Amos Oz's "Judas"

Saw his brief obit on the ticker tape (I knew the name, I knew he'd been on the long list of Nobel Prize possibles) and decided to give him a go. (I'd been rereading Tolstoy and I needed a breather.) A compelling story: I read off and on: all the way to Hamburg and back. My favorite "strands" are the historical bits (the beginnings of the Jewish state: Israel) and the historical documents (and chatter) re Jesus from a Jewish POV. Questions remain, and of course I've not reached the end. So perhaps I should wait. Or say nothing. Let Oz speak. Apparently Oz has placed his ideas on the fictional Shealtiel Abravanel (or so I've read). OK, and they are indeed interesting ideas. What if, instead of a Jewish state, a state co-governed by Jews and Arabs had been founded? How would that have changed things? Dunno. Skeptical. Was there a historical figure (or minority group) with the same opinions then? If so, that would've perhaps made a different (and more interesting) book. If not, why not? Perhaps it is much easier to play the If-game after so much time has gone under the bridge.

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A few "clips":

Shmuel said: “The Jews who wrote this polemic were certainly writing under the influence of their oppression and persecution by the Christians.” “Such Jews,” Wald said with a contemptuous snigger, “such Jews, if they had only had the power, would certainly have oppressed and persecuted the followers of Jesus, probably no less than the Christian Jew-haters have persecuted the Jews. Judaism and Christianity, and Islam too, all drip honeyed words of love and mercy so long as they do not have access to handcuffs, grills, dominion, torture chambers, and gallows. All these faiths, including those that have appeared in recent generations and continue to mesmerize adherents to this day, all arose to save us and all just as soon started to shed our blood. Personally I do not believe in world reform. No. I do not believe in any kind of world reform. Not because I consider that the world is perfect as it is—certainly not, the world is crooked and grim and full of suffering—but whoever comes along to reform it soon sinks in rivers of blood. Now let’s drink a glass of tea and leave aside these obscenities you’ve brought me today. If only all religions and all revolutions vanished from the face of the earth someday, I tell you—all of them, without exception—there would be far fewer wars in the world. Man, Immanuel Kant once wrote, is by nature a crooked piece of timber. And we must not try to straighten him, lest we sink up to our necks in blood. Listen to that rain outside. It’s nearly time for the news.”

***

It’s a curious fact, Shmuel wrote in a note to himself on a loose piece of paper, that however much these Jews engage with the supernatural stories surrounding Jesus’ parentage and birth, his life and his death, they studiously avoid any confrontation with the spiritual or moral content of his gospel. It is as if they are content to refute the miracles and contradict the wonders, and as if by this means the gospel itself will disappear without trace. And it is also strange that in all these writings there is no mention of Judas Iscariot. And yet, had it not been for Judas, there might not have been a crucifixion, and had there been no crucifixion, there would have been no Christianity.

***

"Your Jesus was also a great dreamer, perhaps the greatest dreamer who ever lived. But his disciples were not dreamers. They were hungry for power, and in the end, like all those who hunger for power, they became shedders of blood. Please don’t trouble to reply. I know what you are going to say, and I can recite the words of your reply from beginning to end and vice versa. Yes. We have spoken enough for today, and now I want to read Gogol quietly. I reread Gogol every two or three years. He knew almost everything there is to know about our nature. And he fell about laughing. But don’t you read him. No, you should read Tolstoy. He suits you much better. Bring me the cushion from the sofa. Yes, that one. Thank you. Please place it behind my back. Thank you. There is no one like Tolstoy for dreamers."

***

“The very same. I also made it a rule not to debate with him. We were quite distant from one another. He used to read Davar every morning, and when he had finished he would come in here and leave it silently on my desk. We exchanged not a word apart from ‘sorry,’ ‘thank you,’ or ‘would you mind kindly opening the window.’ Once or twice he broke his silence and said to me that the founding fathers of Zionism deliberately exploited the age-old religious and messianic energies of the Jewish masses and enlisted these in the service of a political movement that was fundamentally secular, pragmatic, and modern. But one of these days, he said, this Frankenstein’s monster will turn on its creator: the religious and messianic energies, the irrational energies that the founders of Zionism endeavored to harness to their secular, contemporary struggle, would burst forth and sweep away everything those founding fathers intended to achieve here. He resigned from the Zionist Executive Committee not because he had ceased to be a Zionist but because he believed that they had all deviated from the path, that they had been carried away with their eyes closed by Ben-Gurion’s lunacy, that they had gone off the rails and become overnight followers of Jabotinsky, if not of Stern. And, in fact, he did not resign—he was thrown out. Both from the Zionist Executive Committee and from the Council of the Jewish Agency. They gave him twenty-four hours to decide whether to place a letter of resignation on Ben-Gurion’s desk or to be expelled formally, in disgrace, from both bodies, by unanimous vote. He wrote a reasoned letter of resignation, but it was classified. No newspaper would publish it. Almost total silence surrounded his resignation. Yes. Perhaps they were expecting him to take his own life. Or convert to Islam. Or emigrate. I sent Atalia seven years ago to look for the letter, or a copy of it, in the Zionist Archives. She returned empty-handed. They did not say that it had been classified or lost, they brazenly insisted that no such letter had ever existed. It had sunk like lead in the mighty waters. Two years after the War of Independence he died here in this house. He died alone in the kitchen. He sat down one morning, as was his wont, to read the paper and suddenly he bent over the table as though to wipe some stain off the oilcloth and hit his head and died. When he died, he was possibly the most lonely and most hated man in Israel. His world was in ruins. His wife had left him many years earlier. The heart is so deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked—who can know it?, to quote the prophet Jeremiah."