Shavit Revisited
Ari Shavit’s ‘My Promised Land. The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel’ was first published in English in 2013 and in Spanish in 2014. The book had a tremendous success and influence almost immediately. It somehow changed the idyllic and idealistic view of Israel by telling its story through the eyes and sensitivity of a leading, ideologically involved journalist. He had had access, through his career, to both protagonists and documents. But mostly, his own ideological commitment had lead him to formulate difficult questions and contradictions in regard to the history of Zionism and its realization in the State of Israel. As a bonus, it is also beautifully written.
But in 2016 Shavit’s aura declined sharply due to personal reasons which are irrelevant to this entry. I cannot assert as to the fate of the book in the years that followed, although I can guess its momentum somehow faded too. But not totally: Shavit’s chapter on the mixed city of Lod, for instance, had produced a new tourist product in Israel, the city of Lod and its social, demographic reality. We took the tour in 2016 and know it to be still very much in demand.
And then came October 7th, exactly ten years after Shavit’s book was published. If the book had shattered the ideals and dreams of many regarding Israel, what could we expect when instead of words we had to deal with facts? For those who believed in one half of Shavit’s perception, ‘triumph’, how could we face ‘tragedy’? And for those of us more inclined to perceive tragedy, how could we digest it when it had actually happened? Almost two years later we are still being challenged.
During these last two years we Jews have gone back to check on History, on the Bible, on the speeches of the founding fathers and mothers of Israel, on the words of wisdom of writers and intellectuals, on popular culture, songs, sketches… you name it. Almost instinctively, I went back to Shavit’s ‘My Promised Land’. Because even if I don’t live there, Israel is my home away from home.
I discovered not only that it was all already written in the book, in plain sight, black on white, but that is was also scarily premonitory. You can read the different chapters at random or with a certain criteria and order: each option will offer a different insight. You can choose some chapters and disregard others, you can deepen on certain issues to the detriment of others as well. The book, although chronological (as History books tend to be), is flexible. As far as genre, it is History, indeed; it is also journalism at top level. But it is also an essay and at some points as vivid as any thriller you’ve read.
In our congregation, the NCI of Montevideo (Uruguay), we’ve just finished a four-session workshop on ‘My Promised Land’ through the looking glass of October 7th. For this purpose we chose the following chapters: ‘Question Marks’; ‘Lydda, 1948’; ‘The Project, 1967’; ‘Settlements, 1975’; ‘Gaza, 1991’; ‘Peace, 1993’; ‘J’accusse, 1999’; and ‘Existential Threat, 2013’. I am conscious that some other chapters could have also contributed to understanding where we stand today as a nation facing the challenges we face. In fact, the advice is, of course, to read the whole book.
There are two reasons for picking some chapters and not others: on the one hand, you cannot go on forever; on the other, some chapters are hard to digest. ‘Up the Galilee’ is one of the fiercest and most honest testimonies I ever read from a Palestinian, but to include it in a time of war seemed just inflammatory. Furthermore: when we dealt with ‘Lydda’ I chose to leave out the Arab account of the flight from the city; perhaps I should also have left out the Israeli account of the violence and trauma. Shavit’s book does not spare nor compromise on truth.
I am sharing this experience here because I think that ‘My Promised Land’, read today, benefits us in two ways: one is cathartic; the other is intellectual. I will address the later.
Shavit builds his ‘narrative’ on one main premise: paradox. A paradox is an apparent logical contradiction which in the end, at some point, makes sense. Taking it further, to build a narrative based on paradox allows the reader to live within this paradoxical reality without surrendering to despair and lack of hope. Paradox is a way of understanding what happens around us. ‘Triumph’ and ‘tragedy’ are not opposite, but they can be read as a paradox. Israel is indeed a success story if there ever was one, and it is also deeply immersed in a tragic succession of events that shape its history and its character.
At this moment of discontent as Jews, Israelis, and Zionists, when ideology trumps pragmatism, when Gaza is becoming a sort of Afghanistan (or Vietnam), when hubris substitutes a healthy sense of pride, when our values are challenged every day by minorities who hold a disproportionate and ridiculous amount of power, it is good to stop for a few moments and look around, into the past, into ourselves. Ari Shavit’s ‘My Promised Land’ is a good path to take.
We cannot guess, much less predict, the future. We can exercise wishful thinking, but it is only that, wishful. Reality is far more complex, it is often paradoxical, sometimes even unsolvable, but we must learn to live with it, lest we choose to renounce our Jewishness and our Zionism. Which is not the case. The ‘minian’ that sat for four weeks to read and understand Shavit in the light of October 7th learned precisely that: that to remain Jewish and Zionist we have to remain learned and committed.
