HENRY
RO'TH
279
reservations regarding the Soviet Union. What I wrote seemed to re–
flect a peculiar adoption. Israel did not adopt me; I adopted my
ex
post facto
native land. What seemed important was that I identified
with Israel without being a Zionist and without having the least curiosi–
ty about Israel as a practical, political entity. Suddenly I had a place
in the world and an origin. Having started to write, it seemed natural
to go on from there, and I have been writing long hours every day
since then. I am not yet sure what it is leading to, but it is necessary
and is growing out of a new allegiance, an adhesion that comes from
belonging.
I had the need for us to be warriors; I had the need for us to be
peasants and farmers, for us to exercise all th& callings and trades like
any other people. I have become an extreme partisan of Israeli ex–
istence - for the first time I have a people. All this made me conscious
of a latent conviction - that the individual
per se
disintegrates unless
he associates himself with an institution of some sort, with a larger
entity. I could not find that kind of bond in religion, and I do not
think the Israelis do either. I found it in the existence of a nation. I
have not been able to turn for that to America, which is presently com–
mitting the folly of destroying itself, so at least for the present I have
adopted a people of my own, because they have made it possible for me
to do so. And I am further indebted to Israel because I am able to
write again.
If
there is anything dramatic about all this, I suppose it can be ex–
plained as the way a fictioneer does things. Significant for me is that
after his vast detour, the once-Orthodox Jewish boy has returned to
his own Jewishness. I have reattached myself to part of what I had
rejected in 1914. Even before the Israeli-Arab war I was beginning to
feel that there might be some path that would lead me back to my–
self, although I realized there was no returning to the Jews of the
East Side of more than a half century ago. Then suddenly I dis–
covered that I could align myself with a people that is forward-looking
and engaged in the vital process of its own formation. And with the
resumption of writing I find that I myself am reabsorbed into something
that is immediately vital. One of the little - or big - projects I have
undertaken is a work dealing with the artist responding to his world.
Being a Jew in the Diaspora is basically a state of mind, an attitude
of not belonging. In that sense there are also Gentiles who are Jewish.
Only two courses remain open to the Jew in America: he assimilates and
disappears completely, while giving the best elements of himself to his
native culture - and God knows that he has a lot to give ; or he goes
