#yeshayahu

[protectionsquad24601]

I don't think people understand how intrinsically Jewish the Les Misérables musical is. The writers of the original French musical were Claude-Michel Schönberg (Hungarian Jew), Alain Boublil (Sephardic Jew), and directed by Robert Hossein (Moldovian Jew). Schöneberg also composed the music. It was adapted into English by Herbert Kretzmer (Lithuanian Jew).

The lyrics include many references to Jewish beliefs and values. Schöneberg said in an interview, "When I’m writing a show there is always a part that is typically Jewish."

However, the one that sticks out to me especially is a line from the Epilogue:

"They will live again in freedom,

In the garden of the Lord;

They will walk behind the ploughshare,

They will put away the sword."

The origin of the phrase - specifically, the bit about 'ploughshares' and 'swords' - can be traced back to a nevuah (prophecy) by Yeshayahu (Isaiah), a Jewish navi (prophet) from the sefer Yeshayahu (Book of Isaiah). (Sorry, yes, I insist on the Hebrew words first.)

"The Torah will go forth from Tzion (Zion) and the word of Hashem from Yerushalayim (Jerusalem)... They will then cut their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning knives. No nation will lift a sword against the other, and they will no longer learn warfare."

This is a quote about the 'end of days', and the idea of a peaceful paradise free from war was emulated in the song to convey a similar paradise for our barricade boys, the casualties of the June Rebellion. This is only one of the many examples of Jewish themes and references in the Les Misérables musical!

[anaxerneas]

The idea of ethical mitzvoth, however, now becomes an oxymoron for Leibowitz. An act is either religious or ethical. Even “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” is to be regarded as a mitzvah, not as an ethical precept. The key phrase in the verse containing this commandment for Leibowitz is that which follows immediately to end the verse: “I am God.” It is a duty towards one’s neighbor that is based on man’s position before God, not his position before his fellow man.

The question that arises, however, is whether in the case of ethically motivated acts that coincide with mitzvoth, a Jew ought to have instead performed the act for religious reasons – a position that would not leave much room for a religious person to perform an ethical action. Indeed, it would seem that if one wishes to perform the mitzvah of, for example, “loving one’s neighbor,” one ought not to be acting based on ethical motives. As such, it is not clear what becomes of the legitimacy of the ethical realm for a religious Jew, since every ethically motivated act constitutes a missed opportunity for the worship of God. Each act ought to be religiously rather than ethically motivated, even when the mere act itself would be the same. While it is not as if one who is ethically motivated can sincerely transform that ethical motivation into a religious one, it seems as if becoming the type of person who naturally acts religiously in such cases would have to be the ultimate aim for Leibowitz. This would not deny all value to ethically motivated acts, but it certainly seems to problematize those that coincide with specific mitzvoth for Jews qua Jews. Though happily the demands of the two realms often coincided, Leibowitz’s picture, it seems, leads to the problematic conclusion that ultimately a Jew ought not to be ethical, but instead religious.

Daniel Rynhold, Yeshayahu Leibowitz

I don't think Leibowitz's dichotomy between the ethical and the religious can do justice to the command not to oppress the foreigner, with its appeal to empathy ("for you were strangers in the land of Egypt"). And even the not-so merciful commands to blot out the memory of Amalek or other Canaanite tribes feel the need to remind the Israelites the violence they faced from those groups.

[eclipse-strider]

Chase the Jews out of every country so they flee to Israel, and then vilify them for living in Israel.

Put Israel under constant threat of annihilation, making mandatory conscription a necessity, and then use that as an excuse to declare that “there are no civilians in Israel,” that the entire population is guilty, their lives and human rights forfeit, for being “complicit” in their own survival.

[cavalierzee]

Israeli Soldiers: We Will Erase and Destroy Gaza

Israeli soldiers holding signs that together read:

“We are the soldiers of the Jewish people’s army from right and left. We won’t take off our uniforms until we erase and destroy Gaza.”

In Israel, genocide is mainstream.

By Yeshayahu Leibowitz

[curiositasmundi]

[...]

È opaca la denominazione dello Stato, definito ebraico pur essendo abitato per oltre il 25 per cento da non ebrei (arabo-palestinesi musulmani e cristiani, cristiani non arabi, drusi, beduini, ecc.). È opaca la formula che descrive Israele come “unica democrazia in Medio Oriente”, perché la democrazia non si concilia con l’occupazione coloniale o l’assedio dei palestinesi. È opaca la forza militare di Israele, che dagli anni 60 dispone di un armamento atomico senza mai ammetterlo. Secondo il giornalista Seymour Hersh, Tel Aviv ha già minacciato una volta l’uso dell’atomica, nella Guerra del Kippur del 1973 (The Samson Option, 1991).

Ma più opaca di tutte le politiche è l’esistenza di una lobby sionista estremamente danarosa e attiva – soprattutto in Usa e Regno Unito – che fin dalla nascita dello Stato di Israele sostiene le sue politiche di colonizzazione, e che oggi appoggia l’ennesimo tentativo di svuotare la Palestina dei suoi abitanti. Si dice che Netanyahu sta spianando Gaza e attaccando anche la Cisgiordania solo per restare al potere, senza un piano per il futuro. Quasi un anno è passato dalla strage perpetrata da Hamas il 7 ottobre, e una rettifica si impone. È vero che Netanyahu teme di perdere il potere, ma un piano ce l’ha: la pulizia etnica in Palestina.

La lobby sionista ha istituzioni secolari negli Stati Uniti e Gran Bretagna e filiali ovunque. Influenza i giornali e li monitora, finanzia i politici amici. Denuncia regolarmente l’antisemitismo in aumento, mescolando antisemitismo vero e opposizione alle guerre di Israele. Nei Paesi europei operano vari gruppi di pressione tra cui l’Ong Elnet (European Leadership Network).

È chiamata a volte lobby ebraica, ma con l’ebraismo non ha niente a che vedere. Ha a che vedere con il sionismo, che è una corrente politica dell’ebraismo e che dopo molti conflitti interni ha finito col pervertire la religione. È nata nella seconda metà dell’800 e culminata nei testi e negli atti fondatori di Theodor Herzl e Chaim Weizmann. Per il sionismo politico, l’ebraismo non è una religione ma una nazione, uno Stato militarizzato, edificato in Palestina con uno slogan che falsificando la realtà era per forza bellicoso: la Palestina era “una terra senza popolo per un popolo senza terra”, data da Dio agli ebrei per sempre. Secondo il filosofo Yeshayahu Leibowitz, che intervistai nel 1991, Israele era preda di un “nazionalismo tendenzialmente fascista”. Non stupisce che Netanyahu e i suoi ministri razzisti si alleino oggi alle estreme destre in Europa e Usa.

Non tutti gli ebrei approvarono la ridefinizione della propria religione come nazione e Stato. In parte perché consapevoli che la Palestina non era disabitata, in parte perché la lealtà assoluta allo Stato israeliano imposta dalla corrente sionista esponeva gli ebrei della diaspora a sospetti di doppia lealtà.

Indispensabile per capire questa fusione tra religione e Stato militarizzato è l’ultimo libro di Ilan Pappe (Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 2024). Lo storico racconta, proseguendo lo studio di John Mearsheimer e Stephen Walt sulla lobby (2007), la nascita del sionismo nella seconda metà dell’800, e cita fra gli iniziatori le sette messianiche evangelicali negli Stati Uniti. Sono loro che con più zelo promossero e motivarono il movimento sionista. L’idea-guida del sionismo millenarista è che Israele ha un diritto divino a catturare l’intera Palestina. Se il piano si realizza, giungerà o tornerà il Messia. Questo univa nell’800 sionisti ebrei e cristiani. C’era tuttavia un tranello insidioso: per i sionisti cristiani, il Messia arriva a condizione che gli ebrei alla fine si convertano in massa al cristianesimo.

Il sionismo colonizzatore è oggi in difficoltà. “Non in mio nome”, è scritto sugli striscioni degli ebrei che manifestano contro la nuova Nakba (“Catastrofe”, in arabo) che il governo Netanyahu infligge a Gaza come nel 1948. E che infligge in Cisgiordania dal 28 agosto.

Ciononostante i governi occidentali accettano l’equiparazione fra antisemitismo e antisionismo, per timore delle denigrazioni e manipolazioni della lobby. Quasi tutti hanno fatto propria la “definizione operativa” dell’antisemitismo adottata nel 2016 dall’International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (cosiddetta Definizione IRHA, legalmente non vincolante). Tra gli esempi indicati, l’antisionismo e le critiche di Israele. Il governo Conte-2 si è allineato nel gennaio 2020.

Difficile in queste condizioni monitorare e combattere l’antisemitismo. L’unica cosa certa è che la politica di Israele non solo svuota la Palestina e crea nuove generazioni di resistenti più che mai agguerriti, non solo rende vano l’appello ai “due popoli due Stati”, ma mette in pericolo gli ebrei in tutto il mondo. Nel lungo termine può condurre Israele stesso al collasso.

[no-passaran]

This is award-winning Israeli philosopher, public intellectual and polymath, Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz. He was appearing on the Israeli TV show Popolitika, back in 1992. Leibowitz argues with pundit Tommy Lapid, the father of Yair Lapid, former Israeli Prime Minister.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz argues that Israel is not a democracy after its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and that there are circles in Israeli society that possess a Judeo-Nazi mentality.

Transcription of the video's English subtitles under the cut.

Link to the tweet / Link to the video on IG.

It's interesting to hear the end of this clip. The other man is arguing that until Israel is burning Arabs (Palestinians), Leibowitz's comparison has no base. Leibowitz's answer is that, after the concentration camps (which Israel has used to jail Palestinians in for decades), burning them is the "prophecy". That is: after the dehumanization, ghettification, ethnic separation, and apartheid that Israel puts Palestinians through, the next step is genocide, and it can be seen before it happens because we know what leads to it. In the tweet above, journalist Samira Mohyeddin remembers this "prophecy" now that Israel is, indeed, burning Palestinians alive to kill them.

But it made me think of something else, too. The man arguing with Prof. Leibowitz says that this isn't the case because Israelis don't "burn millions of Arabs just for fun". And, again, this is another place where the "prophecy" has been fulfilled:

Israeli extremist groups linked to the government's party take families (including children) to boat tours to watch Gaza getting bombed and cheer on the deaths and suffering of Palestinians. To extremist Israelis, Palestinian death is fun.

I'm aware it isn't new, we've seen news like this for years, like this one from 2014:

But it goes to show how Professor Leibowitz was right. Regardless of wether you agree or not with his word choice or semantics, genocide is where all these decades of occupation, dehumanization, and apartheid were headed to.

Transcription.

Interviewer: In this situation where you get an award from the government that you referred to as the government of a Judeo-Nazi state. When you get The Israel Prize from that state, do you still think as you said here before, that this state is not a democracy?

Leibowitz: these are two different things. The first, since you raised that issue then I'm forced to respond to it even though I never found the need to respond on the matter, as if I said that the state is a Nazi state.

Interviewer: Judeo-Nazi.

Leibowitz: I used the term Judeo-Nazi to describe a certain MENTALITY which exists among certain circles. A Judeo-Nazi mentality indeed exists within certain circles.

Lapid: Would you go back on this statement for a better atmosphere while receiving the prize?

Leibowitz: the Judeo-Nazi mentality within certain circles is alive and well.

Lapid: Jews who burn millions of Arabs just for fun? Right, professor Leibowitz?! Certain circles whose wish is to establish concentration camps and burn Arabs in a crematorium...

Leibowitz: I do know that the State of Israel holds many thousands of Arabs in concentration camps.

Lapid: And once in a while places them in gas chambers and burns them?!

Leibowitz: I know that the State of Israel holds many thousands of Arabs in concentration camps!

Lapid: and then burns them...?! And places them in gas chambers... Professor Leibowitz?!

Leibowitz: I spoke very clearly! I know that the State of Israel holds many thousands of Arabs in concentration camps.

Lapid: And then burns them?! And puts them in gas chambers!

Leibowitz: That is your prophecy! That is YOUR future prophecy!

[mithliya]

noam chomsky and yeshayahu leibowitz predicted this level of dehumanisation many years ago.

[hazardous-waste-containment]

non-exhaustive list of sources that are imo especially interesting/thought-provoking, just really solid, or otherwise a personal favorite:

MISC

“Leaders and Martyrs: Codreanu, Mosley and José Antonio,” Stephen M. Cullen (1986)

“Bureaucratic Politics in Radical Military Regimes,” Gregory J. Kasza (1987)

A History of Fascism, 1914–1945, Stanley Payne (1996)

The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism, George L. Mosse (1999)

Fascism Outside Europe: The European Impulse against Domestic Conditions in the Diffusion of Global Fascism, ed. Stein U. Larsen (2001)

Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective, Michael Cook (2014)

MARXISM

“Crisis and the Way Out: The Rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany,” Mihály Vajda (1972)

“Austro-Marxist Interpretation of Fascism,” Gerhard Botz (1976)

“Fascism: some common misconceptions,” Noel Ignatin (1978)

“Gramsci’s Interpretation of Fascism,” Walter L. Adamson (1980)

ARGENTINA

“The Ideological Origins of Right and Left Nationalism in Argentina, 1930–43,” Alberto Spektorowski (1994)

“The Making of an Argentine Fascist. Leopoldo Lugones: From Revolutionary Left to Radical Nationalism,” Alberto Spektorowski (1996)

“Argentine Nacionalismo before Perón: The Case of the Alianza de la Juventud Nacionalista, 1937–c. 1943,” Marcus Klein (2001)

BRAZIL

“Tenentismo in the Brazilian Revolution of 1930,” John D. Wirth (1964)

“Ação Integralista Brasileira: Fascism in Brazil, 1932–1938,” Stanley E. Hilton (1972)

“Integralism and the Brazilian Catholic Church,” Margaret Todaro Williams (1974)

“Ideology and Diplomacy: Italian Fascism and Brazil (1935–1938),” Ricardo Silva Seitenfus (1984)

“The corporatist thought in Miguel Reale: readings of Italian fascism in Brazilian integralismo,” João Fábio Bertonha (2013)

CHILE

“Corporatism and Functionalism in Modern Chilean Politics,” Paul W. Drake (1978)

“Nationalist Movements and Fascist Ideology in Chile,” Jean Grugel (1985)

“A Case of Non-European Fascism: Chilean National Socialism in the 1930s,” Mario Sznajder (1993)

CHINA

Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925–1937, Maggie Clinton (2017)

CROATIA

“An Authoritarian Parliament: The Croatian State Sabor of 1942,” Yeshayahu Jelinek (1980)

“The End of “Historical-Ideological Bedazzlement”: Cold War Politics and Émigré Croatian Separatist Violence, 1950–1980,” Mate Nikola Tokić (2012)

EGYPT

“An Interpretation of Nasserism,” Willard Range (1959)

Egypt’s Young Rebels: “Young Egypt,” 1933–1952, James P. Jankowski (1975)

“The Use of the Pharaonic Past in Modern Egyptian Nationalism,” Michael Wood (1998)

FRANCE

“Mores, “The First National Socialist”,” Robert F. Byrnes (1950)

“The Political Transition of Jacques Doriot,” Gilbert D. Allardyce (1966)

“National Socialism and Antisemitism: The Case of Maurice Barrès,” Zeev Sternhell (1973)

“Georges Valois and the Faisceau: The Making and Breaking of a Fascist,” Jules Levey (1973)

“The Condottieri of the Collaboration: Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire,” Bertram M. Gordon (1975)

“Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist,” Thomas Sheehan (1981)

GERMANY

“A German Racial Revolution?” Milan L. Hauner (1984)

“Abortion and Eugenics in Nazi Germany,” Henry P. David, Jochen Fleischhacker, and Charlotte Höhn (1988)

“Nietzschean Socialism — Left and Right, 1890–1933,” Steven E. Aschheim (1988)

The Brown Plague: Travels in Late Weimar and Early Nazi Germany, Daniel Guérin, tr. Robert Schwartzwald (1994)

“Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism,” Ian Kershaw (2004)

HAITI

“Ideology and Political Protest in Haiti, 1930–1946,” David Nicholls (1974)

“Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s State Against Nation: A Critique of the Totalitarian Paradigm,” Robert Fatton, Jr. (2013)

IRAN

“Iran’s Islamic Revolution in Comparative Perspective,” Said Amir Arjomand (1986)

IRAQ

“Arab-Kurdish Rivalries in Iraq,” Lettie M. Wenner (1963)

“From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State,” Cole Bunzel (2015)

“Iraqi Archives and the Failure of Saddam’s Worldview in 2003,” Samuel Helfont (2023)

ISRAEL

“The Emergence of the Israeli Radical Right,” Ehud Sprinzak (1989)

“Max Nordau, Liberalism and the New Jew,” George L. Mosse (1992)

The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949, Joseph Heller (1995)

““Hebrew” Culture: The Shared Foundations of Ratosh’s Ideology and Poetry,” Elliott Rabin (1999)

“Israel’s fascist sideshow takes center stage,” Natasha Roth-Rowland (2019)

“‘Frightening proportions’: On Meir Kahane’s assimilation doctrine,” Erik Magnusson (2021)

ITALY

“The Fascist Conception of Law,” H. Arthur Steiner (1936)

“The Goals of Italian Fascism,” Edward R. Tannenbaum (1969)

“Fascist Modernization in Italy: Traditional or Revolutionary?” Roland Sarti (1970)

“Fascism as Political Religion,” Emilio Gentile (1990)

“I redentori della vittoria: On Fiume’s Place in the Genealogy of Fascism,” Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (1996)

JAPAN

“A New Look at the Problem of “Japanese Fascism”,” George M. Wilson (1968)

“Marxism and National Socialism in Taishō Japan: The Thought of Takabatake Motoyuki,” Germaine A. Hoston (1984)

“Fascism from Below? A Comparative Perspective on the Japanese Right, 1931–1936,” Gregory J. Kasza (1984)

“Japan’s Wartime Labor Policy: A Search for Method,” Ernest J. Notar (1985)

“Fascism from Above? Japan’s Kakushin Right in Comparative Perspective,” Gregory J. Kasza (2001)

PARAGUAY

“Political Aspects of the Paraguayan Revolution, 1936–1940,” Harris Gaylord Warren (1950)

“Toward a Weberian Characterization of the Stroessner Regime in Paraguay (1954–1989),” Marcial Antonio Riquelme (1994)

ROMANIA

“The Men of the Archangel,” Eugen Weber (1966)

“Breaking the Teeth of Time: Mythical Time and the “Terror of History” in the Rhetoric of the Legionary Movement in Interwar Romania,” Raul Carstocea (2015)

RUSSIA

“Was There a Russian Fascism? The Union of Russian People,” Hans Rogger (1964)

“The All-Russian Fascist Party,” Erwin Oberländer (1966)

“The Zhirinovsky Threat,” Jacob W. Kipp (1994)

Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements, Stephen Shenfield (2000)

“Why fascists took over the Reichstag but have not captured the Kremlin: a comparison of Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia,” Steffen Kailitz and Andreas Umland (2017)

SLOVAKIA

“Storm-troopers in Slovakia: the Rodobrana and the Hlinka Guard,” Yeshayahu Jelinek (1971)

SPAIN

“The Forgotten Falangist: Ernesto Gimenez Cabellero,” Douglas W. Foard (1975)

Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977, Stanley Payne (1999)

“Spanish Fascism as a Political Religion (1931–1941),” Zira Box and Ismael Saz (2011)

SYRIA

The Ba‘th and the Creation of Modern Syria, David Roberts (1987)

TURKEY

“Kemalist Authoritarianism and fascist Trends in Turkey during the Interwar Period,” Fikret Adanïr (2001)

“The Other From Within: Pan-Turkist Mythmaking and the Expulsion of the Turkish Left,” Gregory A. Burris (2007)

“The Racist Critics of Atatürk and Kemalism, from the 1930s to the 1960s,” İlker Aytürk (2011)

UNITED KINGDOM

“Northern Ireland and British fascism in the inter-war years,” James Loughlin (1995)

“‘What’s the Big Idea?’: Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists and Generic Fascism,” Gary Love (2007)

“Why Fascism? Sir Oswald Mosley and the Conception of the British Union of Fascists,” Matthew Worley (2011)

UNITED STATES

“Ezra Pound and American Fascism,” Victor C. Ferkiss (1955)

“Populist Influences on American Fascism,” Victor C. Ferkiss (1957)

“Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American Hybrid,” Peter H. Amann (1983)

“Silver Shirts in the Northwest: Politics, Personalities, and Prophecies in the 1930s,” Eckard V. Toy, Jr. (1989)

“Women in the 1920s’ Ku Klux Klan Movement,” Kathleen M. Blee (1991)

“‘Leaderless Resistance’,” Jeffrey Kaplan (1997)

“The post-war paths of occult national socialism: from Rockwell and Madole to Manson,” Jeffrey Kaplan (2001)

“The Upward Path: Palingenesis, Political Religion and the National Alliance,” Martin Durham (2004)

“The F Word: Is Donald Trump a fascist?” Dylan Matthews (2021)

“Castizo Futurism and the Contradictions of Multiracial White Nationalism,” Ben Lorber and Natalie Li (2022)

[unitedfrontvarietyhour]

"Fascism was a monster born of capitalist parents. Fascism came as the end-product of centuries of capitalist be---lity, exploitation, domination, and racism—mainly exercised outside Europe."

- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)

"The occupation will take us from a proud and rising nationalism to a messianic, radical nationalism. The third step will be barbarism. The last step will be the end of Zionism."

- Yeshayahu Leibowitz

[imaginesyphilishappy]

Jewish protestors gather in the CA State Capitol Building to demand their representatives take a stand for a permanent and just ceasefire.

They sing words from the prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah)

"And into plowshares turn their swords, nation shall make war no more!"

לֹא יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל גוֹי חֶרֶב לֹא יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה

[anaxerneas]

Yet these formal academic appointments formed but one side of his work, and far from the most public, for in addition Leibowitz taught Jewish thought, whether in an academic context, in small study groups, or on television and radio, with a number of these broadcasts and study-group notes having since been published.

But aside from these activities and his being editor in chief of several volumes of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, it was for his political interventions that Leibowitz would gain most notoriety on the Israeli public scene, whether in his criticism of the religious parties as the “kept mistress” (Judaism, 115) of the Israeli government, his argument as early as 1968 that Israel should withdraw from the newly-occupied West Bank and Gaza strip, or his public call for conscientious objectors from the time of the Lebanon war of 1982 and subsequently in the Palestinian territories. Leibowitz’s ability to stir up public controversy was in evidence as late as 1993, the year before he died, in a speech to the Israel Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, where he reiterated his call on soldiers to refuse to serve in the Territories, using, not for the first time, highly provocative language comparing special units of the Israeli army to the SS. The speech followed the announcement that he was to receive the Israel prize – the country’s most prestigious civilian award – in recognition of his life’s work, a move that precipitated an appeal to the Supreme Court, and a threat to boycott the ceremony by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Leibowitz, however, saved everyone further embarrassment by declining the award.

Daniel Rynhold, Yeshayahu Leibowitz

[eretzyisrael]

By Judith Sudilovsky

A permanent exhibition gallery will present rare heritage treasures of the Jewish people and Israeli society on a rotating display, alongside items from the Islam & Middle East and the Humanities collections. 

A special display table for documents from the library’s archival collections was painstakingly created by permanent exhibit curators Netta Assaf and Yigal Zalamona to safely exhibit writings by great Jewish and Israeli writers, creators and thinkers, including S.Y. Agnon, Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Prof. Nechama Leibowitz, the poet Rachel, Leah Goldberg, Uri Zvi Greenberg, David Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua, Eli Amir, Jacqueline Kahanov, Rabbi A.Y. Kook, HaHazon Ish, and others.

Displayed items commemorating moments from history include the first draft of “Jerusalem of Gold” by Naomi Shemer; the note found on poet and fighter Hannah Szenes (Senesh) on the day of her execution by Nazi firing squad; a letter sent as a young man by Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, to Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz and his response; and writer Stefan Zweig’s suicide note.

Small details

Funding for the new building came from the Israeli government in partnership with Yad Hanadiv – the Rothschild Foundation, the Gottesman Family of New York, and individual donors from Israel and abroad.

The architects, who are not Jewish, invested great energies in learning about Jerusalem, Israelis, and Jewish culture and traditions before they started the project. 

Once the work began, project manager Ephrat Pomerantz worked in close coordination with the Swiss architectural firm and local executive architects Mann Shinar to bring to life the vision the library staff had when they first embarked upon the renewal project 30 years ago to make the NLI more accessible and independent of the Hebrew University.

[femmchantress]

Yeshayahu is here to remind us that sometimes our relationship with God is not too dissimilar from a loving Mommy Domme

[schlagerkopf]

Ableben

On paper, I’m supposed to despise Naftaly Bennett, very much so. But I don’t. I think he’s a solid dude. His external look gives me some kind of chill vibe. He’s got that Cheshire cat look. He’s the type of person I want to dance with, soaked in sweat, in a wedding or a big event.

Maybe it’s not Bennett I should despise, but his manager – the genius who came up with the elections slogan “Something new is happening”. This insanely transmittable slogan that showed on buses and other random places I’ve been and went these last few months has kept reminding me that terrible moment in which I was given the bad news that “something new is happening”.

It happened today exactly one year ago. Friday night, 15th of June 2012. I was 26, two months and four days. Lying on my bed, my old N95 phone from 2007 was stuck to my left ear. My airconditioner was making noises of working, hardly making anything cool – I wasn’t cool in any way, not the situation, not me. On the Friday night news in the living room, my parents were watching the panelists laughing about something, while I was slowly dying in my sinking bed. The room was lit only by the hour on the digital counter on the TV cable transmitter – eternalizing the hour in which love died. I won’t be 100% true if I will argue it is exactly what she said – “something new is happening”. Maybe it was “something is beginning”. Her stream of words continued without pause, her voice sounding as if she is a little unsure, trying not to hurt – but knowing how much it hurts, how much pain it brings about.

“He’s not sleazy, he’s really sweet”.

And then started my elegant pleas for another chance:

“I love you”

“Give love another chance”

“Please”

And the likes.

That also had a pretty built-in response, that was pretty much based around “too little, too late”.

“It’s over Amir, you do not hear how many ‘No’s’ I’m giving you in this conversation”.

Then: “Good luck in the exams”.

That’s it. Alles ist vorbei. I’m left alone, shocked, crying like a baby with my old ass phone, while everyone’s already got smartphone, and she’s probably going to kiss him and do other deeds that I will never ever do again with her in this dimension.

She tapped that long red thingy on iPhones to end the convo. For me it was a simple “END” button. And when they were hit, that’s it, it was over. One year and ten months. 18 months overall. 547 days. And that’s it. A little button is pressed, a little dance of a finger, and we turn from actuality to history. A notable part of two people’s lives has ended. One, as it seems, only wants to forget it. The other, good god, a 26 year old and 4 months man, crying like a baby.

  Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Israeli public intellectual who said interesting things. On one show in 1994 he was asked if he missed old Israeli politicians, from the age of those who built up and founded Israel. He answered with his special accent that hints he was not born in Israel himself, that he does not understand the question.

“I do not understand the question. What does it mean to miss a person?”

The person who asked the question tried to sharpen, resulting in Leibowitz simply saying:

“All of these – they were right for their hour. And we are dealing in this hour”.

I watched this some sad evening and it lifted me up immensely. Here’s a role model. What is it to miss someone, at all? What good does it do? It helps nothing, it’s not constructive. What was once, was. What matters is now.

If Leibowitz indeed didn’t miss anyone, he was a superhero of sorts, and the strongest one. Superman can fly, yeah, sure, but doesn’t he miss someone? And Spiderman? Doesn’t Batman miss his parents?

Missing is my kryptonite. It makes me weak. Especially when I am in my bed, full of memories and so empty, and especially if it happens in a late-night hour.

Missing is a sort of alchemy. It’s not something real, existing, it’s not something you can touch or smell. Mine is the worst kind of longing. It’s for something that was but isn’t. I believe the Portuguese call it “Saudade”. You can miss your friend but you know you’ll see them next week. And you can miss your lover, knowing you’ll never see them again.

  It’s hard to write about breakups. I wrote her a letter two weeks after the breakup. It was six pages and I’ve included some chocolate and a flower. It didn’t help. Because writing about breakups is futile, in a sense.

It’s hard to write about breakups because seemingly there isn’t much to say. I mean, yeah, ok, there is, but what will I say? It’s a paradox seeing that I’m in the midst of writing a long piece about breakups. It also doesn’t go with the fact that if it weren’t for breakups, most music we would be listening to nowadays would be instrumental. So, let’s agree that there’s a lot to say about breakups but at the same time there isn’t – life is complicated like that. I can say that I am hurting so much but how will I transmit this pain to you, the reader? The longing, the pain, the regret, the heaviness on the chest at 2am, when you wake up from a dream where she still loves you, and you realize reality is here and she doesn’t anymore. She used to, a lot, but no anymore. No more “good morning” text messages.

And what can you say anyway? “Time heals”. “Many fish in the sea”. I spent all of summer 2012 depressed in my room, what a waste. Sleeping on the pillow she bought me for my 25th birthday. A 90s boombox she once found and gifted me on a random morning where we said goodbye with a kiss, five months before she dropped the bomb on me – if to quote the Gap Band.

On the morning of June 5th 2012, after she spent the night over at my place, we just kissed and she got into her car and left to work. It was just another goodbye. How was I to know it was the last one ever? That it’s the last time I ever see her? The last time I see her in a world where she loves me? In a world, in a galaxy, where she has love for me in her loving heart? I thought about this moment for so long, about our last kiss – not knowing it is our last kiss. Maybe she knew already? Just a kiss and she left. I was clueless. Like I always am.

  In university, I studied about Martin Heidegger the philosopher. The professor talked about a word in German named “Ableben”. Like many others in Deutsch, it has many meanings, one of them is “Came to an end.

I see the word as the following: “An idea that came to an end. An idea that died. The idea that was between her and me, love, has come to an end. Suddenly, one side decided it is over, and the other side must deal with that.

And that’s something I learnt about breakups in the sad year that I had since she said the words that ended up meaning “it’s over”. Breakups are TOTAL. That is why they are so hard to accept, why it’s so hard to let go. If you don’t accept the breakup you’re not in tune with reality. But reality doesn’t ask you. It’s a madness, like The Stranglers called it in their song “La Folie”. It’s crazy to think and cry about someone all the time, dedicating all that brain power to someone who, maybe on a good day, dedicates you two neurons. Why don’t you do something better with your time? It’s like dancing on a grave.

And here is the realness of “Ableben”. It’s not like somebody died. It’s an idea that died. It’s so abstract. No more good morning and night texts. No more emails that come in the right time in the middle of the day, filling you with love and hope. No more I love you’s, no more kisses and hugs. This all came to its bitter sad end at a certain moment.

I thought a lot about the moment in which love dies. I understand it’s a long process, stopping to love someone who you love dearly. You don’t stop loving in one second. But it feels like it’s some epiphany, some inner switch that you go to sleep loving Amir and you wake up not loving Amir anymore. And it’s so hard for me to fathom how you can stop loving someone you’ve shared so much with, that you were such close friends and lovers.

And it’s crazier that I lover her still, as I write these lines. Of course, not as strongly as I loved her last year, but I still love her. I’ll always love her, even if I don’t know who she is right now, she’s changed. I can feel closer to the woman in the grocery shop than her. And even though I am mad at her and understand that breakups exist and it’s part of life. I still can’t understand how you do that to someone who you call a friend. I stopped caring about the singing of the birds in the morning, and that’s the greatest loss.

And the memories, my my, the memories. They keep playing. It’s like self-torture. Some streets I won’t dare walk through in Tel-Aviv. The bench from August 2010 here we kissed on our first date. When something new was happening and nothing was ending. I still miss her and who she is and what we were. Our long hugs every time we met. And I regret my actions that led her to another’s arms. And still I bite my lips whenever I pass by that garden where we shared our first kiss and look at the empty bench and grass and try to understand that feeling that is so amorphic, knowing that something is dead and that something else, new, has begun, and that new thing is the most beautiful thing in the world but you’re not part of it, you’re dead in the water; for me the new thing died, and I continue staring at the “Game Over” screen.