Reading
Moby Dick in Israel 2012 is liberating. It feels like a great sperm whale
drawing to the surface for a vitalizing breath of air after dwelling for long
hours in the darkest depths of the ocean. This may sound cool and refreshing.
It isn't. Quite the contrary. The fact of the matter is that reading Moby Dick
here is such a refreshing escape, because doing anything other than
reading Moby Dick in Israel 2012 is so despairingly suffocating.
Headed by a messianic group of weirdos who come
up every day with yet another bright idea how to starve even more this
anorectic pseudo-democracy of ours; isolated from other nations, practically
quarantined, it is not the Pequod we're sailing in, but rather the Jeroboam.
But even if it was the Pequod (our meager chauvinistic leaders hardly qualify
for an Ahab), the truly sad thing is that our other alternatives are greedy capitalist
market-oriented Starbucks, cynical Stubbs and narrow-minded order-obeying
Flasks. True, we have some newly arrived Queequegs here as well, but the immigration
authorities are after them and they are too busy hiding away to jump to the
water and save us or to rescue us from the hungry sharks lurking everywhere.
So, far away comrades from Prague, is the state
of affairs over here, swaying from Aries to the equinox, from one storm to
bosom of another, and no land looming in sight…
It is a good thing, then, that we have Moby
Dick to delve into, here in Israel 2012.
Hi Assaf,
ReplyDeleteSurely we all care to have fiction to escape into, endulging in the luxury of a different time and space, yet hopefully we can also nevertheless acknowledge the beauty of our own. Sure, we all know the complextity of our country's delicate situation, poiliticaly and socially, and indeed there are many who may choose to cross over to a far away land the minute it is spotted as a possibility, yet most, at least we should all hope, may choose to remain in our intimate "island," keeping in mind that sharks are everywhere, by close and by far. Most journeys I believe can be defined as going for the sake of returning, rising above difficulties knowing you still have a place to return to, no matter how far it is from you at a give moment. So, I guess personally I would like to acknowledge and moreover apperciate the qualities of my present close inland, than the far away implied better one. By that of course I do not mean any disrespect or lack of apperciation to what you're saying, this is just how I see it.
thank you,
Adi
Hi Adi,
ReplyDeleteWhether I like it or not – the literary escape is a temporary one and eventually – be it after one, two or four hours of reading – I must get back to reality. As (I hope) is clear from what I've written, I'm not of those who have the privilege of another reality – I'm a full time Israeli citizen. That is exactly why I find it so hard and painful, this reality.
I'm not sure of what you meant by "the beauty of our own". As for myself, when I look around at our Israeli surrounding, I see mostly ugliness. I find it very hard to speak of beauty in a country that denies basic civil rights and freedoms from people living under its rule. The fact that I belong to the privileged group only makes me feel more sick and ashamed.
I also can't subscribe to the view that "sharks are everywhere". This statement doesn't mean anything to me. I don't live "everywhere". I live here. Horrible things are done on my behalf, using me and my loved ones as a pretext to a cruel oppression. I respect your viewpoint and I don't preach. I never try to make others think like me, but I think that a moral person, when asked to address something having to do with Israel and with culture, if the racist occupation isn't the first thing that springs to his/hers mind… well, let's just say I find it unusual.
Assaf
Hi Assaf,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I thank you for your honesty and openness, clearly this issue is a stirring one and burdening, I assure you for me as well. Seems we have opened up here one of the most relevant discourses and probably the most sensitive one existing presently in our country. I can also assure you that personally, I have my own reasons to be criticising civil rights discrimination which sadly do still appear here, do not mistakenly think I do not. On my part, I am married plus two, yet am classified as single and childless in my I.D. certificate, forcing me to start an adoption process which will take me probably about two years (at best) for my own two baby twins whom I invented and helped to create from scratch. And why? because I am married (reformly) to a woman for almost six years now. So, as one of the 'minor groups' if you care to call it as such sadly in our "modern" 2012, of course I can agree with you that there are many things carried out here still wrongly and in an injustice way.
But, what I also tried to convey earlier, is that I do not agree that all is wrong, nor ugly. In my point of view, and this is something I will do my absolute best to pass on to my own children, there are so many good things combined with the bad. My wife has lost her aunt in one of the terror bombings, and her best closest friend + husband to be in another, yet she still acknowledges (and I admire that about her) the good things we have. I myself was privileged enough to travel at some other parts of the world such as Asia, Africa and Europe and can say I got a good glimpse of other cultures. And so for me, when I'm asked about Israel and culture, despite the aspects of which you and I may agree upon (some we may not), I think of the intimacy and closeness Israelis share, which I find unique and priceless if compared with other cultures. And so despite the fact that I do acknowledge that our present reality, especially that of the less privileged than us, can be improved immensely, still there are so many in it to be preserved nevertheless. Perhaps you would call me too optimistic or naïve even, of course you are entitled to, but I think that the mere fact that we are even discussing this is part of the beauty I was referring to. I believe that in different realities (and by that I don't mean to claim to pretend I know yours, for I do not) I believe we would have never even been given the chance to raise our thoughts as we just did; this is not something I would take lightly. I am simply saying that our reality is our own to make the best of it, and that yes, it is my personal hope that we will be always be reminded also of the good with the bad, that's all. I do not mean to offend you in any way, but I would like to believe that this kind of optimism is not something that unusual.
Naturally, this discussion is far larger than to be raised in such a short blog, but hopefully we can understand each other is it is.
Thank you again,
Adi