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At Large
My ‘Israeli’ Roots
A record of folk songs by Theodore Bikel did the trick.
My American youth wouldn’t particularly have “predicted” that I would make aliyah (move to Israel) as an adult.
True, there were certain factors that could conduce in that direction. My parents were refugees from the Nazis, having fled Vienna as teenagers with their families in the fall of 1938. They conveyed that Jewish identity was important; we stayed home for the solemn holidays, did special things for the joyous ones. Bringing customs of another religion into the home — as some American Jews were already doing back then for Christmas — would have been out of the question.
But, on the other hand, both of my parents were from very secular backgrounds, and Jewish culture in our lives was meager compared to the immediacy and richness of American culture. I didn’t know that Friday night and Saturday were the Jewish Sabbath. I did gain a deep-seated sense that Jewish identity was important; but I was less clear on why it was important — knowing little about the Jewish people’s history, religion, literature, and so on.
A notable exception, an irruption of rich Jewishness into my predominantly American life, occurred when I was — I believe — six. It came in the form of a birthday present my father bought for my mother: the record Folk Songs of Israel by Theodore Bikel.
Bikel — the actor-singer still going strong at 88 — spent part of his youth in prestate Israel (his family also having fled Vienna), enough to pick up sabra Hebrew and the often feisty, high-spirited Hebrew songs of the era. As for me, the album — and not only the songs, but some fusion of the songs and the picture on the cover — had a huge impact.
(The album’s first song, and possibly the first Hebrew I ever heard, is here; others are here and here.)
Not to put too fine a point on it, I was stunned. I’d heard some Yiddish, but little or no Hebrew; I knew only vaguely about the state of Israel (it was 1960, and it was only a little older than me). My predominant image of Jews came from my own family, my aunts’ families, and my immigrant grandparents in New York City speaking German and heavily accented English — people who were basically urban, part of a minority, and whose Jewishness seemed largely a matter of guilt, anti-Semitism, and vague moral imperatives.
But what I heard on Folk Songs of Israel — I would request to listen to it by myself on the hi-fi in the living room, along with other beloved works like Dvorak’s New World Symphony and Bach’s Italian Concerto — struck me as entirely different.
These Jews not only had their own highly distinctive, very non-European language; they seemed also to have a brash, in-your-face élan, the songs conveying an unmistakable tang of joie de vivre. And what images they put in my head… dancers whirling around a campfire; idyllic glens with flutes piping; rugged pioneers trekking through austere deserts.
For these Jews, of course, not only had their own language, their own bouncy exuberance; they also had a land.
I could see it — I thought — on the album’s cover, and not only in the form of an agricultural field with trees in the distance, but also of a smiling, buoyant woman striding through the field. A woman with a funny cap, long braids, khaki shorts, and a hoe slung over her shoulder. I would later find out that she was actually an American model, the agricultural field situated in Long Island!
But no matter; the picture was sufficient for the moment. Although, even by then — 1960 — there were no longer many women laboring with hearty diligence in the new nation’s fields, the picture spoke to me on another level, touching into life one of the deepest of Jewish archetypes: the Land of Israel.
It was this land — and this was an accurate perception — that provided the fertile soul from which such music gushed.
I DON’T EXAGGERATE the impact of “the album” on my making aliyah. Powerful push factors arose when I was in my twenties. It wasn’t so much the Arab war on Israel; it was the way the world powers — including U.S. administrations — treated the young Jewish state. They shoved it around on the diplomatic stage, blamed it for its own predicament, castigated it relentlessly it for building “settlements” on land it had won in a defensive war of survival. I was still naïve enough to be shocked that this was happening so soon after the Holocaust.
But Folk Songs of Israel laid the basis in my life for Israel as a pull factor — a place that beckoned, a place of song, of fields infused with legend, a new life with a beguiling new language and people. It was when I was 28 that this potent brew of indignation at the non-Jewish political world and attraction to the Jewish homeland, one might say, overflowed, and I found myself on my way to Zion.
Today, a resident of Israel for 28 years, I still look back fondly at that moment I first heard “the record.” While I would be more ginger now about applying sweeping descriptors to the variegated Israeli people and culture, I’m still struck by how much the songs revealed to me, what intuitions they instilled at the age of six. Life here has its ups and downs (perhaps more extreme in both cases) like anywhere else; but I’m more in love than ever with the vibrancy of the reborn Jewish polity. I can’t think of any greater cause than being part of it and contributing to it.
I like to think of how its long arm reached out and found me on a distant continent.
About the Author
P. David Hornik is a writer and translator in Beersheva, Israel, blogging at PDavidHornik.typepad.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
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John786| 7.31.12 @ 6:33AM
Prestate Israel: I think the word you are looking for is Palestine. You can't even mention the word: speaks volumes. Very quaint story about folk songs mixed in with Zionist propaganda & revisionist history. Yeh, keep expanding the settlements- As I've said before Israel is now a majority Palestinian state. One person one vote please.
Malatesta| 7.31.12 @ 2:15PM
This says it all: "It wasn't so much the Arab war on Israel; it was the way the world powers -- including U.S. administrations -- treated the young Jewish state. They shoved it around on the diplomatic stage, blamed it for its own predicament, castigated it relentlessly it for building "settlements" on land it had won in a defensive war of survival. I was still naïve enough to be shocked that this was happening so soon after the Holocaust."
I have lived in five countries and can tell you from personal experience that the world outside Israel – no matter how “civilized” the nation – is as anti-Semitic and ready to sacrifice another six million for a gallon of petrol, as it was sixty years ago. They have replaced the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” with nasty anti-Israel articles in NYT, WP, and other such un-professional papers, to indoctrinate feeble – minded individuals like you.
ReaganConservative| 8.3.12 @ 1:48AM
There has never was any such thing as Palestine, and Palestinian people, they were and still are arabs living in the Jewish land of Judea and Samaria.
If one wants to be factually accurate, ie; truthful, then one should acceptant of that factual truth. Otherwise, you are just another anti-semitic intolerant hate filled arab islamic muslim sympathizing liberal revisionist..
ReaganConservative| 8.3.12 @ 1:51AM
There has never been any such thing as Palestine, and Palestinian people, they were for thousands of years, and still are just arabs living in the Jewish land of Judea and Samaria.
If one wants to be factually accurate, ie; truthful, then one should be acceptant of that factual truth. Otherwise, you are just another anti-semitic intolerant hate filled arab islamic muslim sympathizing liberal revisionist..
Peppermint Tea | 7.31.12 @ 1:12PM
Wow, the silence in the comments is deafening. I guess even on TAS, being pro-Israel is not PC.
Candidate Romney can't even suggest that the order-of-magnitude income disparity is a result of the system, without being called anti-Palestine. I guess the Palestinians have long clung to the zero-sum philosophy that Israeli prosperity makes them poor.
I'm happy to say that I am pro-freedom, pro-liberty, pro-religion, and thus pro-Israel.
Archie| 7.31.12 @ 5:21PM
Maybe this explains some of the silence:
http://www.njdc.org/site/page/.....pectations
At least here in the USA, what are conservatives to think of Jews!? Maybe they will get it right in Nov 2012? I doubt it.
MK48| 8.1.12 @ 1:38AM
Archie...........don't forget the catholic vote.
KyMouse| 7.31.12 @ 2:03PM
The first Israeli folk song I ever heard was "Dona Dona Dona," recorded by Chad and Jeremy, and by the Chad Mitchell Trio. My friends and I could play it on the guitar and sing it, which we did endlessly, I recall.
"On a wagon bound for market, there's a calf with a mournful eye,
High above him, there's a swallow winging swiftly through the sky..."
Malatesta| 7.31.12 @ 2:10PM
This says it all: "It wasn't so much the Arab war on Israel; it was the way the world powers -- including U.S. administrations -- treated the young Jewish state. They shoved it around on the diplomatic stage, blamed it for its own predicament, castigated it relentlessly it for building "settlements" on land it had won in a defensive war of survival. I was still naïve enough to be shocked that this was happening so soon after the Holocaust."
I have lived in five countries and can tell you from personal experience that the world outside Israel – no matter how “civilized” the nation – is as anti-Semitic and ready to sacrifice another six million for a gallon of petrol, as it was sixty years ago. They have replaced the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” with nasty anti-Israel articles in NYT, WP, and other such un-professional papers, to indoctrinate feeble – minded individuals like you.
Skippy| 7.31.12 @ 6:07PM
Israel is real.
It is not going anywhere.
The Arabs(there are no Palestinians)will accept that fact or die denying it.
Lately I have thought the best thing that could happen in the ME, the one thing that would solve the "Palestinian problem" would be for Iran to use a nuke in or near Isarel.
At that point hopefully Israel would launch their arsenal and evaporate a lot of Arab/Muslim cities.
My point?
The only permanent solution is victory.
By one side or the other.
Either Isreal or the Arabs will functionally cease to exist.
The only peace possible when Mohammedans want war is the peace of the grave.
Answer their prayers; give it to 'em.
PCPSmokerII| 7.31.12 @ 9:25PM
Biekel was good in that episode of Columbo. I was also surprised to see him being interviewed by WFB in a 1966 Firing Line titled, "What is wrong with the youth?"
forbesprinter| 8.1.12 @ 11:31AM
I am 66 years old, and Catholic. I grew up in the '50s, believing that Israel was a heroic project, growing out of history and the Bible, and carrying the impetus of the Holocaust. I came to the point of wondering if the one-sidedness of world opinion in that time in favor of Israel was due either to guilt or the influence of Jews on the American media. Now "enlightened" liberal politically-correct opinion has turned history on its head, and Israel is listed as Number One of the world's evils, except maybe for homophobia. No amount of factual information, no amount of comparison of Israel itself to the failures or brutishness of Islam or Arab culture, seems to have any effect on the approved opinion of the day, which damns Israel for, apparently, the crime of preferring not to commit suicide. My hope now is that the Jews are as stubborn as they are historically believed to be, and refuse to disappear to please the New York Times.
On a world-conspiracy note, I'd love to find out how much Saudi Arabian oil money has been spent over the last thirty years to create/ propagate the current liberal view of Israel-as-pariah.