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dasbooch's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of the most important books to read not just on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but on political discourse in general today. It is poetic, heartfelt, passionate and deeply thought out. Highly recommended.
lpm100's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Book Review
Dear Zealots
Amos Oz
5/5 stars
"Profound thoughts are language-independent"
*******
This entire book can be read through in probably about 4 hours.
In terms of sheer pithiness, profundity of insight, portable quotes and signal to noise ratio, this author reminds me of equal parts Eric Hoffer and Leon Wieseltier.
Like "The genuine man of words himself can get along without faith in absolutes" (Hoffer), Oz explorers these issues in a very nuanced way.
Oz makes liberal quotes from the Tanakh and Talmud, and it is impossible to dismiss him as a secular person who knows absolutely nothing about Judaism.
Another thing that he makes is predictions: he died seven years ago, and he predicted that (p.111): "....in perhaps another intifada or two in Jerusalem and the West Bank, until we witness the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the rise of Hamas--if not an even more radical entity. That is the meaning of 'conflict management.'"
It's interesting that this was originally written in Hebrew, and translated to English.
*******
Of the book:
Chapter 1: Mental properties of zealots and commonalities between zealots of all stripes.
Chalter 2: Divided between Chilonim, Dati-Leumi, and Haredim.... Israel will stand. With control of the latter, it will fall. As it has done several times in the past.
Chapter 3: Pragmatic thoughts on a two-state solution.
Verdict: Strongly recommended
As the book is strong enough to speak for itself, I will truncate the review and just put in some of the most thought-provoking quotes. (Additional 1,456 words. Take the best and leave the rest.)
*******
QUOTES
As the questions grow harder and more complicated, people yearn for simpler answers, one sentence answers, answers that point unhesitatingly to a corporate who can be blamed for all our sufferings, answers that promise that if we only eradicate the villains, all our troubles would vanish.
..... Concepts that only half a century ago seemed innovative and exciting - - multiculturalism and identity politics - - quickly morphed, in many places, into the politics of identity hatred. What began with an expansion of cultural and emotional horizons is increasingly deteriorating into narrower horizons, isolationism, and hatred of the other.
To this day, almost every second or third Jerusalemite has his own her own private formula for instant salvation.
Redemption itself, according to most of these prophets, is easily crammed into a short slogan.
The fanaticism in almost all of Jewish Israeli society, of various shades and types, arrived in Israel with the Jews of Europe. From Eastern Europe we received the revolutionary fanaticism of the founding pioneer generation, bent on remolding the Jewish people and erasing the abundance of heritages of those who came from other diasporas in order to build a "new Hebrew." Also from Europe: Ultra Orthodox fanaticism, which the clues itself inside a walled ghetto and defends itself against anything different. Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern and North African countries, conversely, brought a generations old heritage of moderation, relative religious tolerance, and the custom of living in good neighborly relations even with those are different. Indeed, the various forms of European fanaticism are now erasing the moderation of Middle Eastern Jews.
One might encounter, for example, fanatic opponents of smoking who act as if anyone who dares light a cigarette near them should be burned alive. Or fanatic vegetarians and vegans who sometimes sound ready to devour people who eat meat.
Those who are unwilling or unable to rank evil may thereby become the servants of evil. Those who make no distinction between such disparate phenomena as apartheid, colonialism, ISIS, Zionism, political incorrectness, the gas chambers, sexism, the 1%'s wealth, and air pollution serve evil with their very refusal to grade it.
Fanatics tend to live in a black and white world, with the simplistic view of good against evil. The fanatic is in fact a person who can only count to one.
The boundary between politics and entertainment is being erased before our eyes. The world is turning into a kind of global kindergarten. The qualities a candidate needs to be elected are antithetical to the qualities required to lead.
Winston Churchill defined the fanatic as "one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
The fanatic is comfortable with the slogan, as long as the slogan doesn't translate into shouts, pleas, dying gurgles, puddles of blood, brains spilled out on the sidewalk
Literature and gossip are closely related. People who are curious and imaginative long enough to know "what it's like for other people." This longing can be satisfied in its basest, most banal form through gossip, just as it can attain a more refined and complex gratification in art.
"Why not just agree, all of us, Jews and Xtians, to wait patiently and see what happens? If the Messiah comes one day and says 'I haven't seen you for a long time, I'm so happy to see you again,' the Jews will then have to acknowledge their mistakes. But if, when he comes the Messiah says, 'How do you do? Very pleased to meet you,' then the Xtian world will have to apologize to the Jews. Until then, Grandma concluded... Why can't we all just live and let live?"
*******
There's certainly a Jewish nation, but it is different from many other nations because its lifeblood is not necessarily passed down through genes, nor through victories on the battlefield, but rather through books.
The story of Jewish culture is an age-old game of interpretation, reinterpretation, and counter-interpretation.
If you seek shelter from the wind and rain, erect yourself a tent or hut. If you seek a place to dwell in for the rest of your life, build a house of stone. If you wish to take care of your sons and your son's sons who come after you come up build a walled city. But if you want to construct a building for future generations, write a book.
In fact, our holidays are all similar: the bad guys tried to kill us, they couldn't do it, now let's eat.....Pharaoh came, Pharaoh left, bon appetit.
We have been taught since childhood that the earlier iterations of the State of Israel were brought down by internal strife, having collapsed under the weight of unjustified hatred.... But the truth is that the uprising against the Romans, which led to the destruction of the Second Temple, just like the earlier war against Babylonia... did not fail because of brotherly strife or unjustified hatred among Jews, but because of nationalist and religious fanaticism, because of the delusions of grandeur suffered by both leaders and subjects who had lost all sense of reality.
The Jews as a people are not disposed to obedience. Never have been. Moses could tell you how unaccustomed the Israelites are to being obedient. The prophets could also attest to it. Gd himself complains throughout the Bible that the Israelites are insubordinate.
And in recent generations Hasidic rabbis have demanded that Gd appear before a rabbinical Court to justify the terrible things occurring in this world.
Jewish culture has been built, generation upon generation, with the creative energy arising from tension between the Kohen and the prophet, between Pharisees and Sadducees, between the house of Hillel and the House of Shammai, between Sephardic and Ashkenazi prayer services, between Hasidim and Mitnagdim, between the devout and the proponents of Jewish Enlightenment, between Zionists and anti-Zionists, between the Bialik school and the Berdyczewski school of poetry, between religious and secular, between hawks and doves--to this very day.
I regard blind obedience as a deviation from tradition, even when it purports to be the embodiment of that tradition.
And post biblical times, there has not been a single event regarded by all Jews as a miracle. Many people believe in miracles these days, but the dubious outnumber them.
While it is true the spiritual clocks show different times in the different Jewish communities of Baghdad, Yemen, Morocco, Salonika, and Eastern Europe, all the clocks now show in Mount Sinai is increasingly shrouded in a pillar of smoke made up of layers of interpretive text. This is one cause of the smothering feeling that many people experience around the world of Halacha.
In recent generations, increasing numbers of Jews were no longer satisfied with living strictly according to halacha..... A great many headed to the exit door and assimilated. Halachic Judaism responded with panic and fury shunning, excommunicating, cursing, swearing, toughening up, and hunkering down...... The majority of halachic Judaism has yet to leave that bunker.
Halachic Judaism has become a repository that, although it does not lose a single drop, adds virtually none either.
Halachic Judaism often claims that the Torah is what protected the Jewish people, and that without it we would have long ago assimilated among the nations of the world. But the truth is different: it was not the commandments that protected the Jews, but the Jews who endeavored to preserve the commandments, by observing them or in some other way choosing to be Jewish. Identity is meaningful only when the exit door is wide open. Only when permission is granted. Only when each individual chooses, of his or her own accord, to maintain that identity and not replace it.
A person does not curse Gd if there is no Gd in his heart.
The Haredim are incapable of accepting the state of Israel as either a binding Jewish Authority or a binding foreign one; as the Hebrew saying goes, they can neither swallow nor vomit.
If, Gd forbid, the state of Israel were to disappear overnight, along with its parliament, elections, and courts, all the streams of Halachic Judaism would immediately need a foreign regime to adjudicate.
We must not forget that at least twice an our history we have found ourselves in a head on collision with a large superpower. Both times - - when we rose against Babylonia and against Rome - - things ended badly for us.
If someone had proposed in 1945 that Poland and Germany unite into one by national state, he would have undoubtedly been institutionalized..... The Palestinians and Israelis cannot turn into a happy family overnight. We need two states. Sometime later there might come cooperation, a joint market, a federation. But first the country must be a duplex, because we Jewish Israelis are not going anywhere. We have nowhere to go.
Dear Zealots
Amos Oz
5/5 stars
"Profound thoughts are language-independent"
*******
This entire book can be read through in probably about 4 hours.
In terms of sheer pithiness, profundity of insight, portable quotes and signal to noise ratio, this author reminds me of equal parts Eric Hoffer and Leon Wieseltier.
Like "The genuine man of words himself can get along without faith in absolutes" (Hoffer), Oz explorers these issues in a very nuanced way.
Oz makes liberal quotes from the Tanakh and Talmud, and it is impossible to dismiss him as a secular person who knows absolutely nothing about Judaism.
Another thing that he makes is predictions: he died seven years ago, and he predicted that (p.111): "....in perhaps another intifada or two in Jerusalem and the West Bank, until we witness the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the rise of Hamas--if not an even more radical entity. That is the meaning of 'conflict management.'"
It's interesting that this was originally written in Hebrew, and translated to English.
*******
Of the book:
Chapter 1: Mental properties of zealots and commonalities between zealots of all stripes.
Chalter 2: Divided between Chilonim, Dati-Leumi, and Haredim.... Israel will stand. With control of the latter, it will fall. As it has done several times in the past.
Chapter 3: Pragmatic thoughts on a two-state solution.
Verdict: Strongly recommended
As the book is strong enough to speak for itself, I will truncate the review and just put in some of the most thought-provoking quotes. (Additional 1,456 words. Take the best and leave the rest.)
*******
QUOTES
As the questions grow harder and more complicated, people yearn for simpler answers, one sentence answers, answers that point unhesitatingly to a corporate who can be blamed for all our sufferings, answers that promise that if we only eradicate the villains, all our troubles would vanish.
..... Concepts that only half a century ago seemed innovative and exciting - - multiculturalism and identity politics - - quickly morphed, in many places, into the politics of identity hatred. What began with an expansion of cultural and emotional horizons is increasingly deteriorating into narrower horizons, isolationism, and hatred of the other.
To this day, almost every second or third Jerusalemite has his own her own private formula for instant salvation.
Redemption itself, according to most of these prophets, is easily crammed into a short slogan.
The fanaticism in almost all of Jewish Israeli society, of various shades and types, arrived in Israel with the Jews of Europe. From Eastern Europe we received the revolutionary fanaticism of the founding pioneer generation, bent on remolding the Jewish people and erasing the abundance of heritages of those who came from other diasporas in order to build a "new Hebrew." Also from Europe: Ultra Orthodox fanaticism, which the clues itself inside a walled ghetto and defends itself against anything different. Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern and North African countries, conversely, brought a generations old heritage of moderation, relative religious tolerance, and the custom of living in good neighborly relations even with those are different. Indeed, the various forms of European fanaticism are now erasing the moderation of Middle Eastern Jews.
One might encounter, for example, fanatic opponents of smoking who act as if anyone who dares light a cigarette near them should be burned alive. Or fanatic vegetarians and vegans who sometimes sound ready to devour people who eat meat.
Those who are unwilling or unable to rank evil may thereby become the servants of evil. Those who make no distinction between such disparate phenomena as apartheid, colonialism, ISIS, Zionism, political incorrectness, the gas chambers, sexism, the 1%'s wealth, and air pollution serve evil with their very refusal to grade it.
Fanatics tend to live in a black and white world, with the simplistic view of good against evil. The fanatic is in fact a person who can only count to one.
The boundary between politics and entertainment is being erased before our eyes. The world is turning into a kind of global kindergarten. The qualities a candidate needs to be elected are antithetical to the qualities required to lead.
Winston Churchill defined the fanatic as "one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
The fanatic is comfortable with the slogan, as long as the slogan doesn't translate into shouts, pleas, dying gurgles, puddles of blood, brains spilled out on the sidewalk
Literature and gossip are closely related. People who are curious and imaginative long enough to know "what it's like for other people." This longing can be satisfied in its basest, most banal form through gossip, just as it can attain a more refined and complex gratification in art.
"Why not just agree, all of us, Jews and Xtians, to wait patiently and see what happens? If the Messiah comes one day and says 'I haven't seen you for a long time, I'm so happy to see you again,' the Jews will then have to acknowledge their mistakes. But if, when he comes the Messiah says, 'How do you do? Very pleased to meet you,' then the Xtian world will have to apologize to the Jews. Until then, Grandma concluded... Why can't we all just live and let live?"
*******
There's certainly a Jewish nation, but it is different from many other nations because its lifeblood is not necessarily passed down through genes, nor through victories on the battlefield, but rather through books.
The story of Jewish culture is an age-old game of interpretation, reinterpretation, and counter-interpretation.
If you seek shelter from the wind and rain, erect yourself a tent or hut. If you seek a place to dwell in for the rest of your life, build a house of stone. If you wish to take care of your sons and your son's sons who come after you come up build a walled city. But if you want to construct a building for future generations, write a book.
In fact, our holidays are all similar: the bad guys tried to kill us, they couldn't do it, now let's eat.....Pharaoh came, Pharaoh left, bon appetit.
We have been taught since childhood that the earlier iterations of the State of Israel were brought down by internal strife, having collapsed under the weight of unjustified hatred.... But the truth is that the uprising against the Romans, which led to the destruction of the Second Temple, just like the earlier war against Babylonia... did not fail because of brotherly strife or unjustified hatred among Jews, but because of nationalist and religious fanaticism, because of the delusions of grandeur suffered by both leaders and subjects who had lost all sense of reality.
The Jews as a people are not disposed to obedience. Never have been. Moses could tell you how unaccustomed the Israelites are to being obedient. The prophets could also attest to it. Gd himself complains throughout the Bible that the Israelites are insubordinate.
And in recent generations Hasidic rabbis have demanded that Gd appear before a rabbinical Court to justify the terrible things occurring in this world.
Jewish culture has been built, generation upon generation, with the creative energy arising from tension between the Kohen and the prophet, between Pharisees and Sadducees, between the house of Hillel and the House of Shammai, between Sephardic and Ashkenazi prayer services, between Hasidim and Mitnagdim, between the devout and the proponents of Jewish Enlightenment, between Zionists and anti-Zionists, between the Bialik school and the Berdyczewski school of poetry, between religious and secular, between hawks and doves--to this very day.
I regard blind obedience as a deviation from tradition, even when it purports to be the embodiment of that tradition.
And post biblical times, there has not been a single event regarded by all Jews as a miracle. Many people believe in miracles these days, but the dubious outnumber them.
While it is true the spiritual clocks show different times in the different Jewish communities of Baghdad, Yemen, Morocco, Salonika, and Eastern Europe, all the clocks now show in Mount Sinai is increasingly shrouded in a pillar of smoke made up of layers of interpretive text. This is one cause of the smothering feeling that many people experience around the world of Halacha.
In recent generations, increasing numbers of Jews were no longer satisfied with living strictly according to halacha..... A great many headed to the exit door and assimilated. Halachic Judaism responded with panic and fury shunning, excommunicating, cursing, swearing, toughening up, and hunkering down...... The majority of halachic Judaism has yet to leave that bunker.
Halachic Judaism has become a repository that, although it does not lose a single drop, adds virtually none either.
Halachic Judaism often claims that the Torah is what protected the Jewish people, and that without it we would have long ago assimilated among the nations of the world. But the truth is different: it was not the commandments that protected the Jews, but the Jews who endeavored to preserve the commandments, by observing them or in some other way choosing to be Jewish. Identity is meaningful only when the exit door is wide open. Only when permission is granted. Only when each individual chooses, of his or her own accord, to maintain that identity and not replace it.
A person does not curse Gd if there is no Gd in his heart.
The Haredim are incapable of accepting the state of Israel as either a binding Jewish Authority or a binding foreign one; as the Hebrew saying goes, they can neither swallow nor vomit.
If, Gd forbid, the state of Israel were to disappear overnight, along with its parliament, elections, and courts, all the streams of Halachic Judaism would immediately need a foreign regime to adjudicate.
We must not forget that at least twice an our history we have found ourselves in a head on collision with a large superpower. Both times - - when we rose against Babylonia and against Rome - - things ended badly for us.
If someone had proposed in 1945 that Poland and Germany unite into one by national state, he would have undoubtedly been institutionalized..... The Palestinians and Israelis cannot turn into a happy family overnight. We need two states. Sometime later there might come cooperation, a joint market, a federation. But first the country must be a duplex, because we Jewish Israelis are not going anywhere. We have nowhere to go.
anweshab's review against another edition
5.0
Powerful. I think the small book reiterates the thought that there are many lights and many ways of living, that there is hope, if we choose to be tolerant. Applicable to people of all religions and nations.
alisarae's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic.
Three essays are gathered in this short book:
1. Dear Zealots - a look at fanaticism in all its guises. How it starts, how it manifests, its characteristics, and some ideas to inoculate culture against it. I thought it is worth reading especially by Brazilians at this moment. It certainly describes more than half the country to a T.
2. Many Lights, Not One Light - a strong argument for democracy's place in Jewish culture. A combat against theocracy and monarchy, citing examples of classic biblical figures and God's bowing to the will of the people.
3. Dreams Israel Should Let Go Of - Oz's proposal for a two-state solution to prevent WWIII and Israel from being wiped off the map. Some of the political and historical references were too niche for me (I don't really follow Israeli politics since it annoys me so much...as does politics in general. Basically if Steven Colbert doesn't talk about it, then I don't know about it). But I could follow the plan and the overarching arguments, and I think he is right.
Three essays are gathered in this short book:
1. Dear Zealots - a look at fanaticism in all its guises. How it starts, how it manifests, its characteristics, and some ideas to inoculate culture against it. I thought it is worth reading especially by Brazilians at this moment. It certainly describes more than half the country to a T.
2. Many Lights, Not One Light - a strong argument for democracy's place in Jewish culture. A combat against theocracy and monarchy, citing examples of classic biblical figures and God's bowing to the will of the people.
3. Dreams Israel Should Let Go Of - Oz's proposal for a two-state solution to prevent WWIII and Israel from being wiped off the map. Some of the political and historical references were too niche for me (I don't really follow Israeli politics since it annoys me so much...as does politics in general. Basically if Steven Colbert doesn't talk about it, then I don't know about it). But I could follow the plan and the overarching arguments, and I think he is right.
lauren_endnotes's review against another edition
4.0
"Self-sacrifice does not always represent an erasing of the 'I'. Self-sacrifice can sometimes be a well-honed weapon that the fanatic wields for destructive emotional purposes. Moreover, those who are eaget to sacrifice themselves will not find it difficult to sacrifice others."
--From "Dear Zealots" essay from Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land
This was my introduction to Amoz Oz, the well-known and prolific Israeli writer who passed away in late 2018. I often life to start with essays and poetry and "selected writings" before digging into an author's oeuvre. This was a powerful collection of three essays, the first "Dear Zealots" being my favorite one, a larger polemic on fundamentalist/fanatic psyche, and its permutations. "Many Lights, Not One Light" is the longest essay, regarding Jewish culture with Biblical and Talmudic discourse. The last "Dreams Israel Should Let Go of Soon" reiterates Oz's political stance on the two-state solution for Palestine and Israel.
--From "Dear Zealots" essay from Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land
This was my introduction to Amoz Oz, the well-known and prolific Israeli writer who passed away in late 2018. I often life to start with essays and poetry and "selected writings" before digging into an author's oeuvre. This was a powerful collection of three essays, the first "Dear Zealots" being my favorite one, a larger polemic on fundamentalist/fanatic psyche, and its permutations. "Many Lights, Not One Light" is the longest essay, regarding Jewish culture with Biblical and Talmudic discourse. The last "Dreams Israel Should Let Go of Soon" reiterates Oz's political stance on the two-state solution for Palestine and Israel.