Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921), who was among the greatest figures
in the new Hebrew literature, came to Palestine in 1909 and died
there in the disturbances of 1921. More than any other writer or
thinker of his generation, Brenner's work integrated literature,
philosophy, publicism and criticism. His articles were the "pillar
of fire" of the political and cultural thinking of the small Jewish
community in the days of the second Aliya (wave of immigration,
1904-1914). Ever since his death, Brenner was to become one of the
most influential figures in shaping the ideology of the workers'
movement in Palestine, winning an almost religious admiration among
the members of the Jewish youth movements in the 1940's and 1950's
as well as among most of the Hebrew thinkers and writers who came
after him.
His essay "Peace Be unto You, My Friend" is no more than a passing
reflection following an actual incident in which he, Brenner, was
involved, in the citrus groves of Abu Kabir in the winter of 1921.
However, in these modest reflections we find the articulation of a
central theme of special importance on the relations between Jews
and Arabs in the country. One of the things which is most touching
in this article is Brenner's readiness to open symbolical contacts
with the Arabs at a bad moment, one which was unusually tough and
unpleasant; his readiness to abjure all sentimentality - all this
so as at the outset to lay bare his real anger and despair, without
any apologetics. Along with this, one cannot read the words without
their being linked in our minds with a harsh and essential item of
knowledge: this essay, the last which Brenner published in his
lifetime, was written a month or two before his death, near the
same place where the incident described in the essay occurred, and
published a few days before the writer's death. Brenner was
murdered by Arabs on May 2, 1921 in the disturbances which broke
out a few days earlier at the house of the Yitzkars, a place
outside the town of Jaffa near a citrus grove in an Arab
neighborhood (close to the "Mikveh Yisrael" school). He was
murdered along with Yehuda Yitzkar, the father of the family, his
son Avraham, his son-in-law Zvi Shatz, and two young writers who
lived with Brenner, Luedor and Gugik. However, it is worth trying
to isolate the essay from the above information so as to read it as
a statement in its own right, only examining later what the
information adds for the reader.
From a Notebookby Yosef Haim Brenner
With darkness, I wandered in the dusty paths of the citrus groves
at the end of the town. All of them belong to those born in the
country, to the Arabs. They are theirs.
I was about to pass by a landlord, a small Effendi who was sitting
at the entrance to his courtyard in the company of two elderly
neighbors and in the middle, a young man of about twenty, adorned
in his kaffia. I greeted them. They did not reply. After passing
them, I looked back and saw that their lack of response was
deliberate and malicious. The youth straightened up, looking ahead
as if with a shade of victory: we abstained from greeting the
Jew.
"That's the right way."
I pondered bitterly: if there is truth in the assumption that the
people dwelling in the country are from our race, and the
Palestinian Fellahin are even of the blood of the remnant of Israel
- I want no part of them! I have no other way, I must pass by them
whether they want it or not, but it is better to meet with
Velikorus in Tambov - certainly with a Lithuanian in the vicinity
of Kovna - than with these Poles of the East. "Do not ever seek
their peace and wellbeing."
Several steps further, on the next path, an Arab jumped out after
me from one of the groves. He was dressed in European-style rags
Tuzurka and had an old hoe on his shoulder. "Hawaja!" he cried as
he caught up with me. And I saw that this was not an adult Arab, as
I had for some reason thought at first, but a working youth,
thirteen or fourteen years old. He asked me something in a clear
voice, rather shrill but properly spoken and accentuated.
Unfortunately, I couldn't answer him since I do not know the Arabic
language. For my part, I asked him in one word: from Selima (that
is, are you from the nearby village of Selima?). He answered: "no,
minhan, from here, from the Boyiara", and he went on talking and
telling me things. Then I asked him, hinting with my finger:
Effendi? (that is, this Boyiara whence you come and where you, in
your words, work - does it belong to that effendi who is sitting at
the entrance to his courtyard?). He said yes and said that he, the
youth, has no father or mother for they died during the war years
and he is an orphan ... I understood this from the odd word and
even more, from his movements and gestures. And he for his part
understood my question: kadeish? (that is how much does he get a
day?). And he answered proudly: "tamani grash", that is, eight
grush. "No good," I said and he was surprised for a moment and
found it hard to believe. Why "no good": far too little or far too
much? I explain to him at length and forcefully that some get
fifteen or even twenty grush per day ... Adult workers ... he has
small sisters ... one must provide food and a livelihood ... and he
gets eight... everything comes from Allah. At that time I blamed
myself for not having learned Arabic. If only ... a working orphan!
A young brother! Whatever the correctness or incorrectness of
learned assumptions, whether you are close to me or not in terms of
blood, I have a responsibility for you. I must open your eyes, give
you a taste of human relations! ... No, not carrying out a quick
revolution in the Middle East by order of a certain committee
through emissaries of certain socialist politics - no, no politics!
This is perhaps precisely what our task is not, and perhaps it will
turn out that we will be involved in it in spite of ourselves, out
of despair and lack of alternative. No, not this ... rather, soul
to soul contact ... from this very day and for generations ... for
very many days ... and without a purpose ... without any intention
... except that of a brother, a friend and a companion ...
"My peace unto you, sir" the youth said, soon leaving me when he
apparently saw that I was occupied. But his parting greeting was
nevertheless replete with satisfaction in that he had unwittingly
succeeded in getting into a conversation with an adult, in talking
properly like any older person.
"My peace unto you, my friend" my lips whispered and my heart
warmed to him and to myself. I continued my wandering in the
darkness of the evening.
Brenner opens his essay with a mention of his awareness that the
Arabs are the ones born in the country and he is living in an area
which belongs to them. His intention is clearly not that the whole
land is theirs but that these groves are their property. But with a
rhetoric typical of him, he repeats the matter of ownership three
times: "of those born in the country, of the Arabs, theirs". Each
time he draws attention to a different side of the subject: first
he stresses the birth relationship of the Arabs to this area as
against the strangeness of someone who recently came from eastern
Europe. Second, he stresses the ethnic name (Arab) in its direct
form, desisting from any poetic circumvention of the ancient name
(in the form of "sons of Ishmael" etc.). And third, he emphasizes
the third person, the hidden "they", the absolute "otherness" of
the Eretz Yisraeli Jew.
The first episode, the meeting with the "little" Effendi (a real
Effendi would not have sat at the entrance to his courtyard) brings
Brenner round to a sharp and venomous formulation of the cultural
position better known to the Jews: Exile (Galut). Brenner prefers
to meet a Gentile in the Diaspora to the Arabs sitting opposite
him. He takes care to define which Gentile, precisely so as to be
exact and not to find himself under the canopy of the stereotype. A
Lithuanian from the Kovno area or a son of greater Russia
(Velikorus) is preferable here to "one of these Poles of the East".
Brenner takes this to the extreme by completely rejecting any
historical or mythical brotherhood (that "the people dwelling in
the country are from our race" etc.). He examines the relations by
means of the most practical test: can a real contact, momentary and
passing, be created through a peace greeting? Brenner doesn't
hesitate to touch upon the unsympathetic image of the Arabs he sees
before him and he doesn't spare giving them the title he knew so
well as a native of Russia: "The Poles of the East": not a "noble
savage" nor do we have here a man seemingly joined to the earth as
against some sort of Jewish detachedness. There is not even a
vestige of romantic Oriental majesty of any kind.
What we have here is a meeting full of despair with a crude
cultural presence, unimpressive from any other point of view - and
above all, with a familiar and age-old experience. In his reading,
it holds out a shattered hope, one according to which life in
Palestine in the company of the Arabs was to have been a new and
vital cultural experience precisely as regards the Jewish culture.
Brenner, like those of the first and second Aliyot (waves of Jewish
immigration, 1881-1919) did not forget the existence of the Arabs
in Palestine and did not see before him an empty land, like the
romanticists of the third and fourth Aliyot (1919-1928). But this
article was written after living over ten years in the country,
after the hardships of the first world war, soon after the British
conquest, and following much observing of the nature of the Hebrew
and Arab cultures in the country - and Brenner never allowed any
romantic longing to cloud over what his eyes beheld on both sides
of this ethnic barricade.
The first episode in the article is nothing but a vantage point for
the second episode - the meeting with the Arab youth, which
presents most powerfully the gap in speech and language between the
two speakers, and the ancient rootedness of that on which the
bridge between them grows: eight grushes.
Brenner's lack of knowledge of Arabic does not look to him like a
lack of scientific knowledge or like a misunderstanding. On the
contrary, understanding is not lacking, but no action is taken. The
lack of knowledge is in his eyes a moral problem. Brenner
transforms the language disparity into a gap on a different level:
the lack of knowledge of Arabic looks to him like a failure and a
betrayal of the ability to help "a working orphan", a "young
brother"; "if only" ... (and here comes the transition) ... a
working orphan. But he does not perceive the help as a mutual
matter.
Brenner is no different from his contemporaries and has not been
delivered from the concept that the West is superior to and rules
the East. Along with this, he does not identify the superiority of
Western civilization with spiritual or moral superiority, or one of
any sort of values, and here his great spiritual responsibility is
recognizable. Brenner here lays bare a situation of clear
superiority from his side over the Arab, which is at once
transformed into a sense of responsibility: "Whether you are close
to me or not in terms of blood, I have a responsibility for you. I
must give you a taste of human relations… (My emphasis - YH).
This superiority is not explained here as that of the West over the
East or as some sort of political superiority, and above all - it
is not the superiority of any prevalent ideology (like
Socialism).
Brenner ventures a prophecy and claims that even if cultural,
political domination is not among the task of the Jews in the East,
perhaps they will get involved in it "out of despair and for lack
of an alternative". This is an area in which Jewishness is no
longer a Diaspora experience and nevertheless it is not superiority
by force; this is an area where Judaism is no longer mythological
pride along the lines of the "Chosen People" and yet it determines
a certain identity and ethos. That very uncertain place in this
essay is the place which builds this "responsibility" which is
destined in his eyes in the future to be "a soul to soul contact...
without a purpose ... except the intention to be a brother, a
friend and a companion ..."
The end of the essay reveals a complete consciousness concerning
the closing of this dialogue with one announcement: "May peace be
unto you, my friend, my lips whispered and my heart warmed to him
and to myself' (my emphasis ¬- YH). Thus the article ends
parallel to its beginning but opposite to it: just as the citrus
groves are all "theirs", the thought is all "in my heart". The last
words bring the talk back to the opening sentence - walking along
the paths. But these last words add a new double significance: "I
continued my wandering in the darkness of the evening". If you read
evening, (Hebrew Erev) read only darkness. If you read Arab,
(Hebrew Arav) read something different: the speaker is erring along
paths of a foreign consciousness, one he does not understand, which
does not belong to him, and yet he continues.
Brenner's tragic death at the hands of his Arab neighbors seems to
constitute an ironic end, ridiculing any spiritual attempt at
dialogue and certainly a refined dialogue like this one. The riots
which broke out a month or two after Brenner's reflections mark
forces and circumstances so strong and sweeping that Brenner's
words seem not only petty and weak but also incorrect: words which
bear no relationship to the forces taking part in determining the
cultural and existential fate of the two peoples meeting in one
place in these historical circumstances. As such, there is no point
in stating these ideas and certainly there is no point in coming
back and reading them seventy-three years later. However, for
someone reading them through this veil of tragic irony, the
opposite is revealed: Brenner does not portray a nearby reality or
a reality whose possibility of consummation is imminent. He
portrays something which he well understands is rare and distant.
The prophecy in his words, revealing that the actions of the Jews
are destined to be the absolute opposite of his intentions, show a
deep and bitter understanding concerning the real forces at work
around him.
It is particularly interesting to examine today the governmental
and cultural activity of the Jews here through the prism of the
Brennerist explanation of the role imposed in spite of itself on
Jewish nationalism. This comes from despair and lack of alternative
since his words pertain to a perspective far wider than that
entailed in the present political dialogue. And the main point is
that in Brenner's words there is sharp and bitter perception which
enables neither of the parties to find even a small comer where
they can feel satisfaction and repose.