The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu

Yoni as commander of an armor battalion on the Golan Heights during the Syrian War of Attrition, 1974.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to Doris-Jeanne Gourévitch for permission to use her translation of a poem by Paul Verlaine, from Selected Verse, entitled “Autumn Song.”

Netanyahu, Jonathan, 1946-1976.
The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu
Translation of Mikhteve Yoni.

The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu / Jonathan Netanyahu; with notes and afterword by his brothers Benjamin and Iddo Netanyahu.
Includes Index.
1. Yoni, 1946-1976. 2. Israel-Armed Forces-Officers-Correspondence. I. Netanyahu, Binyamin. II.Netanyahu, Iddo. III. Title.

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Eulogy for Lt. Col. Jonathan Netanyahu, Delivered by Shimon Peres, Israel's Defense Minister

INTRODUCTION
by
Herman Wouk

remarkable work of literature, possibly one of the great documents of our time. Its effect on me—I read it in Hebrew a year ago—has been strong and lasting. It is a posthumous publication. My aim in this preface is only to introduce the late author in a few plain words. He speaks for himself with power that I cannot match.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Force, led the storming party that in July 1976 rescued from Entebbe Airport in Uganda a hundred and three Jewish hostages, threatened by pro-Pales- tinian terrorists with execution. The exploit stunned the world. Its fame does not dim. In the continuing struggle of civilized men against the mounting global crime of terrorism, Entebbe shines, a beacon in dense gloom.

Jonathan Netanyahu was shot to death by a Ugandan soldier, when the rescue had been virtually accomplished and the withdrawal of the hostages was about to begin; for the government of Uganda was conniving with criminals. He was the only member of the rescue force to die. This was in the high tradition of the Israeli army. The motto of their officers is, “After me. ”

Self-Portrait of a Hero is a collection of his private correspondence, written from his seventeenth year to a few days before he died. Like Anne Frank’s diary it is a fortuitous, not a deliberately created, work of art. The teen-ager who wrote the first homesick letter from a Philadelphia suburb to his scouting pals in Jerusalem, and the exhausted paratroop commander who dashed off the last letter to his sweetheart before he set out for Entebbe, alike had not the slightest literary intent. These are all random jottings, hasty unselfconscious scrawls.

And yet this artless out of Netanyahu’s changing ideas and shifting moods over thirteen years, these impressionistic glints and glimpses of him in training, in battle, and in brief peaceful interludes of study, comprise a true and brilliant portrait of a hero, the only wholly convincing one that I know of, in a contemporary literature of anti-heroes. This is what a twentieth-century hero is really like. The lands of the free will need such men until the day when the last tyrannies that spawn the terrorists are faced down, and we enter the coming age of peace, the only long-range alternative to a planet of ash. In this grim plain truth lies the importance of Netanyahu’s letters.

Strange, slender, but strong threads tie me to this young Jewish soldier, whom I never met, and never heard of till he died in the rescue mission, now called in Israel Operation Jonathan. His grandfather and mine, it turns out, both studied the Talmud at the great Volozhin Yeshiva in Lithuania. He and I were both born in America. My parents like his were Zionists. But his father and mother returned to Palestine, where they had lived as youngsters, to raise their children; the father is a distinguished historian, the mother read for the bar in London, and both have been serious workers in the Zionist movement. For my parents America was the land of present promise, Zion a dream. I grew up on the streets of New York; Jonathan, in the pleasant green byways of Jerusalem. When the State of Israel was created in 1948, I was thirty-three and my first-born son, Abe, was two years old. Jonathan then was Abe’s age.

My wife and I lost Abe in a tragic and senseless accident, a month or so before his fifth birthday. The Netanyahus lost Jonathan shortly after his thirtieth birthday. If parents are fated to mourn a son, and if one can envy such bitter bereavement, my wife and I can envy the Netanyahus. Their son died for his people and for all men, in the full flush of manhood, doing a famous deed. In his death he helped to save more than a hundred lives, brought glory to Israel, and gave the world a blaze of hope in a very dark time. I may say he sanctified the name of God. For our son, we have only the tears and the scar of a senseless waste. By the power of this book, the two sons seem to blend in my mind and heart; and in mourning Lieutenant Colonel Netanyahu I mourn Abe, and what he might have been. I mourn too the million Jewish children who were murdered by Hitler’s Germany in senseless waste. In Jonathan’s death there is the redeeming dawn of Israel. He could fight, and he fought

The correspondence first appeared serially in the Israeli newspaper Maariv (“Evening”). Published there in book form as Yoni’s Letters, it was a great success. For well before the Entebbe rescue, within the army and outside it, “Yoni” Netanyahu was already something of a legend; a taciturn philosopher-soldier of terrific endurance, a hard-fibered, charismatic young leader, a magnificent fighting man. On the Golan Heights, in the Yom Kippur War, the unit he led was part of the force that held back a sea of Soviet tanks manned by Syrians, in a celebrated stand; and after Entebbe, “Yoni” became in Israel almost a symbol of the nation itself. Today his name is spoken there with somber reverence.

I had not heard of this book until in 1978 I consulted an Israeli colonel about a novel that I am working on. “Have you read Yoni’s Letters?” he asked. I pleaded ignorance—“But you’ve heard of Jonathan, the officer who died at Entebbe.”—“Of course.”—“Well, it’s an amazing book. I’ll send you a copy. You read Hebrew?”—“Yes.”—“Good.”

A month or so later, the book arrived at my home in Washington inscribed, “For Herman Wouk, this book of the letters of my friend, to whom I owe my life. ” So I learned that among Yoni’s many daring exploits—some of them still veiled in secrecy—was his rescue of this officer, wounded and helpless behind the Syrian lines, for which he was decorated. And so I came to read Yoni’s Letters.

A word about my Hebrew-reading ability. I have not lived in Israel, though I visit there often. I have small chance to speak the language, and to my regret I know little of the current literature. I am the sort of Diaspora Jew that my father and grandfather were. My grounding is in the classics; mainly the Scriptures, the Talmud, and the scholarly commentaries. The curious result is that I can read a prophecy of Jeremiah more easily than the front page of Maariv; and a knotty dispute in the Talmud more readily than a chapter in a new Hebrew novel. Yet I found myself going through Yoni’s Letters with ease. Even the early jottings to his friends in Jerusalem, full of callow homesick criticism of America, caught me. Here was an intense, expressive youngster! And from page to page my interest deepened, as the character of the young man unfolded before my eyes.

I now did something odd. Usually I start my day with Scripture or Talmud study. I shifted Yoni’s Letters into that place. Why? Yoni was respectful of our religion, but not observant. To call his book a sacred text would be maudlin. And yet, in it I did glimpse an ember of sacred fire. He wrote a simple pure Hebrew. Scriptural woids and phrases showed up naturally in his jottings, sometimes with arresting force. Modern Hebrew rests on that ancient vocabulary, and the best modern writers—so I am told, and so I believe—tend to hold to the strong old roots and forms, resisting the flood of loan-words and neologisms that can turn newspaper Hebrew into puzzling jargon. Thus I can read Ahad Ha’am, Bialik and Agnon with no strain; and Yoni’s Hebrew flowed for me like their prose. It may have been only his intelligent directness of style, but it worked. I was enthralled.

I confess I started to read the English version of Yoni’s Letters with misgivings, but it is good. Yoni’s brothers, Benjamin and Iddo, who figure much in the correspondence, have infused it with Yoni’s authentic notes: sometimes dry and tough, sometimes beautifully tender, and now and then—writing though he did at odd moments in field tents or bouncing Army trucks—starkly poetic. Few translations ever match the original, but Yoni’s letters preserve in English much of their clarity and force.

Another son of mine has gone to live and work in Israel. His decision startled my wife and myself. Like most American Jews we believe in Israel and support it, buy Israel bonds, make frequent trips there; I give speeches for Israeli causes and so forth. Yet a decision to live there is something else. When our son made his move, he had just graduated from a top American law school. A broad track to success and possible wealth lay open to him. In his worn jeans, battered boots, love of rock music and general Yankee Doodle surface and interests, he was and remains much like the contemporaries he has left behind, in the richest and greatest country on earth—a country he unreservedly loves—to cast in his lot with the beleaguered, inflation-ridden, Hebrew-speaking Israelis in their tiny land.

“Why have you done it?” I asked him one day in Jerusalem. We sat on the veranda of an old stone inn, looking across a ravine at the walls of the Old City in late golden light.

“I’ll tell you, Dad,” he said with an enigmatic grin, just short of the natural patronizing air of the American young toward the not-young, “Israel’s a pretty good place to live.” With that, we dropped it. Love in such cases has to close the gap where words fail.

Yoni’s Letters explained my son to me; at least, gave me a clue. I imagine other readers will see in this book why Israel is a pretty good place to live. Not safe, not rich, not tranquil, not with an assured future, none of these. Jonathan Netanyahu was increasingly a pessimist, and the color of his book darkens and darkens to the end. But the very last words he wrote express the Israeli spirit to the full, and they are tinged, too, with an irrepressible streak of the American in Yoni, which brought him again and again to study at Harvard, and which makes me feel toward him half like a blood brother, half like a bereaved father:

—“It’ll be okay.”

Israel is either a preposterous historical anomaly—an armed New Jersey on the eastern Mediterranean, an enclave of the West thrust into a seething hostile continent of implacable Muslims righteously bent on its elimination—a picture not without its proponents; or it is one of the great hopeful developments of our ghastly century, a beacon in dense gloom, a testimony to the power of the human spirit to overcome disaster and start anew. The return of the Jewish people to their historic land, after nineteen centuries of exile and the gigantic destruction of European Jewry, is certainly one of the most remarkable things that has ever happened. In Yoni’s letters, it is clear that he feels this miracle of history in his blood and bones; and that to be part of it, to safeguard it, to bring closer Israel’s day of peace with its neighbors, is worth the best there is in him and in any man. At his low ebb, almost crushed by the death of his friends in the Yom Kippur War, almost overcome by the messes and the failures of Israeli politics (no better than our own politics in the United States, and often worse), that note of dedication and pride, that sense of the worth of what he is doing, defiantly sounds like a muted distant marching song.

In one letter, he writes of performing guard duty on a hill on the border one cold night, the night of the Jewish New Year. Below the hill in one direction, he sees the lights of a Jordanian town. In the other direction behind him twinkle the lights of a farm settlement, from which the sounds of New Year rejoicing float up to him. Alone, chilled, sleepless in a cloud of gnats, he lies on the stony ground, rifle in hand; and lying so, he feels the beauty and wonder of the Return, and an acerb pleasure in his own rough pari in it.

To the eye of the visitor Israel is a lovely, tranquil, green and pleasant place; “a pretty good place to live,” in fact, where young girls and old folks can pass in the streets at night and think no harm, and the sun shines, and the good things in life, for all the economic woes, are plentiful, and life can be warm and sweet. But all this is so, because Yoni performed guard duty on the border hill top in the night.

The American hero Raymond Spruance, the admiral who led and won the Battle of Midway against almost hopeless odds, commented long afterward about the great sea fight, “There were a hundred Raymond Spruances in the Navy. They just happened to pick me to do the job.”

Had Yoni lived, these letters would not have seen the light. There would have been no occasion for publishing them. Though the word Entebbe never appears in the letters, it is the key to their gathering and finally thunderous force. As in Greek tragedy, we watch with pity and terror a hero moving toward his doom. Fiercely competitive though Yoni was, and exultant in excelling, he would have laughed off the notion of publishing his letters, because “there are a hundred Yonis in Israel; they just happened to pick me to do the job.”

In a sense, he would speak truly, as Raymond Spruance did. Heroes are not supermen; they are good men who embody—by the cast of destiny—the virtue of their whole people in a great hour.

I write this preface at a time of national sorrow and self-doubt in our own country. Iranian terrorists, with the criminal connivance of their government, have held Americans hostage for half a year. An Entebbe-like attempt at their rescue has recently failed. By the time these words see the light, may those hostages, by God’s grace, be home safe! I believe that, as there are a hundred Yonis in tiny Israel, there are in America a thousand Yonis. This book is for them, as much as for anybody; a word from their renowned fallen peer, to reassure them that their hard long training is needed, that love of country is noble, that self-sacrifice is rewarding, that to be ready to fight for freedom fills a man with a sense of worth like nothing else.

If the United States of America is not another preposterous historical anomaly—the last gasp on earth of the dream of freedom, in a world collapsing into authoritarianism or benighted chaos; if America is still the great beacon in dense gloom, the promise to the hundreds of millions of the oppressed that liberty exists, that it is the shining future, that they can throw off their tyrants, and learn freedom and cease learning war—then we too, like Israel, need our Yonis to stand guard in the night.

In Israel, a little land of the free, they honor their Yonis, because Israel lives such a precarious national existence. This book may tell us Americans, in the greatest land of the free, something about honoring our own young guardians in the night.

Yoni loathed war and fighting. To kill horrified him. Of such are the Israeli soldiers, and of such are modern heroes. Because he had to fight to save his nation’s life, he made himself into a great fighting man. But he knew, as all men of sense know, that war today is an empty and dangerous lunacy, not a practical political technique. He was philosopher enough to understand this truth of our time to the bottom; and he was man enough to know, that so long as villains and maniacs would egg on and arm young Arabs to destroy Israel, he would have to be a soldier; and that if he had to, he would die fighting for the Return and for peace. So consecrated, he flew off to Entebbe, and to his great hour.

Like one of Michelangelo’s unfinished sketches in stone, this book is a work of rough suggestive art. The mysterious figure only half-emerges from the native rock. And yet the figure is there. When we close the book, we know nothing of Yoni’s secret exploits, little of his magic with women, little of his terrific labors in his army assignments, little of his intense family relationships. Yet we know the man; all we have to know, and all we will know. He inspires and ennobles us, and he gives us hope. That is enough. That is the best art can do.

I wanted to close this introduction by applying those words to Yoni. But I cannot. I see him in my mind’s eye shaking his head, with a grin and a deprecatory farewell wave. And I hear his last words, like a distant marching song on the wind,

—“It’ll be okay. ”

Ode to Yoni

Entebbe, I met with a British television producer to discuss a dramatization of my brother’s life. After reviewing the events of Yoni’s life and death, the producer said to me: "Leave it alone. A great biography of a great life needs the perspective of decades.”

Two decades have passed since that day, and each year I am reminded of the wisdom of that advice. For Yoni’s image grows with the passage of time, as does the appreciation of his unique character. That spirit, that willingness to throw himself into the maelstrom of Israel’s struggle to survive, was captured best by Yoni himself. Unknowingly, he was his own biographer. The letters he wrote to the members of his family, to his friends, and to the women in his life offer a compelling record of not only the turbulent events in the life of a warrior but the passionate inner soul of a noble spirit.

Perhaps before I die a great work of art will be made about Yoni. But I will take with me to my last days what I experienced from my earliest ones: the imprint of his fortitude and courage, his belief in the justice of our cause, his steadfastness in the face of adversity, and, above all, his humor and humanity.

The death of a brother cut down in his prime is traumatic in every way; it changed my life and directed it to its present course. But the impact on a brother is a distant second to the greatest agony of all, the death of a son. Over the years, as I have visited agonizing parents who have lost their children in battle or to bouts of savage terrorism, I have grieved for them as I grieved for my parents. And it is to all the parents of Israel who have borne the ultimate sacrifice that we dedicate this book. They can find comfort in the fact that in Yoni’s testament there resonates the private heroism of so many of Israel’s fallen sons.

Foreword

began shortly after his death. Within a few weeks, we managed to get hold of more than three hundred and thirty, written to his family, friends and fellow soldiers. They stretch across a period of thirteen years: from March 28, 1963, when he had just turned seventeen, to a few days before he fell in Uganda on July 4, 1976.

Not all of Yoni’s letters were incorporated in this volume, nor were all the letters it contains reproduced in their entirety. We included, however, the greater part of the material, and we consistently retained every passage that throws light on Yoni’s life.

The bulk of the translation from the Hebrew into English was done by Shoshana Perla; the last section was translated by Miriam Arad. Both did their work skillfully and conscientiously. Ruth Rigbi, who checked part of the translation, and Edward Grossman, who went over the whole of it, made a number of fine revisions and suggestions. Our own part was primarily to see to it that the translation was faithful to the original throughout—in style as well as in content. Lastly, Anne Freedgood of Random House added her final touches.

The six chapters of the book correspond to the periods into which Yoni’s life from 1963 to 1976 may be divided. We have preceded each chapter with some background data pertinent to the period in which the letters were written.

Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to all those who provided us with Yoni’s letters, and to those who were helpful in producing the English version presented in these pages.

THE
UNITED STATES

(1963-1964)

younger brothers went to the United States with their parents, Benzion and Cela Netanyahu. The family, long-time residents of Jerusalem, was to live for some years in America while Benzion, then editor in-chief of the Encyclopedia judaica, pursued his researches in Jewish history. For Yoni, seventeen years old, this move constituted a profound change.

President of the student body at his high school in Jerusalem, an outstanding student in the eleventh grade and head of his Scout troop, Yoni now faced a world he barely knew. Entering an American high school in mid-term, he had to cope with problems stemming from the social, linguistic and educational differences between Israel and the United States. But what distressed him most was his separation from Israel, from the life he led there and from his friends, even though he knew that this separation would last only a year and a half, until his enlistment in the Israeli army.

It’s almost three months since I came to America. I go to a very nice school. Half the people know me as “the boy from Israel,” but the truth is I haven’t got a single friend here. Not because they don’t welcome foreigners (quite the contrary, they want to befriend us), but because I keep aloof. And I do so not because I dislike them, but because I feel I belong to a different world. I’m remote from them, and as time goes by, the distance doesn’t diminish, but quite the reverse—it increases continually.

There’s not a moment here—even the most precious and beautiful one—that I wouldn’t trade for my immediate return to Israel. My friends in Israel, my social life there, and above all the land itself—I miss very much.

Longing is difficult to describe. I always used to laugh at the word; I always thought that you could forget, but I was wrong, believe me you can’t. To adapt oneself lo .1 new life yes, dial’s possible; bill to forget the old—that's impossible.

And I want to return, return, return . . . the word keeps floating up to the surface . . . without purpose, without hope . . . yet always gnawing, stabbing, hurting.

I’m here, I live here, yet I’m not really here. I’m far from here, yet far from Israel too . . . Sometimes I think I’m caught in a dream. Not the kind of dream that when you awake from it, you return to reality, but a dream which is reality . . . the only reality there is. I feel as if I’m wrapped in smoke. Alone in a crowd.

If you’ve ever sat in a bar in a dark corner with distant voices in the background and people moving round and round, seemingly close to you yet you don’t belong to them, you don’t belong to anyone, you’re far away from them—if you’ve ever experienced this feeling, you might understand the reality in which I find myself.

I look outside the window and see a pale moon shrouded in a misty sky. The moonlight is faint, illuminating nothing. I look at the sky and there are no stars—it’s all darkness. Between the sky and the window I see the tips of the bare branches of two huge trees and through them the stain of light from above.

I don’t know why I described the moon. Maybe so you could understand the feeling that has taken hold of me at this moment, past one o’clock in the morning; a feeling that isn’t fleeting or unique to this night, but constant, always reappearing.

How did you manage to appear out of the blue, like the morning star? Your letter brightened my spirits, brought them out of the darkness into the light, if only for a moment. Go to Ephraim Kishon* and ask him to recommcnd you as a writer of a study on humor in Israel. Your wretched jokes almost made me laugh.

Listen, it’s not worth your while to send time-bombs by mail because, I’m bursting anyway, waiting for the moment when I’ll be able to go back. Besides, a bomb costs money; and besides—I want to live.

“A wide and spacious country,” said Yoni. All this space that surrounds me leaves me without any air to breathe. I yearn for a place that’s narrow, hot, rotten, filthy—a place that’s more than 60 percent desert and that one can scarcely find on a map of the world; a place full of special problems, where not to be a party member is practically a crime; a place just right for dumb killers, who don’t know that if you want to bump someone off, you don’t inform him ahead of time (bombs, my friend, bombs!).

My friend—I’m a very good student; I’ve overcome the language problem and the rest of my difficulties in school. I’ve found that if I want to learn something, I can do it very well. All it takes is a little work and effort.

Now I feel good; I’m on vacation and have just come back from Naomi’s in Washington,** and I received a letter from Israel (that is, from Koshe). Write soon, or else I’ll sink into a depression and perhaps not live to see the beloved Land, its dear people, fathers and sons, etc.

Your last letter moved me to renew the ties between me and those. I left behind. Why haven’t I written until now? I don’t know. But I know that from now on I will write.

I’ve taken on a new role here in the U.S.—making propaganda for Israel. A month ago I was interviewed in the student newspaper. Apparently the interview was quite successful; I’m being invited to homes, parties, etc., because “the parents want to meet me.” Last night I stayed up until one in the morning with four girls and a boy and preached Zionism and such. I’m glad to note that I’ve discovered a number of human beings here with a high level of wisdom and intelligence. The trouble with the youth here is that their lives are meager in content, drifting as though in a dream or a game.

A long time ago, nearly a year now, when I took on the leadership of the troop,* the first thing I had to do was to form a team, to find counselors, and then—even before I really knew you—when I asked you to leave the Ein Gedi troop to become a group leader in Arazim, and you began to talk, I thought suddenly, “I’m sorry for her, she thinks too much!”

I’m sorry for you and for everyone who grapples with the life about him, with life as we see it, in all its frailty and ugliness. It’s clear to me that there are people who find their lives complete, altogether flawless, although they lack a purpose and a future. Countless times I have envied a child’s existence and gone back into my past, to the perfect world of an infant hidden in the grass, gazing at the world with eyes full of wonder and love, for whom all is his and he is all.

Someone once told me, “Learn to love man as he is; don’t try to find in him what is in yourself.” I haven’t learned that yet. I come in contact with people, but I’m not one of them. I live, but in a world that’s shattered and ruined. I study, but I don’t learn a thing. Why am I like this and not different? I’m sorry that I’m not like the others. I’ve thought more than once: I’m born, I live, even create—and in the end I die. I’ll turn to dust and my grave will be trodden on by others who in their turn will die too to preserve the endless cycle of life and death. It can’t be that I live in order to create—if that were so, why should death overtake me? And if I live in order to die—why do I live at all? Why was I born? In that case, it would have been better not to have been born at all.

The instinctive life-force drives me to go on. Perhaps the only reason for my existence is to try to find answers to the questions that plague me.

Write me more about everyone in Arazim, write about them in the greatest detail—what are they doing? What are the problems of the troop? Write about each and every group leader. How do they get on together? When I was a part of Arazim and Arazim a part of me, I considered it most important for me to be aware of these matters so that all of you could function as a team. I know I took an interest in each person, in his problems and aspirations. I’m writing about Arazim and myself in the past tense. Perhaps I’ll never return to it, but I feel that its successes and failures are mine, even when I cannot influence the course of events.

How do I live in America? I get up in the morning, go to school, come home and study. Read a great deal and walk. Go to bed. Another day gone. A day without content or meaning. A day that will dawn again tomorrow only to die out too.

Two things can happen to an Israeli in America—either he becomes a full-fledged American (something that, I’m sorry to say, I have seen happen many times), or he becomes, in blood and spirit, more of an Israeli than he has ever been. I’m waiting for the moment I can go back—and begin to live again.

“There is no limit and no end to man’s understanding.” I live in this moment; I die in another. Is there any difference between the two? Are they not one and the same? There are times it is better to die than to live, and sometimes it is better not to feel than to suffer. Then there are times it is also good to feel that there’s a purpose to your actions, that you’re not helpless but strong, that you are great and mighty. Sometimes it is good to believe that man is a giant, a force before whom nothing can stand.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Is that really so? Can man really overcome everything?

Null and void, all is vanity, concept veiled within concept, a dense fog concealing everything, a breath on the mirror clouding the image. . . .

I am consumed from within. I live without purpose, aching and crying out. I despair.

At this moment I’m going to sleep. It’s still early. Too early. Why don’t I want to stay awake? Because I’ve nothing to do while awake. Study? What for? I see no point in it. Read? Read what? What will I gain from the writings of others? They write of their own concerns, ideas, lives. That will not do to solve the problems of my life.

Well then, fall asleep? What for? So I can get up tomorrow and repeat the process again. Do I need sleep? Why, I’m not tired at all. This is a moment of emptiness. A moment that holds nothing. A moment of eternity. . . .

Smoke, curling and spreading, covers everything;
Rising, ascending in heavy columns.
The land, enraged, can find no peace;
Fearful, atremble, it struggles in secret,
Waging a soundless bitter battle.
All is in vain, all is over,
A black cloud enveloped the world . . .

All that I wrote on the preceding pages was not intended as a letter, but since it’s been written, I’ve decided to send it to you.

Once, when I was a small child, I used to sign certain letters like this: “Your friend who is longing to see you, Yoni.” Today I see no sense in even signing a letter. For me a letter is the continuation of a conversation which for some reason was not concluded. In a letter you don’t say everything, and everything is disjointed. But when one letter follows another, the tie is not broken—the chain seems endless.

You are all so far away, beyond my sphere of influence. I want to intervene, correct what’s wrong, put things straight, create new things—but I can’t. It’s all so remote, and yet—how strange!—so clear, so lucid, that I can see it all—but only see, and no more.

When four work together, they can do everything—remember that. A kingdom can be turned into one of two things—either into a minor state or a great power. If you and the others are truly serious about Arazim, as I hope you are, and work for it with complete dedication, then you are already more than halfway to victory.

When I was in Arazim I wanted to bring a troop into the eighth grades, a real troop, and not just a group about to disintegrate; a troop in which each individual would feel himself an integral part, without which the entire machinery would somehow suffer. Little by little, as the months passed, I saw how twenty children turned into forty, and then into sixty, eighty, and finally into more than a hundred. I saw how near–infants were transformed into a force which had to be treated seriously and respectfully. I saw a child turning into an adult and a troop taking shape.

Should you continue to serve as a counselor next year? I can’t answer that; that’s a matter for you alone to decide. If you feel that you’re creating something, that not a day slips by without your making some contribution, if you feel you’re needed—then I’m sure you’ll continue. If not, then finish your work on a high note, so that no bitter taste remains when you leave.

Actually, since you’re the Rina I knew, I’m sure you’ll do the right thing. You’ve never disappointed me. Whether or not you continue as counselor, I’m sure you’ve made the most of your time in the troops.

How do I feel? Recently I read a poem translated into Hebrew by Jabotinsky: “Autumn Song” by Paul Verlaine.

As I returned home in the biting cold, the sun smiling in its blurred color and the heavens weeping bitterly for some incomprehensible reason, my eyes fell—without any advance notice—upon a letter from Israel, and from Koshe no less, and what’s more—it was even open. I was beside myself with happiness!

My friend, I realize that the glue on the envelopes in Israel tastes like eggplant, but just the same do try to seal the envelope. Mine, in any case, taste of peppermint, so it’s pleasant to lick the flap; that’s why I don’t use post-cards.

By the way, you might save yourself the effort of telling me what’s happening in the Middle East. I really know what’s going on (so it turns out), and it’s a pity to waste Israeli ink.

In mathematics I’m the best in the class, as well as the youngest; and in literature, as far as analyzing poetry is concerned, you can compare my fellow classmates to what we were in our glorious days back in the seventh and eighth grades. Maybe.

Aside from that, I’m tops in history. I also spend a sixth of the time studying that the average student here does; also, I’m friends with all the teachers; also, I’m doing well in other subjects, and also—well, there’s really nothing else.

I live outside Philadelphia. My school has about 1,500 students who don’t know what they’re doing there. It looks more like the Tel-Aviv Sheraton than a school (beautiful even by American standards, brand new, and it cost 6.5 million dollars to build). My house is “terribly” nice, surrounded by lawns and trees and empty, meaningless life.

The only thing people talk about is cars and girls. Life revolves around one subject—sex; I think Freud would have found very fertile soil here. Bit by bit I’m becoming convinced I’m living among apes and not human beings.

You’re almost sixteen. Do you realize you’ve lived nearly a quarter of your life? An insect, which lives only a few days, probably feels that its life span is enormous. Perhaps that’s why we believe that we still have an eternity ahead of us. But man does not live forever, and he should put the days of his life to the best possible use. He should try to live life to its fullest. How to do this I can't tell you. If I had a clear answer, I’d have half the solution to the puzzle called life. I only know that I don’t want to reach a certain age, look around me and suddenly discover that I've created nothing, that I’m like all the other human beings who dash about like so many insects, back and forth, never accomplishing anything, endlessly repeating the routine of their existence only to descend to their graves, leaving behind them progeny that will merely repeat the same “nothingness.”

Why am I writing all this to you? Perhaps to protest against your failure to realize that with every passing day you acquire a complete world. Now, this very moment, you’ve gained something. From every mistake you make you gain a little. Every single moment of your life is a whole epoch.

Do you remember Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”? In one of the stanzas, he says:

If you can fill the unforgiven minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth . . .

Because each and every minute is made up of seconds and of even briefer fragments of time, and every tiny fragment ought not to be allowed to pass in vain. I must feel certain that not only at the moment of my death shall I be able to account for the time I have lived; I ought to be ready at every moment of my life to confront myself and say—This is what I’ve done.

Regrettably, Rina, we can’t go back to where we were. To this very day I swear that the best and most beautiful days I ever had were those when I was a little child, living in Talpiot,^* hiding in huge fields, covered almost completely by grass, looking for lady-bugs, seeing the world as the most marvellous place, and grown-ups—as veritable giants. But this period, too, is over, and now I’m facing the coming years of my life. I can remember the past, but I cannot return to it. It has passed, it’s gone, finished. I gaze at the future and dream of the life yet to come, with one year chasing another . . .

In Israel, I lived in one world (a person can’t live in two worlds), but that world of mine was divided into many parts. A world with aims (one of them, for example, was common to us both—to set up a troop). Life consists of countless experiences and is measured from innumerable points of view. But the things I did, I did with utter sincerity, and devoted all my strength to their accomplishment. All this did not prevent me from living with myself, from contemplating things that no one beside me knew anything about.

Here—I have little contact with people my age, I have no interest in them, and I don’t need them. I am not part of them. They’re too frivolous. I’ve come across many like them in Israel and I must admit that those in Israel didn’t interest me any more than the ones here. That I’m alone (and believe me, in Israel too I was alone) does not detract from the fact that I, as an individual, as a single unit, constitute an entire world. My life will be complete not because of others, but because of myself. If I err and make mistakes, I’ll start again and build anew. There’s no reason why the tower I build around myself, around my person, whatever it may be, should not stand forever.

Death—that’s the only thing that disturbs me. It doesn’t frighten me; it arouses my curiosity. It is a puzzle that I, like many others, have tried to solve without success. I do not fear it because I attribute little value to a life without a purpose. And if I should have to sacrifice my life to attain its goal, I’ll do so willingly.

Generally, my mood hasn’t changed. I can’t stand America and I’m dying to return.

I’m writing this letter with an attractive red Parker pen which I think used to belong to Bella. At least the ink will return to its owner.

How are you, my dear ones? How are the exams going? These questions, which on the surface appear inconsequential, cannot be appreciated by the twisted brains of my wretched classmates. They should open an entire world before you, reveal to you the stormy background of my life here, lay bare my heart with its anguished cry, and give you an opportunity to chatter a bit in reply—and heaven help you if you don’t!

Batya, I understand you. So what? It happens to everyone. Try to overcome the bitter blow. Muster your strength and try to concentrate a little more on your studies instead of wasting your precious time on a world that is gone.

Yes, yes, I know there’s a good chance you’ll have to repeat the year. I know you “barely” got through last year, that half-an-hour before you took the exam you had “already” flunked, and that you don't know “anything.” Yes, I know all that, nothing escapes me. “Big Brother is watching ...”

Friends, I don’t mean to be a tell-tale but . . . Batya is terribly in love with me, I swear! She told me so herself. And I quote: “This sentence (on a private matter) hurts my aching soul more than anything in the world! Although I knew from the start that your heart did not belong to me, I never dreamed of so much cruelty!

“With a broken heart, great anger and torrents of tears, your former love” (I know this is not in earnest).

Rivka, cutie-pie, how are the braids? Now there’s no one to play “cow boys” with, right? I want you to know from now on that it was all Koshe’s fault because it was he who persuaded me to gallop away to the dream world of America. It wasn’t my fault, believe me! I’ll stop here because I don’t want you to take too much time from sociology class (or perhaps it’s Bible? or history? or God knows what).

Shimshon—regards from what’s-her-name. She too is anxious to see you, but the trouble is she’s got a husband. She claims that if you can take care of him, everything will be okay. If you can . . . ! Needless to say, it’s not all smooth sailing in America and sometimes I miss Israel. Let this be a consolation to you and all you lucky ones who “got a raw deal” and had to stay in Israel: Israeli girls are a thousand times better looking. In America there’s nothing to them but make-up.

Ehud—I salute you! “Be strong and of good courage!” Don’t give up! Encourage the others and maybe together you’ll manage to turn the classes that are still interesting into even wilder circuses than those described in your marvellous letter. Comrade—there is no purpose and no hope without battle. I’m depending on you to do your best.

My friends—what’s it like in America? How can it be anything without Rachel’s almonds, without paper darts, cast-off shoes and fist fights during recesses, without turning the school upside down and without breaking the piano? How can anything be interesting without my boring classmates from Massada^*—who can I quarrel with here? So tell me, friends, how can it be fun?

Less than a month left to the end of the year and its sorrows, but first I’ve got to pass final exams in five subjects. Since I missed more than half of the school year, this is quite depressing.

Look, I understand you and realize you’ll all have to repeat the year. Don’t despair! If you’ll all promise faithfully that you’ll make every effort, I pledge to repeat the year too, and then we’ll have lots to write about.

To stop work on your paper in literature, or more accurately, not to begin it at all, is like committing suicide. Don’t be crazy, you little deserter. Are you fed up with life? Really, Koshe, don’t be a fool! Rouse yourself from the darkness that surrounds you and look at the world with sober eyes.

I always knew the Scouts would not let you go just like that without “fixing” you in some way. To take a fellow who’s prepared to pay . . . (how much did you say?) and send him far away for months and months, knowing that he’s likely to desert and remain there for good (this must be the reason they chose you; they still have hopes!)—well, only the leaders of the Jerusalem Scouts are capable of doing such a thing, and only to Koshe. Be that as it may, congratulations; I wish you great success! Next time, my friend, while you wander in the world, try to roll around to my doorstep in the “land of beautiful sunshine,”^* and tell me in your melodious voice, which I’ve been longing to hear since the winter I left your abode, about all the hardships, wonders and marvels you experienced in your travels.

Since I last left your threshold my soul has known no peace. I don’t intend to tell you all that’s befallen me since that painful moment, but to avoid causing you undue worry let me assure you, Sire, that I am well, and as to the soundness of my reasoning and my strong desire to return to my homeland, may your mind rest at peace, my lord.

At this point it would be better to stop writing like a moron and return to the world of reality. Well—as you see, I’ve gotten stuck on the word “well”—well, I haven’t heard anything from Young Judea^* yet, but Michal, who has also joined our delegation, hasn’t heard from them either, so I’m still hoping. School will end in sixteen days. I’ve got eight school days and five final exams to go.

Say, have you lost your mind? Thoughts of heresy and sin may creep into the mind of any mischievous boy! Nevertheless, when you grow up it would make sense for you to decide to go to Nahal.^** What will I do there without you? Besides, ultimately you’ll have to join the army; and there’s always time to become an egghead. In fact, it’s better to become one when you’re older and more capable of understanding what you are learning and what you want to be.

I’ve been here^**** more than ten days. Our task is to provide American youth with a more solid knowledge of Israel, to serve as a living testimony of Israel’s independence and to represent its youth. The impression that Israel makes here is tremendous. They’re constantly talking about the Israelis who’ve been here, discussing their virtues and weaknesses as if they were saints. The camp is simply in love with me; all of them, young and old, know me, and I believe I’m doing my job properly. There are also two girls with me from the delegation, and we’re all making a good impression.

I’m counselor to campers aged nine to sixteen. Everyone’s convinced I’m about nineteen, and they don’t believe I’m only seventeen. All the other counselors here are nineteen to twenty-three, and I’m good friends with all of them. The fact that I’m an Israeli gives me an enormous advantage. Besides, I don’t feel younger than any of them; often it’s just the opposite.

After the sensational “opening” of your letter I’m giving up any attempt to match it. So I'll go straight to the point.

The sun rose behind an ominous cloud, when an ear-splitting shout was heard: “Yoni!” Not wasting a moment, I leapt from my cot and swiftly dashed to collect your epistle.

Your fascinating letter brought me indescribable happiness. After all, your long silence led me to fear that you’d decided to commit suicide without warning me, or at least that you’d run away from home.

I want you to know that for hours on end I had been sitting in the treetops, picking nuts, yawning away and weaving a noose, intending to hang myself if you or Iddo continued to remain silent.

The rest of this letter will be scrawled because I am now riding in a pickup truck which is taking me and my campers to dine at a restaurant as a prize for being selected the “honor bunk.” I'm not the only one who thinks that this is the bunk; everyone else thinks so too.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
by
Herman Wouk

Ode to Yoni

Foreword

THE
UNITED STATES

(1963-1964)

The sobbing winds Of violins Of autumn drone, Wound my heart, I .anguors start In monotone.
	Choked up inside As something died The hour tolls deep, My thoughts dwell on Those days bygone And I weep;
		And so I go Where ill winds blow Broken and brief Here and there As in the air The dying leaf.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION by Herman Wouk

Ode to Yoni

Foreword

THE UNITED STATES

(1963-1964)

INTRODUCTION
by
Herman Wouk

THE
UNITED STATES