1.
Nothing makes me laugh more than scholarly and peppered analyses of the Trump era. After all, this is a very unexpected person who managed to break the rules of the game, but the media continues to apply to him the rules of the old era, the era before him.
Trump's victory proved that the fewer updates you heard in recent months, the more informed you were. The fewer commentators you listened to, the more you knew what was going on.
And yet, a moment after the stinging loss (of the media, not of Hillary) the air is filled again with words, explanations, analyses, and predictions. It makes me laugh, and I think it makes even Trump laugh.
The top commentators are assessing what his next moves will be, when the man himself still has no idea what he's planning for tomorrow. The best writers are explaining what he'll do in the Middle East, when he's at the "Yo, what a scene, I'm in the Oval Office, I can't believe it, where did you say the bathroom was?" stage."
There's so much talk here about the media's "Yom Kippur." Forget Yom Kippur for a moment, what about a speech fast?
2.
This week, the government approved the disclosure of confidential investigation materials related to the Yemeni children affair. Minister Tzachi Hanegbi was authorized by the Prime Minister to handle the declassification.
For decades, they have been dealing with the physical kidnapping of children, which is certainly an open wound, but what about the kidnapping of the mind, the soul, the heritage and the faith? Here too, serious acts have been committed, from cutting off wigs to forcing secular education, as if Judaism were something primitive, belonging to the past. And so Jews who devotedly preserved their identity for thousands of years in the Diaspora - were forced to abandon it precisely when they reached the Promised Land.
This week I remembered that the mother of Tzachi Hanegbi, former MK Geula Cohen, once wrote something beautiful on this subject.
So I went to her book (whose excellent title is "I Have No Power to Be Tired") and searched and searched until I found it. And so she wrote, Geula, daughter of Rabbi Yosef Cohen, who immigrated from Yemen: "You have no greater theft than the one in which the ministries of education - some more and some less - robbed Israeli students of the deep encounter with the spiritual and cultural assets, and with the heroes of the spirit and thought of our people, and this not only by making them disappear but also by making fun of them. For the theft of a copper penny you are accused of crimes and you pass judgment - who will pass judgment for the theft of spiritual treasures?""
Wow. Every word. Soon, as the archives open, we will hear many stories about children taken from their parents, about family reunification, and about DNA testing.
But we must admit, painfully, that there is not much we can do practically in this area. It is too late. While in the second area, the one that Geula Cohen is crying about, there is still a lot to do and fix. It is customary to say "to restore the crown to its former glory," but perhaps we should say "to restore the plunder.".
3.
And as always when I'm just looking for something small in some historical book, I found myself diving into it and couldn't stop. The book brings short excerpts, articles, and interviews by Geula Cohen from all her years in the underground, in the Knesset, and in public activity in general.
The conclusion that emerges from reading it is that popular Facebook personalities should start being afraid. There is someone who is much brighter and sharper than all of them, even though she is over ninety years old. Pay attention to the following statuses by Geula Cohen. Although they have been published over the years as part of long articles, the format is witty, short and to the point, as if written for our young and frenetic generation:
• "My way of dealing with the impatience that grips me when I hear the latest news is either to immerse myself in one of our ancient sources of inspiration to learn from them that everything is already written there. Or to leaf through an old newspaper to realize that things have already happened in my generation. Or to 'race' with my car to one of the ancient landscapes surrounding the Jerusalem mountains, to breathe into myself something of the patience with which these landscapes have been waiting for us here for thousands of years.".
• "The news in our newspaper becomes outdated overnight, while the old news in our sources is renewed every single day. We need to bring the old news back into the news.".
• "I never felt tall when I stood on a stage, and I stood on many stages. I felt tall - and that from wherever I stood - only when I raised my eyes up.".
• "Of all the pleasant music I hear at weddings, the sound that rises from the breaking of a glass, in memory of the destruction of the house, is especially pleasing to my ears. And of all the symphonies in the world, my favorite is our Hebrew language, as it jingles in our streets with various melodies from the mouths of new immigrants: Russian or Anglo-Saxon, French or Moroccan.".
• "They will dwell alone - a blessing? A curse? If instead of waiting to be reminded that you are Jewish, you remind yourself every morning that you are Jewish - if recognition and not necessity determines your being - then the curse will become a blessing.".
• "In the life of the people of Israel, only what is historical will ultimately turn out to be realistic and political. Signing agreements that contradict this historical truth is like signing a protest that has no cover.".
• "To bear all the sufferings with which the Land of Israel was bought – I am ready with all my soul and my heart. But with the sufferings with which the Land of Israel is sold – I will fight with all my soul and my heart.".
And this, in my opinion, is Geula Cohen's strongest sentence. If we started with commentators who add nothing to us, here is a commentary sentence that is true almost every week, in the face of almost every news item that seems existential and dramatic to us: "As someone who never ceases to feel like a member of a four-thousand-year-old people, it always seems ridiculous to me when a journalist sticks his microphone in my mouth and after less than a minute informs me: Your time is up!""
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
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