Israel 1969, Jorge Luis Borges

Israel 1969 - 40 years ago

"Borges was anti-totalitarian, philosemitic and a Zionist", Raphaël Lellouche

"You shall be an Israeli, a soldier,
You shall build a country on wasteland,
making it rise out of deserts."


I feared that in Israel there might be lurking,
sweetly and insidiously,
the nostalgia gathered like some sad treasure
during the centuries of dispersion
in cities of the unbeliever, in ghettoes,
in the sunset of the steppes, in dreams,
the nostalgia of those who longed for you,
Jerusalem, beside the waters of Babylon.
What else were you, Israel, but that wistfulness,
that will to save
amid the shifting shapes of time
your old magical book, your ceremonies,
your loneliness with God?
Not so. The most ancient of nations
is also the youngest.
You have not tempted men with gardens or gold,
and the emptiness of gold
but with the hard work, beleaguered land.
Without words Israel has told them:
Forget who you are
Forget who you have been
Forget the man you were in those countries
which gave you their mornings and evenings
and to which you must not look back in yearning.
You will forget your father's tongue
and learn the tongue of Paradise.
You shall be an Israeli, a soldier,
You shall build a country on wasteland,
making it rise out of deserts.
Your brother, whose face you've never seen,
will work by your side.
One thing only we promise you:
your place in the battle.

In In Praise of Darkness
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian writer
Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
-----------------------------------------------------------
Israel 1969

Temí que en Israel acecharía
con dulzura insidiosa
la nostalgia que las diásporas seculares
acumularon como un triste tesoro
en las ciudades del infiel, en las juderías,
en los ocasos de la estepa, en los sueños,
la nostalgia de aquellos que te anhelaron,
Jerusalén, junto a las aguas de Babilonia,
¿Qué otra cosa eras, Israel, sino esa nostalgia,
sino esa voluntad de salvar,
entre las inconstantes formas del tiempo,
tu viejo libro mágico, tus liturgias,
tu soledad con Dios?
No así. La más antigua de las naciones
es también la más joven.
No has tentado a los nombres con jardines,
con el oro y su tedio
sino con el rigor, tierra última.
Israel les ha dicho sin palabras:
olvidarás quién eres.
Olvidarás al otro que dejaste.
Olvidarás quién fuiste en las tierras
que te dieron sus tardes y sus mañanas
y a las que no darás tu nostalgia.
Olvidarás la lengua de tus padres y aprenderás la lengua del Paraíso.
Serás un israelí, serás un soldado.
Edificarás la patria con ciénagas: la levantarás con desiertos.
Trabajará contigo tu hermano, cuya cara no has visto nunca.
Una sola cosa te prometemos:
tu puesto en la batalla.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899- 1986), Argentinian writer

"Anti-Semitism is an elusive and protean phenomenon", Christopher Hitchens

From Christopher Hitchens' review of Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori in The Atlantic:

"Anti-Semitism is an elusive and protean phenomenon, but it certainly involves the paradox whereby great power is attributed to the powerless. In the mind of the anti-Jewish paranoid, some shabby bearded figure in a distant shtetl is a putative member of a secret world government: hence the enduring fascination of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. (...)

Of course when Jews do achieve actual power, like the famous Rothschilds, they often become the targets of even more envy than other plutocrats. Political anti-Semitism in its more modern form often de-emphasized the supposed murder of Christ in favor of polemics against monopolies and cartels, leading the great German Marxist August Bebel to describe its propaganda as "the socialism of fools." Peter Pulzer’s essential history of anti-Semitism in pre-1914 Germany and Austria, which shows the element of populist opportunism in the deployment of the Jew-baiting repertoire, is, among other things, a great illustration of that ironic observation. And then there is the notion of the Jews’ lack of rooted allegiance: their indifference to the wholesome loyalties of the rural, the hierarchical, and the traditional, and their concomitant attraction to modernity. Writing from the prewar Balkans in her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West noticed this suspicion at work in old Serbia and wrote:

"Now I understand another cause for anti-Semitism; many primitive peoples must receive their first intimation of the toxic quality of thought from Jews. They know only the fortifying idea of religion; they see in Jews the effect of the tormenting and disintegrating ideas of skepticism."

The best recent illustration of that point that I know comes from Jacobo Timerman, the Argentine Jewish newspaper editor who was kidnapped and tortured by the death-squad regime in his country in the late 1970s. In his luminous memoir, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, he analyzes the work of the neo-Nazi element that formed such an important part of the military/clerical dictatorship, and quotes one of the "diagnoses" that animated their ferocity:

"Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space."

The three cosmopolitan surnames involved in this anti-Trinity, it was made perfectly clear to Timerman between thrusts of the electric cattle prod, were considered to be no coincidence."

Caricature from the antisemitic Viennese magazine Kikeriki (1912)