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Monday, November 6, 2017
בין נפש לתרבות - סדרת הרצאות בתולעת ספרים
Friday, November 3, 2017
22 years to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
4th of November marks twenty-two years since the assassination of
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
A gathering is held on that day, 4th of November 2017, end of Sabbath,
at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.
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| The blood-stained text of the Song for Peace found in Rabin's pocket |
For most of forty years the right-wing has ruled Israel, and the present Netanyahu government is not only the most extremist of them all, it bears far too many of the insignia of neo-fascism.
Netanyahu was one of the most visible and audible instigators prior to Rabin's assassination. Now, with a sense of safety in his position of power, he paranoically persecutes the institutes of democracy, such as the media, the legal system, and the police. In his fight to retain power in spite of allegations of severe corruption, he spares no means.
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| Netanyahu at an anti-Rabin demonstration |
The present government is reluctant to reach out for serious negotiations with the (itself reluctant) Palestinian partner, it is a spearhead for settlements beyond the security fence, spending a fortune on what eventually will have to be dismantled or withdrawn, rather than enabling the young, creative, hard-working Israelis to attain affordable housing.
As a totalitarian inclined politician in power, he is a Prime Minister, who accuses and lashes out at big parts of the population, in the most vulgar of ways. He does not see the media as legitimate in its role as scrutinizing the regime, but adheres to media as his megaphone (the Sheldon Adelson owned Israel Hayom). Likewise, in his view, the Supreme Court should not be the independent defender of democracy, as it still remains, but be ruled by the Netanyahu regime - he is making every effort to subjugate the legislative and judicial arms of democracy to the exclusive rule of the executive arm.
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| The song for Peace, Nov 4, 1995. |
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| The vulgarity of PM Netanyahu. |
Netanyahu represents another Israel than Yitzhak Rabin, who wanted to unite the people around peace and saying no to violence, while Netanyahu lashes out at big parts of the population, calling them "sourpussies," and in a peak of vulgarity takes a picture of himself with a tin of pickles (both sourpussies and pickles are hamuzim in Hebrew). In spite of Netanyahu's present rule, the large segment of the Israeli population, Ashkenazi and Sefaradic, young and old, which is hard-working, creative and contributing to Israeli society, paying for the madness of a rule that many oppose, will inevitably return to lead politically, and not only carry the economics, technology, science and culture - the very well-fare of Israeli society.
Netanyahu does not miss an opportunity to brag about Israeli hi-tech and Israel as the only democracy in the area. That is exactly the Israel that he aggressively fights against and incites against.
But the winds of change are blowing. Polls are not to be relied upon, but for the first time since the early 1990s, the center-left is gaining enough strength to possibly form a government, when Netanyahu will have to leave, possibly. His indictments are coming closer, in spite of his attempts to prevent them by absurd and esoteric laws.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
We mourn the passing of Tom Kirsch
We mourn the passing of Tom Kirsch, after a long and courageous battle with terminal illness.
"This book is aptly titled. Thomas Kirsch writes not only a fine autobiography but also a fascinating profile of Jungian life in the last several decades. Thomas was the son of two psychoanalysts, disciples of Carl Jung. Thomas's father knew Jung well in Europe before fleeing from Nazi Germany and coming to California, where he and Thomas's mother practiced for many years. The younger Kirsch followed in the footsteps of his parents and became a highly influential scholar and leader of The International Association for Analytical Psychology for many years. His life story is both a personal tale and a wide sweeping panorama of Jungian thought."
The correspondence between Jung and his father, James Kirsch,was edited by Ann Lammers, and published by Routledge. From the back cover: The Jung-Kirsch Letters belongs
to a category of literature where the thoughts and ideas of the psychoanalytic
masters are revealed behind their more formal writings. We are here served an
exceptional vista of ruminations, theoretical and clinical discussions, dreams
and personal emotions, as they crystallize into meaningful ideas. Ann Lammers’
skillful editing renders this correspondence between Jung and one of his most
prominent Jewish disciples into a masterful volume of great interest for
readers, both professional and lay, interested in depth psychology. Erel Shalit
From Tom Kirsch's contribution to Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: The Relationship between C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann:
"Overall, this correspondence is of
immense importance to the history of the Jungian movement. Neumann was
considered by many, but by no means all, especially in Jung’s inner circle in
Zurich in the 1940s, to be Jung’s intellectual and spiritual son. Jung certainly
implies as much in his foreword to The
Origins and History of Consciousness (1949/1954), where he writes, “he
arrives at conclusions that are among the most important ever to be reached in
this field.” In an interview recently available from the Library of Congress in
the United States in which Kurt Eissler interviewed Jung on Freud in 1953, Jung
discusses the difficulty of being a leading figure but then having a student
continuing in a creative way one’s most important thoughts. Jung thought that
he was doing that with Freud’s ideas of “archaic vestiges” into archetypes.
Freud could not accept that. Jung has the same feeling about Neumann furthering
his work. It is not easy when a student makes a real contribution to one’s own
most cherished work, but Jung says, “I have a very talented student, Neumann,
in . . . Tel Aviv. He is truly a significant person! And, he took hold of some
of my material and did something with it. You know, when one is overtaken in
this manner, it is not easy for someone who has been in front.” High praise,
indeed!
...
On a personal
note, when Erich Neumann was still in Berlin, my favorite aunt was engaged to
his older brother Franz, before marrying my favorite Uncle Walter, my mother’s
older brother. This is another piece of evidence that the German Jews in Berlin
were quite involved with each other.
People may be
interested to know that my parents always read Neumann, and I never heard a bad
word about him at home! My mother read him avidly, and so did my dad. I have
often wondered what my life would have been had my parents stayed in Palestine in
1935. I could have been a Sabra. Hebrew would be my mother tongue. What would I
be saying today, at this conference, about Erich Neumann? A path not taken."
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Jung`s Red Book For Our Time: Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions
Jung`s Red Book For Our Time:
Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions
by Murray Stein (Editor), Thomas Arzt (Editor)
The essays in this volume are geared to the recognition that the posthumous publication of The Red Book: Liber Novus by C. G. Jung in 2009 was a meaningful gift to our contemporary world. Similar to the volatile times Jung confronted with highly turbulent and uncertain conditions of world affairs that found himself in when he created this work a century ago, we today too are threaten any sense of coherent meaning, personally and collectively. The Red Book promises to become an epochal opus for the 21st century in that it offers us guidance for finding soul under postmodern conditions.This is the first volume of a three-volume series set up on a global and multicultural level and compiling essays from distinguished Jungian analysts and scholars.
Contributions by: Murray Stein: Introduction
Thomas Arzt: “The Way of What Is to Come”: Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions
Ashok Bedi: Jung’s Red Book: A Compensatory Image for Our Contemporary Culture: A Hindu Perspective
Paul Bishop: In a World That Has Gone Mad, Is What We Really Need A Red Book? Plato, Goethe, Schelling, Nietzsche and Jung
Ann Casement: “O tempora! O mores!”
Josephine Evetts-Secker: “The Incandescent Matter”: Shudder, Shimmer, Stammer, Solitude
Nancy Swift Furlotti: Encounters with the Animal Soul: A Voice of Hope for Our Precarious World
Liz Greene: “The Way of What Is to Come”: Jung’s Vision of the Aquarian Age
John Hill: Confronting Jung: The Red Book Speaks to Our Time
Stephan A. Hoeller: Abraxas: Jung’s Gnostic Demiurge in Liber Novus
Russell A. Lockhart: Appassionato for the Imagination
Lance S. Owens: C.G. Jung and the Prophet Puzzle
Dariane Pictet: Movements of Soul in The Red Book
Susan Rowland: The Red Book for Dionysus: A Literary and Transdisciplinary Interpretation
Andreas Schweizer: Encountering the Spirit of the Depths and the Divine Child
Heyong Shen: Why Is The Red Book “Red”? – A Chinese Reader’s Reflections
Marvin Spiegelman: On the Impact of Jung and his Red Book: A Personal Story
Liliana Liviano Wahba: Imagination for Evil
John C. Woodcock: The Red Book and the Posthuman
Saturday, October 14, 2017
No Room for Small Dreams by Shimon Peres
This book is so full of life that it should be read by everyone, especially the young, and the leaders of the region, particularly those on both the Israeli and Palestinian side who find and raise every obstacle possible to avoid what Peres so pertinently calls “the necessity of peace.”
"In 1934 eleven-year-old
Shimon Peres emigrated to the land of
Israel from his native Poland, leaving behind an extended family who would
later be murdered in the Holocaust."
Toward the end of his memoirs
he writes:
"I believe in the
inevitability of peace because I understand the necessity of peace. Necessity
... drove the pioneers to settle the land. It pushed them to think creatively -
to turn salted dirt into fertile ground, and transform a fallow desert into a
community that could bear fruit. ...
I believe with all my being
in the virtue of Zionism, and in the historic decision made by Ben-Gurion to
accept the UN resolution for a partitioned Palestine. Even then, Ben-Gurion
understood that in order to retain the Jewish character of our state, we had to
uphold our values, and that our values are fundamentally democratic. Jews are
taught that we are all born in the image of God. To believe this fundamental
tenet, a Jewish state must embrace democracy, which demands full equality
between the Jews and non-Jews. Democracy, after all, is not only the right of
every citizen to be equal, but also the equal right of every citizen to be
different. The future of the Zionist project depends on our embrace of the
two-state solution.
... To give up on democracy is to abandon our Jewish values. We
didn't give up our values even when we were facing furnaces and gas chambers.
We lived as Jews and died as Jews and rose again as free Jewish people. We
didn't survive merely to be a passing shadow in history, but as a new genesis,
a nation intent on tikkun olam, on making the world aright."
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| Rabin and Peres at the peace gathering, Nov. 4, 1995 |
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| Netanyahu in a pre-Rabin assasination demonstration, next to a coffin bearing the name of Rabin |
Friday, October 13, 2017
Netanyahu the Hasmonean
Joshua Sobol, the outstanding Israeli playwright and director, writes the following, after Benjamin Netanyahu's comment in a Bible class that he hopes Israel will last longer than the rule of the Hasmoneans:
"Bibi compares the
life expectancy of the State of Israel with that of the Hasmoneans, which
lasted a merely 77 years, while he wishes Israel to be able to celebrate its hundredth
birthday.
"Bibi compares the
life expectancy of the State of Israel with that of the Hasmoneans, which
lasted a merely 77 years, while he wishes Israel to be able to celebrate its hundredth
birthday.
In other words: let’s
hope Israel will continue to exist another thirty years.
Those words by the
Prime Minister of Israel uncannily recall the prophecy by Ali Khamenei, who
gave Israel another merely twenty-five years until it will be destroyed in war
and disappear from the map.
“After us the
deluge,” said Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. Louis adopted her nihilistic
statement, who after France’s defeat in the battle of Rossbach in 1757, reformulated
it thus: “After me, the deluge.”
This is the spirit
that now emanates from “Israel’s Royal House.” The message to the young is: Go
search for a place where life expectancy is more than thirty years. And for
those who remain in this place, and desire to raise their children, grandchildren
and their great-grandchildren, the message is: Our Louis XV and Madame
Pompadour have to be speedily replaced by those that ensure Israel’s existence
over the generations, by its peaceful regional integration, rather than being
sentenced to disappear within three decades of continuous conflicts and wars.
Who wants to live
under rulers who say, “After us, the deluge”?"
It should be added that the fall of the Hasmoneans was mainly due to strife and infighting, rather than the external onslaught (which Netanyahu refers to). And Bibi, seemingly to defend his rule against the investigations carried out against him, has increased his attacks on big parts of the population, against the media and the State's democratic institutions, such as the legal system and the police.
It should be added that the fall of the Hasmoneans was mainly due to strife and infighting, rather than the external onslaught (which Netanyahu refers to). And Bibi, seemingly to defend his rule against the investigations carried out against him, has increased his attacks on big parts of the population, against the media and the State's democratic institutions, such as the legal system and the police.
The following is an excerpt from my novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, referring to the defeatist view reflected by Netanyahu - which I personally do not share. I trust Israel's past, present and future capability to fight against external forces that aim at its destruction. Leaders like Netanyahu, who with hate speeches set the torches of extremism on fire, do have the capability of tearing up the social fabric.
...
True, not everyone had left. There
were those who remained behind – he thought of the many poor who had no means
to get away, and the baalei teshuvah, those Masters of Repentance who
had returned to the fold of the orthodox fathers. It seemed to Eli Shimeoni
that their return to the straight path of God had given them the freedom not to
ask any questions. They always knew the answer so well, claiming that “in the
War of the End of Days, the War of Gog and Magog, total defeat would precede
the ultimate victory over evil,” as they knew to repeat by heart.
He had been fascinated by the fanatic
obsession with the graves of holy men, whether those scattered over the
country, prominently Shimon Bar Yochai at Meron, or those orgiastic journeys by
the Bratslav Hassidim to visit the grave of Rabbi Nahman in Uman, or Uriah the
Hittite in Iraq – what a thrill! Himself from a somewhat religious background,
he often wondered about the fundamentalist need of doomsday fantasies, their
need to split the world in good and evil, a “pure” world in which the
“impurity” of the “evil other” will be persecuted and exterminated, without the
simple realization that this means that if I succeed in my crusade, I will
remain trapped as the evil exterminator.
…
First his children had left, gone
abroad to study. One had taken up a prominent position at the University of
Stamville, while the other was doing gender research at the Institute of
Harback. Then his wife had followed, accusing him of being a fanatic and an archaic
idealist, or derogatively calling him silly and stubborn, an obsolete Zionist.
Friends and colleagues had discreetly taken farewell. Initially they would
apologetically say, “if things ever change, you can be sure I will be the first
one to return home. After all, there is nothing like Israel, and you can not
really extract Israel from an Israeli.” But then, people became increasingly
forceful and determined as they said goodbye. The cultured ones would say with
bleeding hearts, “this is not the country we prayed for,” and the
self-proclaimed prophets would plainly tell him, “everything is collapsing,
there is no future here.” Some would reinforce their doomsday prediction,
relying on historical evidence that an independent Jewish nation could not
survive more than a hundred years.
But what struck him the most was,
that everything was so everyday-like. Nothing special, nothing particular to
notice. So similar to Elie Wiesel’s pastoral description, “I left my native
town in the spring of 1944. It was a beautiful day. The surrounding mountains,
in their verdure, seemed taller than usual. Our neighbors were out strolling in
their shirt-sleeves. Some turned their heads away, others sneered.”
That’s all. Nothing unusual. Only the
mountains were taller than usual. And yet, when as a young man Eli had read
those few lines, which he had memorized ever since, the impact on him had been
shocking. In lieu of immanent mass murder, there was an uncanny sense of the
ordinary, sensed by the mountains that were moved more than people were. As man
became smaller, the mountains became taller. The uninvolved, the willing or
unwilling bystander, may, or may not, have struggled to wrestle himself out of
the conflict that the disruption of the ordinary entailed. The victim, on the
other hand, would already have been transported away from the reality of a
beautiful day in spring, however, not yet fully trampled down by the boots of
the octopus.
...
“From the first pages of this book,
the tone of a masterpiece emerges powerfully.
This book makes us realize that the “Israel
problem” cannot be understood in a journalistic frame of mind. Politics, war,
land, culture, and contemporary experience are expressions of the deep core of
human life, the core of the human soul.
This is an important book for anyone
who thinks about “cultural identity” and the love of one’s own country and
culture.”
Junko Chodos
Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return
is available, in English as well as in Hebrew, at Amazon and other booksellers
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Netanyahu's shameful government
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| President Reuven Rivlin attends the state ceremony marking 44 years since the Yom Kippur War. (Mark Neyman/GPO) |
Not a single member of Netanyahu's government saw it fit to
honor the memorial service to the fallen soldiers of the Yom Kippur War, held
at the military cemetery at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl, on October 1, 2017. When
contacted by the organization commemorating the fallen soldiers, the office of
the PM responded that the ministers are very busy.
Ehud Barak expressed outrage at the ministers’ absence,
“This is shameful and infuriating. This shames the soldiers who died. Where
were Bibi and his ministers? Too busy making political appointments or at a
political ceremony in Gush Etzion? This is a new low.” Ehud Barak further noted that a government that "forgets the fallen soldiers, will eventually fall and be forgotten."
Labor leader Avi Gabbay said, “A government that does not
respect its past and does not have an impressive present does not have much
of a future.”
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| empty seats at the 10 million shekel ceremony, Sept. 27, 2017 |
Netanyahu and his government did have the time - and the money, 10 million shekel - to arrange what they claimed to be a 'state ceremony', celebrating fifty years of settlements. They expressed outrage at the absence of the opposition, the High Court of Justice (as well as the President) from the ceremony, but managed to gather a merely 1600 attendees.
More than two thousand Israeli soldiers were killed in the Yom Kippur War, that began when Arab armies attacked Israel on October 6, 1973, on the holiest day of the Jewish year, and more than seven thousand were wounded. Considering that Israel's population in 1973 was 3,338,000, the number of killed would correspond to two hundred thousand in the US of today.
The following is an excerpt from The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel:
Inflated Strength and Denial
of Fear
Illusions of safety and self sufficiency were the result of
excessive reliance on strength with concomitant denial of fear following the
Six Day War. President Sadat’s attempt
to initiate negotiations in 1971 72 did not elicit an unambiguous Israeli
response, because there was no real feeling of need. The psychological frame of mind was such that
no one seemed able to pose a threat to Israel, or even evoke fear. Thus, despite Sadat’s repeated declarations
that the coming year would be one of either war or peace, the warnings were
foregone and the 1973 Yom Kippur War erupted in complete surprise to the
Israelis. As a consequence of such an
illusion of self sufficiency and invulnerability, Israel’s leadership was
unable to correctly interpret the intelligence at hand about imminent
attack. Like the entire Israeli
collective, the leadership was caught in the dangerous psychological condition
of fusion between the individual ego and the extended national or collective
self. Personal and collective identities had merged, they were as if
inseparable. The individual could (and, in fact, social undercurrents
encouraged him to) identify with the national image of strength, omnipotence
and fearlessness. Even death was
challenged. Nothing could inflict harm
or injury. This state of psychological
inflation affected the entire nation, including the political leadership, which
was unable to differentiate itself from the collective process. The leadership had fallen victim to the collective
self-image of invincibility, and was therefore unable to prevent the war. In striking contrast, following the
Declaration of Independence, May 14, 1948, when the people rejoiced and danced
in the streets, Ben-Gurion was gravely concerned with what lie ahead,
contemplating the possibility of the Arab nations’ forthcoming attack. In 1973, however, the process of redemption,
of the individual ego merging with the collective self, had attained its tragic
peak.
The position of strength, force, and power, disconnected
from its opposite pole of loss and fear of annihilation, collapsed following
the Yom Kippur War. Since any trace of
weakness might have threatened the sense of hubris, and therefore had been
denied, the gap between reality and self-perception had reached unhealthy
proportions. With devastating clarity,
the Yom Kippur War brought to light the weakness that lingered in the shadow
behind the persona of strength and self sufficiency, by which the collective
ego had become possessed. The war brought
forth the sense of loss and – again – the deeply rooted fear of ultimate
destruction. This, in turn, generated
the release of strength and the will to survive. The Yom Kippur War was the tragic outcome of
a complex having taken possession of a nation’s collective consciousness.
The Yom Kippur War and Its
Aftermath
From Ambivalence to Unconditional Ideology
The mood in the wake of the Yom Kippur War was entirely
different than the triumph and euphoria that had followed upon the Six Day War.
Israelis now found themselves depressed and in grief, the narcissistic illusion
of grandiosity and invulnerability had shattered. …
Contents
Preface The Beggar in the Hero’s Shadow
Chapter 1 Return to the Source
Chapter 2 From My Notebook
Chapter 3 From Dream to Reality
Chapter 4 Origins and Myths
Chapter 5 From Redemption to Shadow
Chapter 6 Wholeness Apart
Chapter 7 Myth, Shadow and Projection
Chapter 8 A Crack in the Mask
Chapter 9 The Death of the Mythical and the Voice of the Soul
Dedication of The Hero and His Shadow
I dedicate this book to those, all too many, whose voices were silenced by man’s evil.
I dedicate it to those, all too few, who raise their voice against fascism, who speak up in the struggle for peace and reconciliation, especially between Palestinians and Israelis, incessantly on the verge of yet another cycle of violence and hostilities.
I dedicate it to those who try to hold the vulnerable balance in that ultimate conflict of Abraham between Father and Son, divine and human, idea and implementation, past and future, ego and self.
I dedicate this book to the daughters and the sons whose future is endangered.
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