Why are we having difficulty coming to tems with this reality, the realization of how much we are hated ? As a student growing up in Britain I took part in demonstrations against racism, prejudice and fanaticism wherever it appeared in favor of tolerance and universality. A new era in which the post war hopes of building a brave new…
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) holds a very special place in Jewish historiography and mythology. It is true that there was, traditionally, antagonism towards ‘Greek Wisdom.’ He passed through the Land of Israel on his way to Egypt although Jerusalem was not on his route. And from there he went on to conquer Persia and got as far as India. He died in…
A murder During the British Mandate
Alexander Rubowitz, a sixteen-year-old Jerusalemite left his home on May 6, 1947, and never returned. He came from a very religious family in the Charedi quarter of Meah Shearim. He had joined Lohamei HaHerut b’Yisrael “the Freedom Fighters for Israel,”popularly known as Lehi. After the Second World War, antisemite Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, introduced stringent means to quell the rising violence against the British presence in…
Eric Hoffer
Following my piece about Franz Fanon, here is one about another very unusual but influential and almost forgotten idealist, Eric Hoffer. He was a brilliant, non-conformist, self-taught intellectual. He was highly critical of mass political movements. His thinking is so relevant to the intellectual madness and corruption that has infected the intellectual world today. He is not to be confused…
Shlomo Ben Yosef (1913-1937)
Once again, we find ourselves torn between negotiation or warfare. Over 80 years ago under the British mandate Jews were divided in what was then called Palestine. Ben Gurion favored real-politick and negotiation. While Begin preferred reacting to violence against Jews with violence. Who was right? It is till debated. There was, from the start of the twentieth century, tension between nationalists in both…
Frantz Fanon
As a student I was a fan of Frantz Fanon, a black Frenchman born in Martinique. He was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose work was and remains influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. For more than five decades, the life and works of Fanon have inspired national movements both political and racial. A good…