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PARTISAN REVIEW
pa rticularly struck by a sentence in
The Hill
oj
Evil Counsel.
One of
the cha rac ters, a n immigrant from G erma ny livin g in J erusalem,
says he longs for J erusalem as if he were still in Leipzig. Wha t is
the source of thi s mela ncholy?
Amos Oz:
Let me tell you one or two things about my family because
it mi ght help you to understa nd thi s pa rticul a r sente nce and
perha ps the entire feeling of some of my cha racte rs about J eru–
salem. I come from a ve teran Zioni st fa mil y, in fact, a mili tant
ri ght-wing Zioni st famil y which ori gina tes on my father's side
from Odessa. M y gra ndfa ther was in fac t a Zioni st before
Zioni sm , back in the nine ties of the prev ious century, meaning he
wrote love poems for Zion in Rus sia n . H e was still writing love
poems fo r Zion in Russ ia n when he lived in J eru salem a nd when
he knew Hebrew pe rfectly well. T he reason , as he put it, was that
Russ ia n was his gut la nguage. H e couldn't utter the wo rd "Ru ss ia"
without making thi s wide ges ture with hi s hands - if he had hi s
ha nds in hi s pockets, he j ust couldn't say "Ru ss ia." So while being
a Zioni st he was also a devoted Eu ropean , a secul a r J ew, a grea t
admirer of eve rything tha t was European: culture, civili zation,
tradition .
In
1918 my gra ndfa ther fl ed Ru ss ia a nd se ttled in
Pola nd . When a nti -Semitism in Pola nd became unbeara ble (he
was taunted by hi s neighbo rs, "Go to Pa les tine, little J ew"), he
dec ided tha t Pola nd was n't safe a nymore, so he tried to become
French , Bri tish , American , he was eve n crazy enough to try to
become Germa n in 1930 . All those countries turned him down:
they had e nough J ews at tha t time. So he had to leave Europe a nd
go to Pa les tine. Anyway, he came to Zion a nd se ttled in J eru salem
- with very mi xed fee lings. It was a stra nge place: the heat, the
Ara bs, the a tmos phere, the ex tremely Orthodox J ews. It was n't
hi s world . And yet he was ideologicall y committed to Zioni sm.
H av ing fa iled in bu siness he went back into writin g poe try, still in
Ru ss ia n , a nd still exac tl y the same sentime nta l stuff which he used
to write when he was a teenage r in Ode sa. J eru salem was a city
paved with emeralds a nd with a ngels a t every street co rner. I was
a round at the time a nd whe n a n a ngry youn g ma n who read hi s
poems screamed a t him , "Come on , you know wha t J erusalem's
really like, you know the real J erusalem , you know what the
stree ts a re paved with a nd wha t we've got here a t some street
co rners ." To which he res ponded by roaring a t him , "You idiot,
wha t do you know about the realJ erusalem ? The real J eru salem
is
the J erusalem of my poems ."
Goodheart:
The J eru salem of the imaginat ion .
Oz :
M y fat her became a li braria n in J eru salem a nd di vided his life
