(2 of 2)
Certainly, the native-born young Israelis, the "sabras" (nicknamed from an edible cactus that is prickly on the outside, soft and sweet within) who fought for their land like lions under the inspiration of Zionism, have been searching for a new source of inspiration. The intense Zionist ideology of heroic manual work in an atmosphere of collective equality looks to them more & more oldfashioned. The slogans have disappeared; their leaders have become government bureaucrats with American cars at their disposal; mailmen and railway clerks seem to be just as valuable to the state as "pioneers" who are willing to swelter in the Negev desert to grow tomatoes which could be more cheaply produced in Galilee. Said one young Israeli: "It seems as if Zionism was a sort of Benzedrine which isn't working any more. And we don't know what to take in its place. But we do feel that the state has failed us — without exactly knowing why."
The bitterness of the disillusioned sabras was increased by the immigrants from Europe's cities, with their preference for selling ice cream at street-corner stalls to clearing rocks from the hillside. Splinter groups began to form: the intellectual "Canaanites" who urged severing all relations with non-Israeli Jews and wrote anti-religious poems; the would-be expatriates who wanted to leave the country and live among non-Jews; the aggressive nationalists who sneered at the "spinelessness" of those who had marched unresisting into Hitler's gas chambers.
Bible Principles. But in the past year a new positive attitude has been evident. Says Pedagogy Professor Karl Frankenstein of Hebrew University: "This has been most striking in their changed approach to new immigrants . . . Cynicism and sterile nationalism are on the way out."
The young men and women of Israel are reaching for religious forms to give meaning to their new nationhood. Parents who belong to the old secular-socialist tradition of Zionism are finding that their children demand observance of religious festivals; even in the collective farms, which have been called "hotbeds of atheism," young people feast and fast in accordance with the Jewish calendar.
But the young people make it clear that the law-bound Judaism of the Diaspora is not what they are looking for. Said one of them last week: "In the teachings of the Bible there are principles of ethics and morals on which can be constructed a way of life more satisfying than the rabbis' interpretations with which our grandparents had to be content." Added another: "Every nation needs its traditions, but we modern Israelis can't accept the traditionalism of the Torah-soaked ghettos."
* Orthodox Jews of the Diaspora have often hired non-Jews (goyim) to perform household tasks that are forbidden on the Sabbath (shabbos).