modes of life, unless we try to insulate them from too rapid contact with the “Western half,” a process which I have always advocated but which Dr. Patai violently rejects as “discrimination”. . . .
It would be tempting to put forward a positive solution as well as polemics, but I’ve used up my allotted space. Suffice it to say that our belief in the possibility of absorbing the new immigrants is based on a belief in the inherent value of every Jew, of every human being, whatever the immediate cultural level of his group, and does not require the creation of imaginary qualities. The present situation demands certain adjustments from the immigrants, as from others, as a price of Israel’s survival. We can only wait and see whether as a result, in the long run, two parallel cultures will be formed (later to merge); we do not know enough to forecast.
Alefh Sherman
Jerusalem, Israel
[Lack of space prevents us from publishing other communications on this subject. They may appear in future issues.—ED.]