Must the fate of the Jewish People be to suffer again and again
from disaster and exile?
What can make the cycle of destruction and rebuilding cease? If
there is such a thing as Redemption – what is it?
Two literary creations are the focus of the current exhibition
Disaster and Dream: Yitzhak Lamdan’s poem Masada (1927) and
Levin Kipnis’s story Dori and Daphna Immigrate to Eretz Israel
(1941). Both depict a similar narrative: the protagonists grow
up in the terrible conditions of the Exile in which they suffer
persecution. To save themselves from the fate of the Jews of
constant attacks and genocide, they immigrate to Eretz Israel to
build the new country and themselves be rebuilt in it.
Nahum Gutman illustrated both the poem and the story, in which
the Holy Temple appears as the epitome of the Redemption:
in Masada a mass of people bearing the Menorah ascend Mt.
Moriah, and in Dori and Daphna the center of the illustration
is the “Temple of Zionism” – the National Institutions building
in Jerusalem.
These literary works along with Gutman’s illustrations show
that Zionism did not choose only one path to Redemption. On
one hand, the pioneers strove to establish a state based on
democratic and liberal values, while still holding on to the dream
of founding a Jewish kingdom and rebuilding the Holy Temple
even after the state was established.
With Israel’s independence, the condition of the Jewish People
all over the world changed as there was a sovereign Jewish state.
The vague longings of rebuilding the Holy Temple now had to
face a concrete reality. We are witness to a process of changing
the status of the Holy Temple from a symbol of resurgence of
a people on its own land it became a plan for action for certain
Jewish sectors.
Leading scholar of Kabbalah, Gershon Scholem, formulated his
thoughts and warnings as follows:
“Whether Jewish history will or will not have the ability to stand
at this entrance into concrete reality without destroying itself
with the Messianic demand arising from its depths – This is the
issue that our generation of Jews, based on our past with its
huge dangers, must face at present and for our future”
(from Dvarim Bego [The reasons behind things], 1975)
Monica Lavi and Michal Broshi, Exhibition Curators
