186
PARTISAN REVIEW
too Jewish, but Avnieli-that's something else again, the devil knows
what, but it has a strange sound, not Jewish at all, and so proud
!
That's why we have so many Gideons, Ehuds, Yigals, Tirzahs . . .
what? . . . And it doesn't matter that we had the same kind of
thing before, that was with assimilationists, that's easy to understand.
There we were living among strangers, people who were different
and hostile, and we had to hide, to dissimulate, to be lost to sight,
to appear different from what we really were. But here? Aren't we
among our own, all to ourselves, and there is no need for shame,
or for hiding, or anyone to hide from. Well then, how do you expect
to understand this? ... That's it! That's the whole thing, point
by
point. It's obvious, no continuity but a break, the opposite of what
was before, a new beginning.... A little detail, quite unimportant,
it didn't deserve going into so much, but it is a symptom of far
more ... I've gone into side issues. I won't keep you much longer.
I'm finishing. In a word, this is the aim: one people, and above all,
a people creating its history for itself, with its own strength and by
its own will, not others making it for him, and history, not the
chronicles of a congregation, anything but
chronicles,
that's how
it
stands. For a people that doesn't live in its own land and doesn't
rule itself has no history. That's my whole idea. I've already told
you and I repeat again, and I'll say it again and again, day and
night ... is it clear? Is it clear?" And all at once his words ran
together and his voice broke and sputtered with feeling, his eyes
flickered to and fro like one who doesn't know which way to go.
"With this I've said a great deal, the whole thing . . . everything
I had on my mind ... and now I don't want
to
say anything more.
I have nothing more to add.... Enough!"
He noisily pulled back a chair and cast himself heavily into
it, wiping the sweat off his face with his palm, and sat there all
in a turmoil, with his face flaming, his heart pounding, and his
temples throbbing.
It grew quiet, like the stillness after a quarrel. The men were
silent and sat uncertainly with altered countenance, not sure in their
hearts nor easy in their minds, as though in doubt whether something
might not
be
lost or lacking, or .as if they were in mid-passage between
whtre
th~
had been and
whith~r
they w'er'e to rome.
