Saul Bellow visited Israel for several months in 1975. During his visit he kept a journal of his observations, his meetings, his conversations. Drawing on the journal, he published To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account in 1976. Having read it at the time, I have found one passage in particular to have stuck in my mind:
And what is it that has led the Jews to place themselves, after the greatest disaster of their history, in a danger zone? A Jewish professor at Harvard recently said to me, “Wouldn’t it be the most horrible of ironies if the Jews had collected themselves conveniently in one country for a second Holocaust?” This is a thought that sometimes crosses Jewish minds. It is accompanied by the further reflection (partly proud, mostly bitter) that we Jews seem to have a genius for finding the heart of the crisis.
Leafing through the book to find this passage yesterday, I was struck by how timely the book remains. I’ll return to it for another passage or two this week.
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