Thursday, September 16.1982 — THE BULLETIN--7
By AMNON DENKER
SUDDENLY I look aroundand 1 notice: What's going on around here?"lVe been left behind all by myself!
When it happens bit by bit you don\ ndtice it at all. First one goes, then another. You look for sohie face that seems to have banished from the scene. The fellows just say: "He went there,'' and shrug their shoulders. You don^ pay any attention.
Then one day you start figuring and say to yourself: "Wait a minute.
of such an experience. We came out of it a little dizzy. Thiere.were some who made it — you knowr univeyr sity, lawyer, accountant, marriage, and all that stuff. ^ ^ #
But most have their heads askew to this very.day. Now I donYmeanlto say* that all of those H^ads got crowned with kipot immediately. But in all those years that have passed, each was thrown into any strange directions.
Look, even one of my group who finally went into medicine — it would seem that everything would
Aihhon Denker, a writer for Israel's most prestigious secular daily, Ua'aretz, wrote an article for Erev Rosh /lasAaita under the title Levadi (By Myself) in which he describes the Teshuva Moveinent in Israel from the viewpoint of one on the other side of the fence;
This is no joke, this has reached epidemic proportions!"
You know what it reminds me of? The time after the Yom Kippur War, when we came back and began to take a count — who was gone and who was left. Now dont get me . wrong. I dont mean to compare the two. But still it reminds me of it.
We used to come home and the first thing we'd hear was that one of our close friends had been killed and that another was in the hospital. Then we'd hear about others not so close to us. You noticed that someone was no longer around and you asked about him. And people would say: Didn't you hear? He was kUled "up there" or "down there".
Perhaps it all began with the
war,
Perhaps it all l^egan with the war, perhaps not. Somehow I have the feelinj that it all began with my class, those who were rejgulars when the war broke out and who swallowed it in a big way. So many are casualties
be all right, right? No. He Has all of this stuff in his head. He finished his studies and began his tricks: acupuncture, sole therapy, gimmicks. Now he wants to set up a health farm in the Galil. ~
And the others? Don't ask. They chase after every wind that blows and don't fmd^a thing. These guys are the best of my peers — what they call the cream of Israeli society: Ashkenazis, high school graduates, officers, battle corps. This was our group.
Then this business of . doing Teshuva began. I find it hard to put my finger on where exactly this all began or how. We used to hear about all kinds of guys who would disappear and who would suddenly surface in town with black kipbt on their heads and with a strange look in their eyes. It was a sort of happy-go-lucky look — really content.
They'd come around for a week or two, and then they would disappear completely. You couldnt find them
anywhere. These were fellows who weren't from pur immediate circl^ and we didn't {(ay top much attention to them. Another passing fad, we figured: But slowly it W
Ypu khpw^ 1^ this iheaiit? You wbul^ go pveri to a friend to %ti something up for Shabbat, and he would start hemming and hawing. If^ nPt (Convenient for him; he's busy. Until you would draw but of him that for three months he has been travelling to Rechovot for Shabbat, to some rabbi who gives lectures on Judaism.
**What*s happening?" you ask him, "are you crazy?" But nothing help^. After a month he's wearing a black kipa. Then he isnt even around. He travels every two days to Jerusalem. Starts acting strange, just slips out between your fingers. You stanli^nd watch how he changes every diyt
It is frightening: one day a yarmulke. After a week he is eating kosher only. Another week and he shows up with izitzis and kisses mezuzot. You sit down to drink a cup of coffee with him, he picks up the cup and before drinking makes the blessing: "Blessed are you L-rd, our G-d, King of the Universe by whose words all was created."
You listen to him talking and ask yourself: Is this really him? After all this, he then evaporates and you hear he is in Ohr Samdyach.
They*re not listening to *Pink Floyd*,.. but to lectures.
Ohr Samayach is their Yeshiya. They send them all there after softening them up first for the deep plow. What's nice af>out it there is that they dont force you to do anything. When you are inside it doesnt look so dark like the darkness we always attributed to the religious.
CELEBRATING with joy in the Old City, at one of the nuuiy Yeshivis wbkh .^ve sprung up pvier the past I $ years to meet the needs of young Jews returning tq.thi^. ancient faith.
Feel like walking around in a tee shirt and jeans? O.K. You want to go into town and take off your kipa? O.K. It's almost modem. Some of the ^ys go about with cassette records, but the difference is that they are not listening to Pink Floyd
but to Rav Shapira^ lectures. .
Then you begin to feel free and happy and donit sense at id] how this whole business closes in on you fponi
- (Continued on Pugc 18) V See: COMMENTARY c
GULAG RECORD
The weeks go by slowly for three Moscow Jews sentenced to long prison terms for wanting to leave the country.
VLADIMIR
SLEPAK
NUMBER OF WEEKS ALREADY SUFFERING THE GULAG ORDEAL:
ANATOLY
SHARANSKY 219
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
The Helsinki Agreement which the Soviet government signed allows for freedom of emigration. Let our voices — letters, telegrams and phone calls — express our protest to Western leaders to intercede and to the Soviets to set them tree.
THIS WE^K WRITE OFFICIAL: F,P. Golbvchenko, Ukrainian Minister of
Internal Affairs, Kiev, ul Kirova, Ukrainian SSR, USSR.
Ida was released March 25 after 196 weeks (almost 4 years) in Gulag. She is still awaiting permission to go to Israel.
■<«»:-»>>v»>>v>'NiNNr.v.v.vs*.%v.*i
From Israeli hopes dashed by Reagaii plan
JERUSALEM — Washington's proposal for Palestinian self-rule in the West E^nV and the Gaza Strip has swept away a major hope by Israel that the Reagan Administration would provide a respite from years of American-pressure to give up the occupied territories.
At the same time it has confirmed the fears that attended the process of peace with Egypt, the apprehension that after giving up the Sinai Peninsula, Israel would soon be asked, to give up more. ___
No responsible Israeli official has deceived himself about United States policy on the status of the areas captured by Israel in the 1967 war: Washington never recognized Israeli jurisdiction over East Jerusalemv the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza or Sina4. The position through all of the American Administratioiis of the last 15 years was that, given peace treaties and properHsecurity_ guarantees and defeiisible'bbrders, Israel would ultimately have to withdraw.^ ^
But Prime Minister Menachem Begin*s Government had allowed itself to believe that Presideiit Reagan would not articulate this view and would certaitily not thake it the centerpiece of a peace plan. Nor did the Israeli Government seem to realize how frail the Camp'David framework would be as a buffer
against this old deihand for tei-ritorial compromise.
At the Camp David talks in 1978, Mr. Begin proposed granting "autofiorfiy*' to the 1.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as a device with which to deflect pressure for withdrawal. This became the second major aspect of the frairiework for peace, after the Egyptian-Israeli provisions on the return of Sinai and diplomatic recognition.
The precise details of "autonomy** — how much power the Palestinians would have in the territories — were
Although Camp David leaves the final stattis of the areas open, each side's ultimate objectives have lurked in the shadows of tlie negotiations, coloring the positions and foiling attempts to get an agrieement on how miich autotibmy the ; Palestinians should really have...
David K. Shipler Sept. 4/82
JWB offers a weekly series ofrtews and editorial excerpt's from recent editions of the world's leading newsp<^>ers and magazines^ Material cited from Le Monde, The Guardian and The Washington Post originates in The Manchester GuanBan Weekly.
greatly exaggerated the amount oif destruction and failed to underline the underlying causes of the war.** That, of course, is the nature of television news: weak on causes, strong on effects. And just as thie
Pentagon learned in Vietnam; so the Israelis have discovered in Lebanon that the world cannot easily stomach war when its horrors are transmitted into every TV owner*s living room.
Sept. 13 92
Nuivsiiifoolc
left for negotiations among the Israelis, the Egyptians, the Americans, the Jordanians and the Palestinians themselves. The Jordanians and the Palestinians have refused to join these negotiations because they understand Mr. E^egin*s goal to be such limited powers for the Palestinians that the territories would remaitfsblidfryuhder Israeli control.
Eurthejrmore, the final stage of the Camp David process contains a fail-safe mechanism for Mr. Begin:^Mo change in the status of the territones' until all sides reach- an agreement, five years after "autonomy" takes effect, oil the finaldisposition of the West Baiak and Gaza, Since Israel wants control and the Palestinians want independence, the resulting impasse would cleave the areas in Israeli handsindcffinitcly.
Froin The b^Me |srM^^
From Cards up GemayePs sleeve
As IsraeKs military struggle to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut ended ... an equally bitter-intellectual battle over the media coverage of the war in Lebanon was still being contested — and likely to be fueled by Presideiit Reagan*s-"new^Mid<^st rinitiative. Jewish leaders in general and neo-conservative spokesmen in particu-lai; ^were ii|furiated by what they perceived as the anti-Israeli tone of many of the dispatches from the /front.
. . ^hile the Jei^usalem goverhinenr had relatively few complaints about the coverajge in The J^ew York Times and the Los Angeles Times, it felt badly used by the major TV networks. "Pictures act vi$ceralty on . people," said spokesman Chafets. television
.. AlthoughXLebanese presidentelect Bashir) Gemayel is faced with a daunting task, he has three major cards up his sleeve.
1. The deep-rooted and widespread desire of the Lebanese to live in peace. Now ^disenchanted and exhausted, they are much less willing to take up arms, orsupportranyone taking up arms, thaTTthey werrseven^ or eight years ago. —-^-r^^s^-^^-^
2. A favourable combination of circumstanceTs. The endig of^lhe PLO presence in Lebanon, unthink-able^iotso long ago and how under way, opens ijp good prospects of a return to ndrrnal on the domestic front- '
3. The fact of being in a better position than any * Other party involved to persuade the li^raelis to leave the country on condition the Syrians do likewise;
AUhough he has a good hand. Gemayel will have to play his cards
very carefully if he is to succ^ in bringing peace to the region. He already announced the general lines of his policy, implicitly including peace with Israel, when he said: "We have no border problem and no geographical problem of any kind with any of our neighbours. WeshalL entertain normal friendly relations with all our neighbors, precisely in the hopc^ of' pulling out of the crisis ... "
If4h|rcrunch coines and Lebanon^ disintegrates, it will probabl)^^ happen then rather than now. Since^ all his enemies except those in northern Lebanon are a good deal less determined than he is. it could be argued that the risk of the countiy breaking up would have been greater if. instead of winning the election, he had been defeated.