AFnewsAn interview more current than ever taken in January 2018
Appeared in Romania in Critical Point No. 01 / 2018 March 31, 2018 and in Israel in Gazeta Românească
Overwhelmed by the charm of Tel Aviv in the 20s, with the vision of the Bezalel School… Visiting a certain Tel Aviv, that of FANIA OZ, who was our guide, that of Mrs. NILY OZ, the one who welcomed us with the sun in her arms in Meir Park, at the end of Bialik Street, a street whose architects, Koplevitz, Levy or Baerwald, planned the white buildings, profiled against the magical background of the serene Mediterranean and which illuminate matter in a spiritualized form. The oriental motifs of Reuven Rubin or Nahum Gutman, subtly adopted by the local Art Nouveau or Jugendstill, vibrate in the fresh air of the day. Then, here we are at AMOS OZ’s home, in this Temple of the Book in Ramataviv where he officiates, with simplicity and gentleness, not an ascetic of the pen, but a man of our days who enchants us with the courage to look Israel in the eyes . We are his guests, here, like in his books that gave us enchanted moments, the students of PAIDEIA, the school led today by his daughter, FANIA OZ SALZBERGER, our guide through the Tel Aviv of poets, painters and architects of the beginning of modernity. We try to touch the water and the wind, we experience scenes and events from his books and, suddenly, a perfect peace comes over us…
I.A.: What is Israel for AMOS OZ: A Tale of Love and Darkness where you Don’t Call It Night…?
AMOS OZ: Israel is a dream come true. Disappointment does not necessarily come from the nature of Israel. But from the nature of the dream. The moment you fulfill your dream, you feel a slight disappointment that what happened is not as wonderful as the original dream. It is an important element when you reflect on the reality of this country. It was born from a dream, not from demographic, geographical or other considerations. And like any dream, it cannot live up to the monumental expectations of those who dreamed it. It was not born from a single dream, but from a whole spectrum of dreams. A huge variety of plans, ideologies, intentions, fantasies, beliefs. If someone asks me what is the definition of a true Zionist, I cannot exclude fanatics, extremists, lunatics, chauvinists. I cannot remove them from the sphere of Zionism. Among the early Zionists were some who wanted to rebuild this land as a replica of the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon. With the Temple in the center, with the Royal Palace not far from the Temple, a nation of priests, farmers and soldiers. The biblical nation. There were others, mainly from Eastern Europe, who dreamed of creating here a replica of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish stetl of Eastern Europe, but safe from pogroms, persecution, discrimination, and the daily fears of non-Jews. There were the Jews from North Africa, who dreamed of recreating here, in Israel, a kind of religious state, but not fanatical, conservative, utopian, with a Jewish-Oriental-Arab living environment. Peacefully integrating the Arabs, speaking the Hebrew-Arabic idiom, preserving behaviors specific to the Middle East. While others dreamed of creating an Austro-Hungarian paradise here. Theodor Herzl was one of them. Proper manners, people talking to each other as “Herr Doktor, Frau Direktor”… Peace and quiet between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, Franz Josef’s Austria-Hungary in the middle of the East… Others, quite different, dreamed of creating a paradise here Marxist. An egalitarian paradise created by the Jews of Soviet Russia. Others had in mind a kind of secular, progressive, tolerant, individualistic Scandinavian social democracy. Others believed in a Jewish colonialism in the good sense. The Europeans coming to save the East from poverty and disease. Bringing light and progress to the Arab world, which would eventually Europeanize. They will build large farms where they will work alongside the Arabs fairly and all will benefit from the fruits of their labor. There were also some fascist Zionists, a very small group inspired not by Hitler, but by Mussolini in his early phase, they dreamed here of a centralist, nationalist, patriotic, militaristic state. I could talk a lot about the very different dreams of the early Zionists. But how can all these exist together? What did all these dreamers have in common if their dreams were so different? They even contradicted each other. Like water and fire. As if trying to create the impossible. How could this dream be created if everyone came up with a different plan? It seems like a joke, a comedy. A farce. There had to be a common denominator. It’s a naïve folk song known to generations of pioneers, Nily’s parents, my parents, that says: “Here, in the land of our ancestors, all our dreams will come true.” No matter how many and different the dreams were, they all agreed that they would be fulfilled here and not elsewhere. Not in Europe, because Europe, for centuries, was a very hostile place. And in the 20th century it became unbearable. Not in the Islamic world, not in the Arab world because of the rise of nationalism, chauvinism, xenophobia. And these Jews from Eastern Europe were the first Zionists to come here, and later Zionists came from Germany, then from North Africa, from Iraq, from Yemen. They could not agree. And it was very hard, but not the end of the world. And it was a choice between an intense life in a country of contradictory dreams and a country where everyone has the same dream, the same vision, the same plan. I prefer polyphony. The very cacophony, the very sound of screaming. Even violent disputes between Jews and Jews. Right in the heart of this country there are religious and secular, Jews and Arabs, rich and poor, Sephardic and Ashkenazi, so many contradictions…
I.A.: Can we reach a perfect Peace in the Holy Land?
AMOS OZ: This country is very small. And this small country had to be the only home of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The Jews have never had a homeland apart from this. But it is also the land of the Palestinian people, and they have no other country. They are not Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, and they lived very hard as refugees in these countries. Currently Israeli Jews have nowhere to go and they are not going anywhere. Neither do the Palestinian Arabs. After a hundred years of fighting we cannot live together to make love, not war. Maybe in the future, but not now. And the solution is to divide this small house into two smaller apartments. Let’s stop shooting each other, stop terrorizing each other. I think that this country, this land of the two nations must be a condominium. A house with apartments. Not a shared bedroom. I believe in honest compromises. In my opinion, compromise is life, and its opposite is anarchy and death. We have to find very creative solutions for these distinct territories. We must make multi-faith places accessible to all faiths, without a single control. I believe in the need to integrate all Israeli citizens politically, socially, economically within Israeli society. Jews will also be able to live in the Palestinian territories, close to the holy sites. Not as masters or colonizers. They could live as equal Palestinian citizens or as Israelis resident in Palestine.
I.A.: Opening the Black Box of your narrative, is Zikhron Ya’akov a symbol of the heroism of the Romanian Jews who came here to build a country, through work and facing the dangers of nature and Ottoman rule? What does Zikhron Ya’akov mean to you?
AMOS OZ: Zikhron Ya’akov is the place I love. And I love it not only because I have family there. And Nily has an ancestor there who came from Romania and who was one of the fathers of this settlement and who is buried there. And one of his grandsons went to the old cemetery and found his grave. This place means a lot to me and was the setting for a novel I wrote and a non-fiction book. But you know, when I write a story or a novel I can’t write in terms of a “representation”. I don’t consider how representative a place or another is, what interests me is that this background and the characters have a connection… Each of those in this room has a history that goes far beyond the moment in which they were born . I don’t dedicate my books to one or the other, I leave these things to the sociologists… For me, all history begins with the characters. I don’t know where they come from, but when they start talking to each other, interacting, I know that’s the action. The question about Zikhron Ya’akov is very attractive, and I could very easily talk about the fact that the place is, indeed, a symbol. But I am a storyteller, and when I tell a story about Zikhron Ya’akov, it is beyond emblem or representation. Not a single place in Israel is a representation. By this I mean that Jerusalem is Jerusalem, that Tel Aviv is Tel Aviv, and that Arab place near Tel Aviv called Kafr Qasim is another Israel. And not far from here are illegal refugees from Africa. This is a completely different Israel. So general things cannot be said about places like Zikhron Ya’akov. That’s because Israel, the biggest small country, is basically of infinite variety.
Photos: Irina Airinei Vasile
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