Mordecai Richler in Jerusalem

March 27, 1996
Issue 

This Year in Jerusalem
By Mordecai Richler
New York: Knopf, 1994. $25
Reviewed by Vivienne Porzsolt

Canadian Jewish writer Mordecai Richler's rich account interweaves his boyhood in Montreal in the 1930s and '40s — poor, orthodox Jewish, filled with left Zionist dreams and illusions — and his visit to Israel in 1992. He describes his journey from a teenage commitment to make aliyah [immigrate to Israel] to a sense of his solid roots in the Canadian diaspora and an awareness of the rights of the Palestinians to their own state alongside Israel.

The book is framed around a preface of two quotations, one a resolution of exultation by Habonim, a Zionist youth movement in November 1947, the other, a prescient statement by Albert Einstein in 1938: "I would much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on a basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state ... I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will suffer — especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks."

This recalls Chomsky, who said, referring to his own background as an anarchist Zionist, that prior to the foundation of Israel, Zionism did not necessarily imply a Jewish state.

The Zionist zeal of his youth was fuelled by his flight from the confines of orthodox religion and the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust. Richler treads a tightrope, striving for a perspective which balances Jewish and Palestinian rights in the land historically shared by the two peoples. Visiting a refugee camp, and listening to the Palestinian accounts of their suffering, he compares it with the Jewish "history of outrages".

"Black-eyed Aba Nidal ... endlessly rocking, keening ... was unnervingly reminiscent of the St Urbain grandmothers of my boyhood, spinning their sorrowful tales of the Old Country. Instead of drunken Cossacks wielding swords, it was IDF [Israeli Defence Force] delinquents with dum-dum bullets ... I was grateful that for once in our history, we were the ones with the guns and they were the ones with the stones. But, taking it a step further, I also found myself hoping that if Jerry, Hershey, Myer and I had been born in the squalor of Dheisheh rather than the warmth of St Urbain, we would have had the courage to be among the stone throwers."

Richler actually tries to step into the shoes of the Palestinians and see it from their perspective, while holding on to his own. So few Israelis and Jews, doves and followers of Peace Now included, are able to do this. Nevertheless, Richler's is very much a Zionist perspective, for obvious reasons not shared by Palestinians, but it is a perspective from which reconciliation and genuine peace are possible.

I warmly recommend this book for its humanity, intelligence and honesty.

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