THE DAYS OF ZIKLAG Alter, Robert Judaism; Winter 1961; 10, 1; ProQuest pg. 3

THE DAYS OF ZIKLA.G THE ASSESSMENT OF AN IDEOLOGY

ROBERT ALTER

To hell with heroism. Who needs existence after twenty centuries of exile. heroism. A come-on for suckers. All But the soldiers in this novel tend to this flag-waving. Our hands have got see both the glorified state and their so knotted up waving old flags that own glorified role in another light: as they don't have the strength left to let go, to shake themselves loose, the same speaker puts it a moment later, when there's nothing glorious about "a weight of rhetoric like a millstone the flags any more. And instead of around your neck." just tossing away, really and whole­ The appearance, two summers ago, of heartedly, all the Hags, in order to S. Yizhar's The Days of Ziklag can be walk light and free-you go to your death for their sake, for the sake of taken as one of the significant cultural Hags that don't say anything. The events in Israel since the founding of hours of what's left of your life are the state. It would be a mistake to stooped and dreary under the proud imagine that the! novel marks anything Hag. like a turning-point, or the sudden be­ ginning of a crisis in Israeli thought, At first glance, this is hardly a sur- but The Days of Zik/ag-together with prising statement to find in a war­ the furor of debate raised in the Israeli novel published in 1958, or, for that press by its publication-put into a new matter, any time during the last forty sharp focus the whole tangle of prob­ years. But the familiar theme of em­ lems of what has been standard Zionist bittered disenchantment with causes ideology. S. Yizhar (pen-name for Yiz­ begins to look a little strange when we har Smilanski) is far from being a lone, realize in what war the speaker is fight­ embittered voice, or even a spokesman ing and ·which proud Hag it is that for simply an off-beat protest-group of doesn't say anything to him. This abju­ angry young Israelis. He has for some ration of causes is a typical moment time been widely regarded as the writer during a discussion among a small group of the younger generation in Israel. In­ of soldiers on a Negev hilltop, waiting tellectual circles in the new state waited in the blistering heat of a September impatiently for the completion and pub­ afternoon in 1948 for an Egyptian at­ lication of The Days of Ziklag, which, tack. The young men-none is older at long last, was to give them the epic than twenty-one-are part of the first novel of the Israeli-Arab War, and, generation of Jews in two thousand hopefully, the first great novel of Israel years to take up arms to defend their written by an Israeli-born author. Yiz­ own land. The cause for which they are har, on his part, (perhaps rather too fighting is the rebirth of Jewish national self-consciously) was laboring at his war- JUDAISl\f: A QUAR'TERLY JOURNAL

novel with the seriousness of a man out complaining that Yizhar had distorted to make literary history. By the time he the image of the young generation of completed his account of the seven-day fighters for freedom. The degree to struggle for a hill in the Negev, his which some of Yizhar's critics were emo­ on-and-0ff stream-of-consciousness novel tionally involved in the issues under de­ had run to two large volumes and 1143 bate is suggested by the oratorical fervor closely-printed pages. Israel's reaction to that creeps into Abraham Kariv's state­ this bulky addition to its bookshelves ment to the press explaining why he was, in the most intense areas of debate, voted against the novel on the prize­ little short of schizophrenic. (One paper committee. "Thousands of boys pur­ went so far as to print two different re­ chased victory for us with their lives ..." views of the novel side-by-side, one a and Yizhar dared to betray their reserved tribute and the other a violent memory. "The Days of Ziklag ••. tears attack.) Admirers of the book, particu­ down more than it builds." This notion larly the younger critics, acclaimed it as of a literature that ought to "build" was "the literary event of the

weil touched on most of the real techni­ diers siezes an Arab-occupied hill in the cal faults of The Days of Ziklag: its un­ Negev. Twice they are driven off the justified repetitiousness, its lack of char­ hill, but with reinforcements, they re­ acter differentiation, the indigence and capture it both times. The book ends monotony of the inner lives that we are after the Israelis have succeeded in re­ asked to follow through hundreds of pulsing an extended attack on the hill pages of interior monologue. But the by Egyptian forces. Judging just by this real weight of Kurtzweil's criticism was general scheme, we might conclude that brought to bear against the moral qual­ The Days of Ziklag was following the ity of the book. He accused it of cyni­ time-honored pattern of war-novels and cism, nihilism, narcissism, masochism, novels of action: failure I, failure 2, ulti­ exhibitionism, verbal onanism, to cite mate success. The book, in fact, departs some of his choicer invectives. Kurtzweil radically from the tradition of the popu­ may have had personal motives for ob­ lar war-novel in refusing in any way to jecting to Yizhar, but it is nevertheless capitalize on the inherent, reportorial indicative of the real danger some dramatic appeal of the events of the people in Israel sensed in this book that war. The author has worked out a nar­ a major critic felt obliged to bury it in rative technique whose very purpose is such a stream of Freudian dirty-names. to extract all trace of dramatic excite­ (Criticism of the Beatniks in America ment from the action described. He ac­ 'vas, by comparison, dispassionate, per­ complishes this principally by denying haps because nobody sensed in the Beat­ the continuity of experienced time. niks the same kind of seriously respon­ Time is fragmented into an endless suc­ sible protest against society that Yizhar cession of autonomous moments. "The represented in Israel.) If we put aside whole world is nothing but the bubble Kurtzweil's vocabulary of pathology, his of this moment. This hot moment. This moral claims against The Days of Ziklag cut-off moment. ... And you exist from ·were the same as those made by the one moment to the next, one moment other strenuous opponents of the book: after another. . . . This sickening time, Yizhar had given a distorted picture of this falling bridge." Living in a world his own generation because of his f unda­ of isolated moments is bound to produce mental cynicism and nihilism. If the two kinds of emotional states: a sense writer whom a good part of the young of being becalmed in time, helplessly Israeli intelligentsia looks on as its adrift, and a sense of apprehension at spokesman is really a nihilist, the ac­ what the next, unconnected moment claimed idealistic enterprise of the Zion­ will bring. And throughout the interior ist state would appear to be heading monologues and the long discussions in toward some very painful cultural dead­ The Days of Ziklag, boredom and fear end. How true the claims are, or what are the two principal themes. The hu­ general situation could have led to the man will, which must assume a tempo­ insistence on such claims, will become ral continuity in which to operate, is clear through a consideration of the pre­ paralyzed when time is completely frag­ cise nature of the protest made in The mented. Action can no longer be the Days of Ziklag. subject of the novel: its place is taken The plot-outline of this long novel is by a study of the emotions of boredom simple enough. A squad of Israeli sol- and fear. Now, working within this 6 JUDAISM: A QUARJTERLY JOURNAL

framework, Yizhar can do a rather eff ec­ hill was probably mistaken. The hill is tive job of deflating any heroic notions not Ziklag, David's Ziklag, the unique of the nature of war. But his novel is Ziklag of the Bible, but merely point of something more than just another de­ elevation 244 on the military maps, dis­ bunking of the heroic, or just another tinguished from other hills in other protest against the debasing, stultifying places only by the bland, linear distinc­ effect on the individual of modern war. tion that makes one number different Both the anti-heroic theme and the pe­ from the next. The name, however, has culiar metaphysic of time have special already stuck. The Israelis refer to their cultural significance in the context of anonymous hill in the Negev as Ziklag; present-day Israel. An examination of they capture Ziklag, run from Ziklag, the ironies bound up with the title of are parched and frozen, maimed and the novel will lead us into the ideologi­ killed on Ziklag-which is, after all, only cal implications of Yizhar's attitude to­ point of elevation 244. The final irony ward the heroic and toward time. is that, even if it were the real Ziklag of Ziklag was the city David used as his Biblical times, it wouldn't make the least center of operations after he and his difference to them. band of warriors had been driven into The most powerful exposure of the exile by Saul. The Biblical days of spuriousness of neo-Biblicism as a way Ziklag, like Yizhar's, were a period be­ to national consciousness occurs on the fore the Jewish state was fully estab­ evening of the first day. The Israelis, lished, when survfral demanded courage with all their ammunition gone, have and skill at arms. One of the more dis­ been forced to run for their lives in the tinctive members of Yizhar's squad ot face of a sharp Arab counter-attack. soldiers is a Bible enthusiast named They lie sprawled out on the ground, Barzilai. Barzilai is a not unlikely half-naked, exhausted, hungry, caked product of secular, nationalist edu­ with dust and sweat. Barzilai, out of the cation in Israel. He carries with him at best of intentions, chooses this moment all times his little pocket-Bible, and to read to the group something "the whenever he has the opportunity, he fellows would like" from the first chap­ pulls it out to leaf through it-looking ter of Second Samuel. not for "inspiration,'' as a devout Chris­ "Now it came to pass after the death tian might, but for an imaginative iden­ of Saul, when David was returning tification with Biblical personages and from the slaughter of the Amalekites; the places they lived in. So when the and David had abode two days in came even to pass on the group of Israeli soldiers takes possession Ziklag; It third day, that, behold, a man came of the hill, Barzilai becomes very excited out of the camp from Saul with his at the thought that this very hill might clothes rent, and earth upon his head; be the site of King David's Ziklag. and so it was, when he came to David, " 'Hey, if this is really Ziklag,' Barzilai that he fell to the earth and did obeisance. And David said unto him, insisted, 'and we're fighting on Ziklag, From whence comest thou? And he then it's a different story altogether!' said unto him, Out of the camp of But Nahum remained indifferent: 'It's Israel am I escaped. And David said not a different anything.' " Barzilai soon unto him, How went the matter? I pray thee, tell me. And he answered, discovers, after consulting a map, that That the people are fled from the his conjecture about the identity of the battle, and many of the people also THE DAYS OF ZIKLAG 7

are fallen and dead; and Saul and text of study. And the Bible itself was Jonathan his son are dead also. And always seen by Jews through the eyes of David said unto the young man its rabbinic commentators. Modern Zion­ knowest thou that told him. How ism, from its first literary precursors over that Saul and Jonathan his son be dead? ..." "Why don't you just get a century ago, has been a distinctly ro­ off our backs now with all your dead?" mantic movement: a return to a glorious Chivi burst out in anger. "\Ve have past, a break with all that life in the enough without that." Diaspora implied to go back to a glow­ Barzilai, in this instance, is living out ing world of the Bible. But this whole the neo-Biblical mentality to the last romantic return of Zionism was founded letter. He is trying to give depth and on a contradiction. In the past, the Bible significance to the experience of the -or rather, the Bible and its tradition liv­ present moment by identifying it with a of interpretation-had remained the parallel moment in the heroic past o[ ing book of a people because the people Modern Zion­ the Jewish people. This explains the accepted it as God-given. innocent enthusiasm with which he ism relegated the Bible to the position hav­ undertakes a Bible-reading to his friends of a great humanist doctrine, and, at such an unpropitious moment. ·when ing thrown away the one justification proceeded to use he is interrupted, he is drawing close in for "living" the Bible, his reading to the point when David it as the cornerstone for a new culture. will lift his voice in the Bible's great One symptom of the sort -0f change that Ben-Gurion's habit of moving elegy over the defeat of heroes­ has occurred is to the Bible as the Book of "How are the mighty fallen ..." But referring plnase, which did not exist against this heroic, literary image of de­ Books. The Hebrew, sounds even worse feat in battle, these soldiers have before in earlier listener in Hebrew them the reality of their own defeat­ to the discriminating it does in English. Certainly the with the stench of their own sweat, the than insistence on the Bible as the Book of ache of their own tiredness, the memory a kind of huckster ap­ of their own cowardice. Any attempt to Books reflects to the Scriptures, a my-book-is­ see their dirty, distasteful world in the proach better-than-your-book pitch. This spec­ light of the epic grandeur of the Bible of trying to "sell" the Scriptures as could only strike them as an infuriating tacle to the whole falsehood. a national book points return to the To realize the full importance of Yiz­ futility of the Zionist twentieth century har's attack on Israel-the-Land-of-the­ Bible; a people in the expected seriously to take up Bible thinking, it is necessary to recall cannot be a piece of ancient literature as its pat­ the role that the Bible has played in tern for living, even if it is demonstrated Zionist ideology. The popular notion, that the book in question is a very good to begin with, of the Jewish people piece of ancient literature. There is no through their centuries of exile as the People of the Bible, is rather mislead­ need to conclude that the founders of ing. The Jews were the people of the the modern Jewish settlement in Pales­ Law, a Law whose ultimate authority tine (essentially, Ben-Gurion's genera­ derived from the Bible, but which was tion) were simply using the Bible as an articulated in the Talmud. The Tal­ instrument of propaganda in all their mud, not the Bible, was the principal talk about the fulfillment of the pro- 8 JUDAISM: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL

phetic v1s10n, the rebirth of ancient fathers. Only fathers. And anything Israel, and so forth. The vacuity of a before your father's immigration­ belief is hardly a measure of the sin· darkness. Back to the days of King David. cerity with which people can believe it. Zionism has succeeded in fostering a It becomes clear now why Yizhar secular messianism with adherents who chose to represent time in his novel as a have believed quite literally that their succession of autonomous moments. Tht> actions meant the realization of pro· technique, of course, offers a certain phetic promise. But as a general state oi fidelity to the psychological reality of affairs in cultures it would seem to be mechanized warfare; it is a means of re­ much easier to fool yourself than it is to producing the torment of endless, help­ fool your children. Yizhar's young sol· less waiting that is the main part of the diers, as we shall see, are far from the modem soldier's fighting. But, beyond radical cynicism of which they have been this, the whole extreme situation of accused; they are simply being con­ battle affords Yizhar the opportunity to fronted with the awful disparity between represent concretely, by means of his the high-sounding words on which they autonomous moments, the moral anguish were educated and the reality they have of a generation that is forced to live to live in. When Barzilai unthinkingly with no past, or only a sham past, and tries to make these tired, beaten men with no goals before it that can give any identify with the heroic model of David, very reassuring sense of the future he is committing an outrage on their ("time ... this falling bridge"). If all sensibilities, and Chivi's angry rebuke is that The Days of Ziklag did were to ex­ the natural, honest reaction. hibit its wound of cultural disinheri· But if such young people see the false­ tance, the accusations of cynicism, and ness of linking themselves with the an­ perhaps even of masochism, would have cient Jewish past, and are at the same some justification. The truth of the mat· time the children of the pioneer genera­ ter is that Yizhar's novel is a book whose tion that divorced itself from the imme­ most distinctive quality is its moral diate Jewish past, where are they sup­ soundness. The first step that Yizhar posed to stand? This is the one haunting takes is to try to face honestly the world question that the characters of The Days in which he and his generation find of Ziklag find themselves asking again themselves: so the first purpose of his and again. book is to do a good deal of thorough ground-clearing. Among what he was My grandfather, whom I never clearing away, however, were ideals to knew, was a scholar; all he did was study his Torah and his books; his life which some people in Israel had com­ was whole and he was firmly rooted mitted their whole lives, and it was in­ in all his relationships. Fine. My father evitable that they would be able to see tore himself away and came here and in Yizhar only a profaner of the nation's planted himself again. Now I and my altars. friends are segatiles. Plants sprouting by the roadside. No longer scholars of The young soldiers whom we get to the Torah, and not yet wise with any know during the course of the novel are, new wisdom . . . l\ly grandfather's for the most part, the sons of small farm­ wisdom came to the end of the road. A new wisdom we haven't come up ers and hibbutzniks (though Yizhar does with yet . . . Fellows without fore- attempt to give a wider demographic THE DAYS OF ZIKLAG 9 sampling). Their birthdates all fall into is not so much against the parents them­ the period between 1928 and 1930, selves as against the education their par­ which makes them the chidren of the ents gave them. They want to face the wave of idealist pioneer immigrants who facts of their world without a vocabulary came to Palestine during the twenties. that overvalues those facts; they want, Pioneer immigrants, both of the Second first of all, to get rid of the milestone of Aliyah (before World War I) and of the rhetoric that has been hung around their Third Aliyah (after the Balfour Decla­ neck. ration) were, as a group, moved by a Just as long as it's without talk ... feeling that they were participating in Don't let them come to remind me of the inauguation of a great millennial duties. Don't let them come to explain enterprise. First came the conviction that to me the situation, the nation, our modern Jewish nation-was a fulfillment youth, the role of our youth, the hour, the hour's imperative, the task,-those of an ancient Jewish messianic ideal. days are finished! I have a stock that Then there were more specific kinds of will last me forty years. Just don't let millennial hopes founded on specific them educate me. modern ideologies: the Marxist ideal of The very fundamental nature of Yiz­ the Perfect Society, which the collective har's break with the ideals of the pioneer settlements hoped to realize; the Tol­ generation becomes evident in his treat­ stoian ideal, preached by A. D. Gordon, ment of the theme of the Seven Days. of a union of the individual and the Any kind of secular messianism involves people with the cosmos through a return the transfer to an exclusively human to the soil. The children of the pioneer­ plane of the J ud,~o-Christian conception idealists, coming to maturity as their of history, a history created and directed people was fighting to ensure statehood, by God. History is supposed to have had been educated in a vocabulary of meaning for man, is going somewhere, the millennium and found themselves in is intended to reach a post-historical cul­ a world where the millennium had not mination. The experience of our cen­ yet arrived and didn't at all seem to be tury would tend to place in a dubious on its way. They sympathize with, even light the attempts to cling to a millen­ admire their fathers, but they are simply nial interpretation of history while sub­ in a different world from them. stituting man for God. Yizhar tries to An amazing generation, our old show in his novel what the world must men. What they managed to accom­ look like, stripped of illusions, when plish between their youth and old age. there is no faith in a God of history.. The pathos they had, that we've lost almost completely. It's hard for us, The two days of Rosh Hashanah, the the clear-minded ones, to follow their Jewish New Year, occur in the middle of path. We haven't burnt any bridges the seven days of his novel. Rosh behind us. \Ve haven't exchanged one Hashanah is the point in the year as­ world for another. No terrors of the signed by Jewish tradition as the "birth­ pogroms and drums of revolution on one side, or abandonment in a new day of the world," the anniversary of and alien wilderness on the other side. creation. The Biblical seven days of Work intoxicated them. Both soothed creation suggest the pattern for any mes­ them and stirred them. And then we sianic conception of history. On each came along. day, new things are created, and the The resentment of these young people creation culminates in the Sabbath, just IO JUDAISM: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL as a progressing history is to culminate You only imagine that you can leave in the Sabbath of history. But Yizhar, everything and run. You can't. You're by means of constant description of the denied the possibility of running ... I hate our father Abraham going to changing sky from sunrise to sunset and sacrifice Isaac. What right does he then through the changing stars at night, have over Isaac. Let him sacrifice him- · is at pains to show . us. the complete self. I hate the God that sent him to · sameness 0£ each of . his seven days. sacrifice and closed all other paths for While a group of young men struggle him-only the way to the A keda He left open. I hate the fact that Isaac is for a hill that may or may not be im­ nothing but material for an experi­ portant to somebody or other, nature­ ment between Abraham and his God and nature's time-remains absolutely ... To slaughter sons as a proof of impassive and indifferent. In these seven love! To use force and step in and days, there is no process, only cycle, no take lives in order to win a quarrel. culmination, only ·the. untiring repeti­ And that the world remained silent and didn't get up and scream: Scoun­ tion of sunrise and. sunset and sunrise drels, for what do the sons have to again. die? Hate all necessity to get some­ The other .major Rosh Hashanah thing at the price of causing ruin. Or motif in the n~vel offers a further indi­ destruction. Or torture. Or compul­ cation of the fr~tense moral honesty that sion. motivates Yizhar's 'critique of traditional It is a hopeful sign that one of the ideals. The Torah-reading for the sec­ major literary spokesmen for Israel's ond day of Rosh Hashanah is the chap­ younger generation turns out, in the ter in Genesis that describes the Binding final analysis, to have deep pacifist sensi­ of Isaac. At the moment of the year bilities. Secular Zionism's assigning of when Jews stand before God to be ultimate value to national existence in judged, they recall the devotion of their itself was bound to carry with it the forefather Abraham, who was prepared danger of making all moral values sub­ to sacrifice to God his most precious ordinate to the highest good of the possession. The motif of the Akeda, the preservation of the state. Yizhar and the Binding of Isaac, is taken up by Yizhar members of his generation found them­ early in the novel and developed through selves faced with this problem very con­ the seven days of fighting. Without faith cretely when the Israeli-Arab War put in a living God who will send his angel them in the position of having to take to stay the sacrificial knife, or faith in a human lives in the name of the "Home­ God who, in any case, is supremely more land ... a word ... that says everything important than anything else, including and says nothing." The Days of Ziklag human life, the call to an A keda be­ is a deep-felt protest on behalf of indi­ comes unbearable. And when a notion vidual conscience in the face of a his· like Homeland is substituted for the torical situation that often threatens to God that demands the sacrifice of the silence it. Yizhar's pacifist tendencies, sons, the reaction of embitterment is still moreover, are of a responsible, realistic more understandable. These are the kind. He realizes that the fighters of thoughts of a young Israeli machine­ Ziklag do not have the alternative of gunner as he waits for an Egyptian simply laying down their arms. His ob­ shelling to begin: jection to war, like all of his criticism, There's no way. around the Akeda. is made in a context of social commit- THE DAYS OF ZIKLAG l I

ment. (It should be noted that Yizhar, decisions in a universe with no built-in the great voice of protest, is committed values: to social action even to the extent of You only live one time. This time. being a member of Knesset, representing And that puts an awful lot of respon­ Mapai, the ruling party.) Here, as in sibility on you. Because there's no other areas, Yizhar's formulations bear other time. You can't try again, a dif­ a distinct family-resemblance to those of ferent way, like the kid in school, who, when the Jean-Paul Sartre. His pacifist machine­ dra·wing doesn't turn out right, runs for· the eraser. There gunner's justification for fighting sounds is no eraser. I'm a one-time-in-the­ very much like a variation on the title­ world-and-finished creature. theme of The Red Hands: This call to moral .responsibility is Always man belongs. Always he is of. accompanied throughout the novel by Always attached to and not discon­ Yizhar's other major positive theme: the nected, by himself . . . And for the thirst for belief: The young generation "of' he must die. And why should he of Israelis he porfrays _·has not, on the be permitted to begin making noble whole, responded decisions that he won't shoot at the to the disenchantment looters of his home, what right does with past beliefs by becoming cynical. he have to stand aside, to announce :\Jany of the characters of The Days of that he will neither do evil nor de­ Ziklag are intensely coi1scious of the stroy, that his hands will stay dean vacuum left by the los~ of the old faiths, and won't commit murder, when his and they are anxious to find something whole generation is forced to wade in blood, bound to a necessity greater they can belie,·e in ·which will fill the than it. emptiness. But t!1ey are not willing to settle for anything less than the genuine : The generation cannot turn its back article. <.m the necessity; Yizhar's plea is that the Yet all this moral caiidor and courage mind of the individual should not be­ is hardly an answer to the come enslaved to the necessity. The question of cultural continuity that is· raised by The Days of Ziklag does not pretend that Days of Ziklag. U the young generation anyone can wish away the horror of war, has divested itself of all the spurious but it insists again and again that we connections which · Zio"riism tried to cannot allow ourselves to come to terms make with the Jewish past, a1'e there any with a world that accepts war. Yizhar grounds for thinking tliat the develop­ certainly has no programmatic sugges­ ing Israeli culture will ·be at all tions for a road to positive action either a Jew­ ish culture? One begins: to suspect that for the individual or for the people. He Yizhar's young soldiers, during these has tried to remove illusions from his dis­ cussions taking place under the threat world, and he finds it stonily indifferent of enemy arms, are led to overstate their to all human enterprise. (He emphasizes position. It is hard to believe that for repeatedly that the soldiers don't belong young Israelis, certainly for young Israeli on Ziklag or in the whole natural set­ intellectuals, all of Jewish history is ting.) There is little he can suggest ex­ simply "darkness, back to the days of cept that, as the Sartre-brand of existen­ King David." The relationship of Israeli tialism teaches, the individual must be youth to the Jewish past may be proble­ ready to assume the terrible burden of matic, but that past is not quite a com­ responsibility for making his own moral pletely closed book. A dramatic instance 12 JUDAISM: A QUAR:TERLY JOURNAL

of continuity in historical experience is Jews?" in the Ha-aretz Yearbook for supplied by Yizhar himself, perhaps un­ 1951-52, described the importance of this intentionally, in a striking short-story kind of self-criticism in Jewish national called "Hirbet Hiz'ah" (the name of an consciousness: Arab village). The soldier-narrator's The remarkable power of survival vague feelings of uneasiness at the ban­ of ] udaism is rooted as well in the ishment of the villagers from their "no" it knew how to say to every call homes suddenly crystallize in a moment of redemption that did not fit the of nearly traumatic shock when he real­ image of the true redemption: to izes what it is that he is witnessing: Christianity, to Islam, to Sabbatai Zvi, to communism. And through the "Galut [exile]. Why this is Galut. That's strength of this negation the people the way Galut looks." It is through the of Israel remained the people of re­ centuries of pain and fear distilled in demption and preserved the hope of the word Galut-a Galut which he redemption in the world which re­ never experienced personally-that the mained unredeemed. The assertion of the messianic character of the State narrator suddenly understands the suf­ of Israel means the loss of the cri­ fering of the Arabs trudging into exile. terion for true redemption ..• The His sympathy for them is not just the zealous guarding of this criterion is a result of a humanitarian predisposition; prerequisite for the continual advance it is made possible, and is emotionally of the people of Israel. colored, by the collective past experi­ The Days of Ziklag undeniably per­ ence of the Jewish people. forms this function of zealous guardian­ S. Yizhar has performed the service of ship. The criticism of Zionist messian­ deflating much that called for deflating ism that it presents is not its own inno­ in Zionist ideology. On the positive side vation, but it is significant that Israel of the ledger, it is doubtful if he, or the has reached a point when such criticism whole generation of Israelis he would could be so completely summed up in a seem to speak for, is really as completely single book, and when such a book could cut-off from the Jewish past as some of be regarded by many of the young in­ the characters of The Days of Ziklag telligentsia as their Final Inventory. pretend. In any case, the manifestation From this point, one may hope for a of such honest self-scrutiny in a culture time when prevailing thought in Israel is certainly a healthy sign. Professor will come to a more realistic appraisal Ernst Simon of the Hebrew University, of the purpose and justification for the in his lucid discussion, "Are We Still Jewish state.