Excerpt from The First Tithe by Dr. Israel Eldad:
And I also got up that night, to see what was so humorous.
Had I overcome the desire which drove me to go look at the crowds of Jews, celebrating what was not worth celebrating, still I would have looked, because the walls had fallen. Had I still been living in the Ramat Gan orchard-corner, or on the edge of Bnei Brak, where I was for the last three months of 5707, then I probably would have sat over a cup of coffee with a little cream on top, listening to the “dramatic” U.N. vote. I would have peacefully thought whatever thought I had, and lain me down to sleep, allowing the turbid cream to settle, and rising the next day to again see everything with the wise and cruel eyes of a Fighter for the Freedom of Israel. Except that to do this is impossible if one lives in a new apartment on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff street, only a few feet from the Casit Café, the center of the riotous celebration marking the U.N. vote for a Jewish “state.”
“On this spot, in the Hebrew city last to suffer and first to celebrate, the abandonment knows no bounds.
“For the first time I abandon myself, unburdening myself of the constraints imposed by underground caution; and I descend to roam and see the nation at its worst. They can barely finish singing HaTikva, for all the throats have burst from shouting, all the windows have burst, all the gates of the houses have burst, all the radios have burst and their volume has been raised to the maximum and the loudspeakers are screaming from every corner. Dizengoff street is no longer a street, the houses are no longer houses, and men are no longer men who can step where they please, quietly and while thinking. Everything is swept up in the ever-growing riot that is encompassing all. Women are running with babies in their arms, houses are dancing with flags waving, the honking of cars competes with the wordless, tuneless shriek:
“Yaaaaayyyyyy!” howls the joy.
“Yaaaaayyyyyy!” howls the cultured progressivity of Casit.
“Yaaaaayyyyyy!” The singer spins his dissonant rhythms: “I don’t care, what do I care, what difference does it make to me? And really I don’t care, what do I care, what difference does it make? Is there a choice? There is no choice! Long live the ‘state’.”
I continue.
Yesterday, I had still been afraid to cross the corner of Frishman and Dizengoff in the daylight. Café Pinati is there, where the members of the Hagana Intelligence sit, just as progressively as those in Casit, though somewhat lagging in culture. Anyone who fights against the British and for the freedom of Israel must stay far away from both these cafés. Tonight there is no fear. Tonight no one at Pinati will get up to spy on you. Not because their jobs have ended tonight. They will yet have their hands full with work, and full with Jewish blood, in the course of the winter that follows the U.N. decision. But tonight, tonight they are drunk. With abandon, continuously as if strung together, the bottles are broken on the ground. Independence! The dogs of MacMichael and Barker have been freed from their leashes. Freedom.
I pass by and continue, in loathsome anger. I had come down to see the happiness of the Jews.
And on a simple level there was happiness. The simple, apolitical happiness of Jews, happiness of “we will have a state” of our own. Yes, many of those who are happy today were only yesterday scornfully turning up their noses at the word “state,” either because they did not believe it possible or because they did not believe it necessary when they were thinking soberly. Tonight they are dancing and happy. Their understanding has passed along with their sobriety. A “Jewish state,” the magical words of the past decades.
Below this level lay another, and it dominated the night. Abandonment.
You see it in the formlessness of the happiness, the lack of all self-restraint normally present in deep happiness. As if demonstrating the psycho-physiological truth that pleasure is only the release of tension.
The tension had been so great these past years, even if not of one kind. The massacre in Europe, the danger of a German invasion, the Underground war of liberation and all that it involved: assassinations, curfews, searches, gallows, demonstrations, illegal immigration, the fear of pogroms, the threat of civil war. Only a very few are ready to continue on and on with this kind of tense life, for their characters are of steel and their nerves of steel are tightly strung, from the depth of suffering all the way to the distant messiah; and on these steel paths the messiah will definitely come. But they are few. The nation is a nervous nation. It cannot wait more than forty days for Moshe to return. A mixed multitude does not withstand the suffering of desert and fire. A mixed multitude wants rest; whatever happens – happens, just let there be rest. A decision, period. A large state or a small one, with Jerusalem or without, the main thing is: an end to this tension, to this “cycle of blood,” as it is called by the right- and left-wing bourgeoisie, which wants stability, stability, stability. These months, the tension has risen, naturally and also artificially, in anticipation of the U.N. decision. Naturally, as for a condemned man waiting to hear his sentence; artificially, by the Zionist leadership, which has always grasped at all sorts of dates and committees and meetings. Indeed, they are their life and the length of their days and they will meditate and hang their hopes upon them, day and night, day and night. They can use them to avoid fighting. They can use them to gore the “separatists” who are “stabbing us in the back” “just” “in these decisive days.” And what will happen if Heaven forbid a positive decision fails to be taken? Then they will have no choice and they will have to “struggle” again… if no new savior appears on the horizon in the form of a special session of the Zionist Congress or another committee.
In the midst of this tension and the suffering, which is so natural during a war of liberation, comes the U.N. vote. Any vote whose outcome is unknown contains some hazard, some gamble, and now the masses of Israel stand in this hazard-filled tension and watch: Will they win the gamble, will they be given a state or not?
Millions of Jews are standing all around the world, thousands of Israeli youth are standing, healthy as cedars, wonderfully combat ready, prepared to sacrifice, and they are standing with their hands in their pockets and their mouths open, watching… how Costa Rica will vote. Costa Rica. Costa Rica. On them, on the votes of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, our fate is dependent, whether there will be a State of Israel. Our youth is standing and counting: “Four, already, are for us, and one is against. What about Siam? Where is Siam? Siam? Siam is missing. Siam is wonderful! And ink gushes, pens run to the paper, counting, counting. How many now? Hurrah! Nicaragua voted for us. Nicaragua voted that the descendants of Avraham and Yitzhak and Yaakov and David and Yishayahu and Yehuda Maccabi should also have a state. Hurrah. Nicaragua.”
Where exactly is this Nicaragua? What kind of a nation is it? Who knows? Ask one, two, three, ask thousands of people from among the mobs waiting for Nicaragua’s decision, ask them: “What is Nicaragua? No one knows. No one knows. But that is not important. Long live Nicaragua, it is on our side.”
Ours. Do not get confused with geography and history. If Nicaragua and Costa Rica will Heaven forbid be against us, then there will not be a Jewish state and millions of Jews will be very sad, and only the Arabs will have a state. State? Seven, eight states.
Suddenly, curses: “Cuba, be damned! Cuba voted against. Anti-Semites. And when the big ones vote – people lose their minds. The United States – for. Long live democracy! The Soviet Union – for. Long live the great Russian Revolution!”
And I, too, and am happy, for the triumph of our orientation. We were first.
Waves rise and fall, rise and fall. The hearts beat, beat. “How many now, how many for us now? And how many against? How many are needed? Thirty? Thirty-two?”
When I was a child, Abba used to play cards with me on Hanukkah, the “31” game, and my heart used to beat like this when I got to twenty-four or twenty-five. Will I get thirty-one, the magical thirty-one?
Today, having behind us a heroic war of liberation against the British Empire, we stand like a doltish herd and dance circles around every vote on our behalf? Today, after all our experience, after we have seen the worthlessness of the votes of such institutions, institutions which strut for a day and whose decisions are of momentary significance, we still grasp at them? Still, and to such a extent? With such determination? With such belief?
The association I make with the golden calf was not born that night, and I did not father it. It was brought to my attention by Uri Zvi Greenberg, who with the glance of an eagle encompassed distances, distances in time, and who lived with the past as if it had happened before his eyes. He said to me: “Only once before has the nation experienced such a horror, such an abomination, like the dancing of that night. The dancing around the golden calf must have looked the same.”
Dr. Israel Eldad
