Mihail Sebastian - For Two Thousand Years

I like Winkler’s sturdy calm, the suggestion of physical strength, and the rough appearance which in fact obscures how much he has learned by applying himself methodically and painstakingly. Someone once pointed out to me a report in a foreign Zionist magazine which Winkler had submitted on behalf of the Romanian delegation at the annual Zionist congress in Basel: the subject did not interest me, but I noticed how much work he had put into it, his sense of order and great ability in organizing documentary material.

‘A bureaucrat with a heart’ is how S.T.H. dismisses Winkler. S.T.H. is too passionate and unfair. And in the end I think Winkler’s worth lies not in what he is but in what he is not. He’s not a lunatic, or a metaphysician, or crippled with doubt, or poisoned by complex intellectual crises. To not be all these things, and yet be a Jew — there’s a challenge. I have the impression that Winkler is well up to it.

So, seeing him again, it occurred to me that he would have the answers to the questions troubling me lately — and though I have neither the appetite for nor practice in opening my heart, I talked about the events of recent days, of all my thoughts about the isolation of the Jew, and particularly of the Jewish intellectual, his isolation from the masses, and how poorly adapted he is for social reality and even life in general.

‘You believe in Zionism and working to found a new country. Has your conscience never grappled with this sterile feeling of Jewish aloneness? Don’t you feel this collective effort you’re mixed up in is somehow contrary to the nature of the Jew, who is destined to live an interior life and to be unable to break the shackle that holds him back from the world?

‘Forgive me, I realize what I’m saying is too abstract and pretentious, but follow me anyway. I’ll try to be clearer. Look, I think that in an enterprise like this, which involves building a country, an absolutely epic adventure when you get down to it, what really matters are not the practicalities — industry, economics, finance, raw materials — but something else, something in the realm of psychology or metaphysics, if that doesn’t alarm you. A bit of madness, a certain self-confidence, even a little recklessness. I wonder if we’re bringing too many problems with us, to a place where you should go with your sleeves rolled up for work. I don’t know, I’m not well informed and don’t try to be, because I don’t have much faith in figures, but without having thought deeply about Zionism, I believe it originates in an attempt to overcome our own futility. It’s really a tragic stab at salvation rather than a natural return to the land.

‘In recent days I’ve felt so ridiculous, having suddenly come face to face with life and these crowds, that when I think that there are young people like me who’ve put their books aside and gone to work with a pick-axe, in some terrible Palestinian colony, I ask myself if their departure is an act of heroism, as you probably believe, or just one of desperation.’

‘I don’t believe anything,’ replied Winkler. ‘I listen to you and see you don’t understand. Too much psychologizing, and I’ve no time for psychologizing. I’ve never had these kinds of doubts, to be completely honest with you.

‘I’ve always seen things clearly — I’ve always known what to do. I look at you, the way you get worked up, I look at S.T.H., how he chews things over, I look at lots of people and I just don’t understand. You worry about rebuilding the country and I don’t know how to respond. Maybe you’re right, maybe not, I’ve no idea. To me, the matter is natural, healthy and straightforward. I have no doubt that it’ll all work out, but I’m not in a hurry either. I work and wait.’

He stopped speaking, as though the discussion had come to an end, then, several beats later, added:

‘Listen, if you want to find out more, come with me on Thursday evening, to Jabotinski’s conference. He’s a dissident Zionist, terribly at odds with the central leadership as a result of his violent actions. He’s a strange sort, as you’ll see for yourself. During the war, he organized a Jewish military legion to fight to take Jerusalem. Come and hear him, maybe he can clear things up for you.’

*

I listened to Jabotinski, and he didn’t clear things up for me. But Winkler was right: he’s a sort. He has a clipped, unemotional style of speech that is at the same time lively and lucid and reveals that he is a natural fighter. Not much in the way of gestures, few smiles or frowns. A certain roughness of bearing, a lack of expressiveness even, which may well be deliberate. Lots of facts and figures, but enclosed within a few simple — vehemently simple — ideas. I’m no expert on Zionist politics, but I think I understood the main thrust of Jabotinski’s position regarding the movement’s official leadership.

‘The executive imagines,’ he said, ‘that Zionism can prevail through diplomacy. It starts with a legal fact: England’s mandate to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This term “homeland” strikes me as vague and unengaging. I’d prefer them to clearly say “state”. But, moving on. The central Zionist office thus believes that this legal document may provide a basis for its dealings with England, perhaps enabling it to gain land, to gain certain advantages and gradually achieve the movement’s political and national objectives. The strategy is simple: the Jews behave themselves, and the English will be magnanimous.

‘Well, this policy of haggling and hoping is for me the slow strangulation of the movement. Suicide. A national movement that hangs on a piece of paper is a recipe for death. We won’t become strong through a diplomatic pact, but through an inner creative spirit. With Lord Balfour’s letter or without, with a British mandate or without, it’s all the one to Zionism. Without the desire to create, without strength of will, Zionism amounts to absolutely nothing.

‘“But what is it you want to do?” ask the prudent Jews who’ve heard it whispered that I want to raise an army and start a war, or something to that effect. “Do you want to bring Great Britain to its knees? Do you want to destroy the English navy?

‘“Do you want to fight against submarines, torpedoes and the admiralty’s battleships?”

‘These Jews of ours are pretty smart, as you can see for yourself. But I can be smart too when needs be and this is how I answer: I don’t know what I want. I don’t know and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t sit and wonder what will work out and what it will be like. I just feel that things aren’t happening and the movement has to shift from international affairs to our own affairs. That we need purely spiritual strength rather than the backing of the force of law. That, in the end, the riskiest struggle for self-realization is a thousand times more productive, even when it fails, than the politest call for foreign goodwill, even when it succeeds.’

… And so on, for two hours. It was not a success. There were a lot of people, but they were disturbed, afraid even, of the speaker’s boldness.

In the end, in the street, Winkler clapped my shoulder and said, ‘Well?’

I didn’t know what to say. The man interested me, but the issue remained just as clouded. As it happened, we bumped into S.T.H. in the hall, and the three of us went to a café on the boulevard to talk.

S.T.H. was relentless.

‘A fascist, that’s what he is. And don’t ask me to consider him any less of a fascist because he’s a Jew. The idea of a Palestinian Jewish state, created through an act of national will — what an absurdity! And at the same time, what savagery! Don’t you see the machinations of the English in this whole business, a capitalist venture, which the massacred native Arabs and the Jewish proletariat of the colony will pay for, their very blood exploited in the name of the national ideal? Great Britain needs a right-hand man to guard the Suez Canal, so it’s invented this myth of a “Jewish homeland”. “Homeland” is too nice a word. No doubt some Quaker or Puritan came up with it. But millions of sentimental Jews have taken it at face value.