This post has also been published on Inktellect, Academic Studies Press’s blog.
Each year on May 7th, my father would remind the entire family that it was the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender. A slight smile would spread across his face, as if at that very moment the Nazi army had suffered defeat and announced unconditional surrender. Sometimes my mother would hand him a small piece of cake, and together they would celebrate the triumph of light over darkness, the forces of justice over the multitude arms of absolute evil.
My grandfather died in a labor camp in Transnistria. My parents, Berta and Moshe Barasch, survived the Holocaust. Through convoluted means, they avoided deportation to a labor camp and remained in the ghetto in Czernowitz for most of the war. Each day was fraught with life-threatening moments and a struggle to find food. As both were skilled painters, they forged documents to help people escape the terror of the Nazi regime. These harsh experiences shaped their worldview in various ways. One way was their perception of the world as a stage where collective—and not personal—forces operate. Their war-time experiences could certainly serve as the basis for a breathtaking thriller: My father joined forces that sought to open a new path in the Alps to rescue Jews from Europe, and my mother sailed on an illegal immigrant ship for over a month in the Mediterranean Sea. The ship docked at the Tel Aviv port on the day the United Nations voted to establish Israel. The weary refugees disembarked and joined in the communal dancing. Yet my parents tended to emphasize the fundamental historical reasons for their experiences: one group persecuting another group, the Allies acting against the countries supporting Nazi Germany, and of course, Jews being persecuted solely because they were Jewish.
Refugees docking the ship and walking to the shore, 1947
When discussing the Holocaust at home, they often wondered how the Jewish communities should have responded and how the Holocaust would affect the Jewish people in the future. They downplayed their own experiences, some of which only came to light years later. The main issue was the unfolding of the war and the genocide of Jews. An essential part of their self-perception was being part of the Jewish people. Any threat or harm to Jews somehow became a personal affront to them.
When they arrived in Israel (my father in 1947 and my mother in 1948), it seemed that their sense of collective belonging deepened further. Establishing a new state and the struggle for its existence generated a profound sense of being part of the future society. My father joined the Palmach, the military force fighting to establish a Jewish state, even though he was a painter and a man of letters; fighting for a homeland for the Jewish people was an obligation from which no man living in Israel was exempt. My parents also became members of Kibbutz Ein Harod. Many years later, when my father was an art historian dedicating almost all his time to research, my mother once told me, “You wouldn’t believe what a different person your father was in the kibbutz. He loved spending time with friends. Every evening he would hurry to meet kibbutz members and enjoyed their conversation very much.” Being part of the kibbutz was a positive experience, at least for some years. But even when my parents moved to Jerusalem, the sense of being part of Israeli society and sharing a common fate did not fade away. The living conditions were not easy. With a family of three children, we lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment. There wasn’t enough space for three beds in the children’s room. But participating in a significant historical process eased every difficulty. My father joined the Hebrew University and established the first art history department in Israel. My mother was a mathematics teacher. The entire family saw itself as an integral part of its environment. The deepest frame of reference to the world comprised being Jews and Israelis; there was hardly any room for other components.
I cannot pinpoint exactly when the first cracks appeared in our self-perception relying so heavily on the collective. Perhaps it was in the mid-1970s. In my family, the sense of pride and elation following the Six-Day War was replaced by deep reservations about Jewish settlement in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. The profound fear that gripped us when the Yom Kippur War suddenly broke out instilled doubt about the survivability of the Israeli state and imbued the lives of non-Israeli Jews with a certain charm. Additionally, the deep-seated tension between Ashkenazi Israelis and Sephardi Israelis that emerged abruptly eroded our sense of identification with the collective, namely, the State of Israel. The rise of the Likud to power in 1977 presented a fait accompli to Israelis with a social background like my family’s: the group they perceived themselves to be part of was only one segment of Israeli society, comprised of other parts they completely disagreed with. The sense of belonging previously so natural and intuitive became an issue that needed to be intellectually addressed in order to reach conclusions.
Black Panthers demonstrating in Jerusalem, 1975
Around those years, Israel began transitioning toward a more capitalist society. As it drew closer to the United States, principles such as individualism and self-fulfillment became part of the Israeli mindset. We were already living in Beit Hakerem, an upscale neighborhood in Jerusalem, where most residents were educated and financially well-off. My father, a professor of art history, taught at prestigious universities in the United States. We traveled to the United States and Europe, encountered novel ideas, and experienced the pleasures of the West. Israeli entrepreneurs began to establish start-ups that operated in the spirit of free market principles, concepts of economic efficiency shaped Israeli businesses, and the capitalist Western world became an ideal to aspire to.
My parents continued, of course, to see themselves as Jewish-Israelis. But in the personal, internal space where discussions about the sense of belonging take place, there was a little less room for the collective. Now, personal fulfillment and professional success were spreading, gradually pushing aside being part of Israeli society. In 1994, when the General Federation of Laborers, which had been a central force in building Israel, underwent a transformation and lost a significant part of its power, my mother said indifferently that the workers’ organization was corrupt and didn’t care about the workers anyway.
On November 4, 1995, the process of focusing on the personal self was momentarily halted. The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin held up a mirror to Israeli society, forcing it to acknowledge that it had, in fact, split into two parts now separated by a deep chasm. On one side stood a group that saw itself as part of the Western world and wanted Israel to be a modern liberal state. At that time, this group consisted of many Ashkenazi Israelis. On the other side was a group that wanted Israel to be a society with traditional religious values, and some of its members also aspired to dominate Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. This group was made up primarily of Sephardi Israelis, and a small group of religious Ashkenazi Israelis.
My parents, who had survived the Holocaust and experienced the wars in Israel, were shocked that an Israeli Jew could assassinate a prime minister in Israel. Possibly, this was the moment when they internalized that the Israel they felt a part of had changed beyond recognition and perhaps no longer existed in its original form. I believe the shock of Rabin’s assassination eventually intensified people’s focus on their personal lives and their gradual disengagement from the public sphere. The capitalist spirit, which had been gaining momentum, enabled some Israelis to achieve phenomenal success but it has also distanced them from the communal identity. The focus on personal fulfillment, even if unconsciously, expands the gap between one person and another.
In 2004, my father passed away. The renowned Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld eulogized him, beginning with, “Today, the Judean Mountains gather to their bosom one of their finest sons.” Although he mentioned my father’s life in Eastern Europe and his journey to Israel, he saw him as part of the landscapes of Jerusalem. He wasn’t referring to the Jewish people losing a loyal member, nor the State of Israel losing an enthusiastic Zionist, not even the Hebrew University losing a distinguished art historian. Appelfeld believed that the deepest connection existed between my father and the physical environment in which he lived for the last five decades of his life: the Judean Mountains, engulfed by the purest air in the evenings.
The transformation of Israeli society is an ongoing process, reshaping the sense of belonging to Israel—to the state, the country, the people, the landscape. Today, many of my children’s friends work in high-tech companies in Israel or aspire to join them. This sector of Israeli society has been flourishing over the past decades and is often regarded as the backbone of Israeli prosperity. Various companies offer their employees the opportunity to harness their talents and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle; but they also engage in intense competition with their peers, sometimes advancing and sometimes being laid off. Employers in this sector subscribe to the values of individualism, self-fulfillment, and occasionally teamwork among individuals driven by personal ambition. This environment, which often blurs social tensions, now encompasses both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Israelis.
Startup Village in Yokneam
One should not assume that high-tech workers do not feel Jewish or Zionist. On the contrary, the war that broke out in response to the events of October 7th proved that some are willing to sacrifice their lives for their country. However, the meaning of being a Zionist now includes words like “quality of life,” “highly skilled workers,” and “land value”— words entirely foreign to the spirit of the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who said that the State of Israel “must be built with hard work, dedication, and the collective effort of all Jews, united in purpose and spirit.”
Arguably, the recent threat to Israeli democracy is one outcome of the widening gap between individuals in Israel. Capitalist society allows many to achieve major accomplishments that would not have been possible in another social structure and creates more comfortable lives. However, its form of government, democracy, is more vulnerable to threats that necessitate collective actions to fend them off.
Intimate Solitude is a novel exploring the transformation of Israeli society between 1968 and 2016. Ben and Ofir, two childhood friends from Jerusalem, establish a medical equipment start-up. They overcome challenges and achieve great success, but the growing gap between them undermines their professional progress. The book delves into the relationships between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Israelis, military service, and coping with wars, as well as the decline of socialist values and the gradual rise of a capitalist world. Most importantly, it explores the shift in Israeli self-perception—the transition to a world where every individual acts in their own self-interest has far-reaching consequences: political, social, and personal. A third protagonist, Laurie, is a young Jewish woman who immigrates to Israel from the United Kingdom and marries Ofir. Her character reveals the complex attitude of world Jewry toward Israel. Her parents’ relationship with Israel is always ambivalent, containing both admiration and reservation. The turmoil in Laurie’s life, including her divorce from Ofir, enables her to discover a sense of belonging in Israel in an unexpected way.
The novel will be published in September 2024. It will be available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon.co.uk, Blackwell’s, Waterstones and all other good bookstores.
Leave a Reply