The Bats of Zion

We all went out for pizza last night. Benjy had his capoeira class, we went to the library and then headed over to Bethlehem street loaded down with Asterix (in Hebrew and French -- apparently the English library volunteers don't believe in Asterix or Tintin). This was sort of a celebration of a return to normalcy after the boys being so sick. It was a lovely evening sort of late spring early summer type weather back in Montreal (we are supposed to be getting more rain and cold weather over the weekend). The sky was just turning pink and dark blue when I saw what I thought ate first were alpine swifts flittering high in the sky, and chirupping madly. Then it occurred to me that they might very well be bats. Now I am pretty sure that that's what they were. I am generally well inclined towards bats. Atalef, the word for bat, is one of the first Hebrew words we learned on this trip as a family from a kindly volunteer at the Jerusalem zoo. It is listed in the Torah as one of the flying creatures that you are not allowed to eat, so has the honour, unique as far as I know of, of being doubly prohibited, since it is also a mammal which doesn't have a cloven hoof and doesn't ruminate.
I'm not sure if I mentioned it but when we went to Caesaria on the Mediteranean coast, we saw a series of old Roman/Herodian vaults, once cellars for a long-vanished building that stood atop them. In the third of these vaults, the one closest to the ruins of the Crusader castle, there is a bat colony. I took each of the boys inside to take a closer look. They are definitely otherworldy creatures and while I was fascinated -- a feeling I tried to share with the boys -- I also was a little freaked out -- a feeling I did my best to hide. The bats last night weren't at all scary since they were so small and fragile looking though their flight looks kind of clumsy and hurried.
An addendum to my previous post about Amos Oz and the various ways that one might express pride in Hebrew. In Yiddish, naches is a word often used for something like pride. Naches comes from the Hebrew nachat, which means something like satisfaction. In the very first essay of the book (Here and There in the Land of Israel, Fall 1982) Oz goes to the neighbourhood where he grew up, near Meah Shaarim, which is now called Geula. It is now an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood. He chats with a representative of one of the local schools, about, among other things, Zionism. The man tells him the state of Israel is "goyische naches." There is a real irony to this phrase in the context of nationalism. The speaker means Gentile pride or satisfaction, or less kindly, the stupid things that non-Jews value which Jews are, supposedly, too sensible to race after. The irony rests in the fact that goyishe literally means 'of the nations.'
I found it funny to discover that Oz, who is so disdainful of the ultra-Orthodox, uses the same phrase (almost exactly) later in the book when he is addressing a group of West Bank settlers. He says that while he is a Zionist, he sees the state of Israel as an instrument, not an end in itself and as far as he is concerned feelings of patriotism stirred by the flag, the passport or the army are "goyim naches" (I am not sure about the difference between goysiche naches and goyim naches). Of course the irony is that Oz's vision is a pretty humanistic one (for an ardent nationalist...)

(My Translation)
"Here is the place for my first little confession.... I think that the nation-state is a vessel or a tool, that it is necessary for the 'settlement of Zion'. But I don't love this tool. The idea of the nation state is in my eyes 'goyim naches' (Gentile pride). I would have been happy to live in the world in which there are several tens of civilizations developing according to their own rhythms. With mutual respect but with no nation-states: no flag, no symbol, no passport, no anthem, nothing, just spiritual civilizations, each one connected with its land, without the 'instrument of state' and without the 'instrument of weapons'.
"But the Jewish people already did a solo performance like that, a very long one. The viewing public, the world, gave us a big hand, sometimes threw rocks and even tried to kill the actor. Nobody was interested in the model that Jews tried to set up for two thousand years, the model of a civilization without the 'instrument of state'. For me, that drama ended with the murder of European Jewry by Hitler. I am willing to play the 'game of the nations' with all the instruments of a state even if that means that I will end up feeling -- in George Steiner's phrase -- like an old man in a play-ground. Playing with a symbol and a flag and a passport and an army and even war, are allowed in the case of existential necessity. I accept these as "rules of the game" since going on without the 'instrument of the state' put us in danger of our lives. For sure. But to admire the instruments of state? To revere these toys? To go crazy over them? Not me. And if we wield the instruments of the state including its deadly power, we need to act not just with loyalty but with wisdom. I would say without loyalty. Only with wisdom. And with caution. Since nationalism itself is, in my eyes, the great curse of humanity."
This last forms a nice corrective to Israel Beitenu's demands of loyalty to the state, and the ideology that underpin them, in the recent elections.