Page 8 - The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, May 31, 1984
Many of the early Zionist pioneers came to Palestine in order to escape from the religious culture which enveloped them in the European shtetl.
In this way much of pre-state Zionism was characterized either by an indifference to or
often a hostility towards matters religious.
Critics of-secular Zionism jsrere aware of this from the first frials of the chalutzim in Eretz Israel. One great spiritual leader at that time warned about the creation in the future Jewish state of "goyim dovrei ivrit,". — Hebrew speaking Gentiles.
It seems, however, from recent reports; thatthefearsof the previous generation were excessive. Israelis are becoming more Jewish than ever.
According to one Israeli journalist there are now more thah 11,000 young Israelis (60% foreign born, 40% Sabras) who have abandoned the discotheques an^ other recreational symbols to dedicate theniselves to full time study of Torah. •
Yeshivot of diverse religious hues are attracting record numbers of formerly secularly oriented people who; having "seen the light," now pore over Talmudic tomes in order to fulfil their spiritual aspirations.
This has prompted criticism in certahi segments of Israeli society wliich sees the retium of Orthodoxy as an odioas develop-ment, especially since many of those now emroUed in yeshivot receive deferments jfrom military service.
Other critics compare the lure of religious Orthodoxy to the cults which are also making inroads in the' country. The coniparison, however, is ungracious. Young Jews who decide to devote a significant portion of their lives to the study of Talmud and codes can hardly be equated with the mindless recruits of the cults who search for "highs" through instant enlightenment.
The study of Torah sharpens the mind and builds character. What exercise can be more important in a Jewish state?
The festival of Shavuoth is surely one of the loveliest of the Jewish holidays. Aside from the religious meaning of the observance, Shavuoth also comes during that time of year, at least in North America, when the full promise of summer is around the comer.
The holiday commemorates the event which took place seven weeks after our Israelite forebears left Egypt.
Encamped at Mount Sinai, the Torah tells us, the Jewish people received the Ten Commandmants, which, while not the sum total of Judaism (which has 603 additional commandments), have nonetheless stood the test of time as what Rabbi Donin calls "the bedrock for much of Western civilization."
Rabbi Donih made the observation that Shavuoth is not referred to as the season of "kabalat Torah," — "receiving the torah" but ratherthe season of "mattan Torah," -r-the giving ofthe Torah.
In his To Be A Je\y, Donin says: "The answer is that while the giving may haye taken place at^neH^e and the occasion can be commemorated, the receiving of the Torah by the Jews must continue to take place every day and everywhere.''
Our Odyssey as an indentifiable people has been possible for one reason — adherence to the Torah constitution that was promulgated at Sinai. The covenant which was then arranged between Israel and its God has received many a blow but it remains to this day the solemn assurance that Jewish survival continues. '
Decline into obscurity encb
SHELDON KIRSHNER
Stefan Zweig was probably the world's most widely read and translated serious author at the peak of his career 50 years ago. A playwright, biographer and essayist/he conimands renewed interest with the recent centenary of his bfa^.
To mark it. Harmony Books of New York published two of his better known works — The Royal Game (a collection of his short stories) and Beware of Pity (his only novel).
Reviewing The Royal Game in The New York Times Book Review, Salman Rushdie noted that its "brilliant and haunting" qualities were enough to ensure that his "time of oblivion is over for good,"
Zweig, whom novelist John Fowles says suffered "a darker eclipse than any other writer of this century," was a Viennese Jew whose books were read in 50 nations.
The son of an hidusMalist, ids talent was acclaimed by sucfai luminaries as Thomas Mann and Maxim Gorlcy. ^^No one before Iiim has written about love witb such depth, such immeasurable sympathy for mankind," GoriQ^ said in praise.
Despite his achievements, Zweig was practically forgotten by literary critics after his death, while Viennese writers of his generation like Arthur Schnitzler and Franz Werfel were remembered.
No one can quite explain the reasons for this, but Zweig's decline into obscurity has now been arrested.
Zweig attained prominence in his native Austria with the publication of an essay in Vienna's great daily newspaper, Neue Freie Presse. The editor who accepted his composition was none other than Theodor Herzl, who would go on to become the founder of modern political Zionism.
It is agreed by virtually all observers that biography was his metier. His biographies of Balzac, Dickens, Dostoyevski, Nietzsche, Stendiahl, Tolstoy, Marie Antionette and Magellan were models which set a standard.
Beware of Pity, which he produced the year World War II broke out, was published several years after his departure from Austria. By then, the Nazis had already burned his books and banned their sale in
Having immigrated to Britain in 1935, Zweig followed the rise of fascism on the European cominent from his homes in London and Bath. He went to the U.S. for a lecture tour and, in 1941, settled in Brazil.
Unlike other emigres, Zweig was not impoverished. His books earned ample royalties in all major languages. But, writes Otto Beer in West Germany's Welt am
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Stefan Zweig
Sonntag, Zweig grew increasingly depressed.
Nazi Germany seemed to be on the march, and the fall of Singapore to the Japanese portended a long, bloody war.
On Feb. 22,1942, he and his wife took an overdose of Veronal. The drug had lis intended effect. They died within minates.
The Brazilian government laid on a state funeral for the Austrian Jew who had feared that Nazism would triumph.
BACK FROM OBLIVION, TOO
One of Zweig's friends was a man named Ernst Weiss. Once referred to as the German Dostoyevsky, he, like Zweig, committed suicide. Weiss, a refugee from Nazi tyranny, died in Paris exactly one day after the Wehrmacht rode into the City of Lights victoriously.
Like Zweig, Weiss has been rediscovered.
Recently, Siihrkamp, a Frankfurt publishing house, announced plans to bring out the body of his work: 14 novels, a collection of short stories; and essays.
Bom hi Brno, where his father was a Jewish merchant, Weiss was a writer who was much admh«d by such figoies as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Franz Kaika. Fascinated by extremes in human l>ehavior, he specialized in the psychological novel. Weiss was a medical doctor by training but a novelist at heart.
BOOKS IN CAPSULE
Jewish Commonities In Frontier Societies [Holmes & Meier, $44.50] offers fascinating insights into three countries — Argentina, Australia and South Africa — where Jews did not begin to establish themselves seriously until the late 19th century.
Daniel Elazar and Peter Medding, both of whom are associated with the Jerusalem Center for Public Aifairs/Center for Jewish Community Studies, have drawn on their extensive knowledge and analytical powers to write a first-class work of communities in transition.
Uncle Mike's Edenbridge [Peguls, $9.95]
flows over with sepia-colored nostalgia of halcyon days. The memoir of Mike Usiskin, a Russian Jewish farmer who joined an agricultural cooperative in Saskatchewan, Uncle Mike's Edenbridge zooms in on a strong, resourceful man whom French Canadian novelist Gabrielle Roy immortalized in her novel. Fragile Lights of the Earth. Uncle Mike's Edenbridge is translated from the Yiddish by his niece, Marcia Basman.
Hooray For Yiddish [Musson, $21.95] is a lighthearted, loving and erudite examination of a language which clings to a precarious existence.
LeoRosten (The Joys of Yiddish) casts his net and comes up with Yiddish words that have won acceptance in English dictionaries (chutzpah); hybrids formed out of English (fancy-schmancy); phrasings and syntax, indigenous to Yiddish, which enjoy currency in English (big deal); Yiddishisms clamoring for acceptance (shlep); new words for which there are no Anglo-Saxon competitors
(shmegegge)., and Yiddish expressions which merit inclusion into colloquial English (paskudnyak).
All in all, a mechaya, by an obvious maven. ' Live And Be Well [Random House] celebrates Yiddish cuUure in America in encyclopedic form. This layishly-illustrated album dispenses a wide variety of information, some relevant, some trivial, some irrelevant, but always in good humor. The text is by Richard Shepard and Vicki Gold Levi.
The Eighth Million [Colombia University Press, $8.95] was first published in 1942, but Meyer Berger's sketches of Gotham in the 1930s is as delightful today. Berger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter of The New York Times, was a stylist from the school of Damon Runyon. As such, Berger was attracted to the unusUal, to the offbeat. In his clear, simple, matchless prose, he writes of gangsters, nuns, cowboys, gypsies, tugboat captains and Broadway. His pieces linger in the mind long after they've been read.
The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer [Collins, $12.95] features 47 of the novelist's best works, including Gimpel the Fool, Yentl The Yeshiv^i Boy and A Crown of Feathers. It is a pleasure immersing oneself in iSinger's vivid imagination.
The Penitent [Collhis, $17.50] is Singer's latest novel and, unfortunately, it is not One of his memorable ones. Curiously flat, it lacks the verve of earlier works which have pleased generations.
The Stories of Bernard Malamud [Collins, $23.95] confirms a verity in contemporary literature — namely that Malamud continues to be one of its great practitioners. The collection, which includes his first published short story, contains stories .like The Magic Barrel, Arigel Levine and Rembrandt's Hat.
Laura Z: A Life [Fitzhenry & Whiteside, $18.95], Laura Hobson's piquant autobiography, is the Odyssey of an American Jewish woman whose life may well be a model for any militant feminist today. Hobson, though, was no conscious feminist, but merely an ambitious, intelligent lady who, thanks to her progressive upbringing, entered the work force at a time when women were expected to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
The daughter of Michael Zametkin, the agnostic editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, Hobson was bom in New York City, andearly on found her vocation in writing. After graduating from Cornell, where she encountered the drawing room anti-semitism ofthe day, she was successively a copywriter, newspaper feature writer and promotion manager of Time, where she earned an enormous salary.
Hobson, who describes her love affairs, marriage, abortions, psychoanalysis and friendships with great gusto and feeling, turned to the novel when she was in her 30s. Her claim tofame still rests with Gentleman's Agreement, the 1947 novel about anti-semitism in America. She says she was inspired to write it as a result of hasty remarks made by Charles Lindbergh, the aviator, and John Rankin, the reactionary congressman from Mississippi.
She ends her book when she is 47 and an American celebrity. Hobson promises a sequel, to which this reviewer looks avidly forward.
Laura Hobson