The tendency among some Israeli intellectuals to “debunk” Israel’s achievements and the personalities of its political leaders was deplored today by Cynthia Ozick, novelist and essayist, at a symposium on “The Impact of Israel Upon the Diaspora,” sponsored by the American Jewish Congress.
“I think we need in some way to learn to take mythology, seriously, even if it is our own,” Ms. Ozick said. “I stand in terror of falling into idolatry and magic, but I stand in equal terror of falling into the hands of the de-mythologizers who do not recognize that Jerusalem is vaster than its geography and that what they regard as the ‘aesthetic vulgarity’ of Israel is totally without importance in comparison to the on-going miracle, the re-birth and re-generation of Israel.” Ms. Ozick was addressing some 35 American “alumni” of the AJ Congress’ annual American-Israel dialogue.
Marie Syrkin, editor of the Herzl Press said the development of a sharpened sense of Jewish identity and the provision of an alternative to assimilation, discrimination and persecution were the major effects on American Jews of the first 25 years of Israel’s existence. “Reduced to its essence, that is what Israel is all about and what its brief existence has meant to American Jewry,” she said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
