David Low's "Interminable Overture" cartoon, 1939

The new film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, based on a novel by John Le Carre reminded me of an old David Low cartoon from 1939 (“History” yawning at the new ‘Blitzkrieg’) – in street language, “been there, done that” (though in his time Low’s perspective was naive). Having enjoyed the film “Tailor of Panama”, with Pierce Brosnan’s exquisitely sleazy character I was hoping this film would deliver similar quality in acting.

But the “Gary Oldman in a trenchcoat” image encapsulating the promos got me worried. This wouldn’t be the first time a whole movie has ridden on a single gimmick – be it a soundtrack or a pretty face. I did a google-search and was surprised to discover that in 1979 the BBC had made a mini-series based on the book. Although the segments are scattered, it’s possible to reconstruct the miniseries and watch it on the internet.

I must say, nothing compares to the original: Alec Guiness and Ian Richardson (ref. “House of Cards”) are cast in leading roles; the acting by all the players is superb and convincing. Patrick Stewart (from Startrek) also has a role. Unlike the new remake, the antagonists’ identities are not known ahead of time and much effort was spent giving them a personality and a human appearance.

In the new film, the suspects are identified almost from the start and left throughout the film as dour and colorless; the action is all in a declining motion with little room for mystery and suspense. The plot is practically spoon-fed to the audience – nothing is subtle. The production team invested most of its energies on the overdone seventies-era props. Similarly, Oldman’s character was a prop: fixed expression in thick glasses and a trenchcoat, he was practially cut out and carried from one scene into another. Ditto for Colin Firth’s character – another wooden prop (looking like he walked out from the “Bridgett Jones” set) with no depth. Mark Strong (ref: “Rocknrolla”) has a strong presence on film but was given a breadcrumb role in which he couldn’t develop his character.

In short, save your money and your intellect. Spend some time locating the segments from the BBC original (a few in no order are available here) and enjoy a real spy drama with high quality acting. You could almost be moved to tears watching the original and comparing to the remake. Hollywood simply doesn’t know how to make good movies anymore.

“Within three years of the creation of the state, there were as many new immigrants as there residents who had lived in the country before Independence. And they continued to come. The accepted view was that they ought to forgo their cultural distinctions and adopt a new identity. Novelist Aharon Appelfeld wrote about a boy from Poland who was mistreated and even severely beaten by his native comrades because he had not become suntanned like them. He assured them that he was trying hard to darken his skin, but they said that if he really wanted to, he would have changed long before.

The ability to change was later defined as a condition of becoming a part of the country. This was also the general view expressed in the discussion between David Ben-Gurion and the writers. “This people is ugly, impoverished, morally unstable and hard to love,” said the poetess Leah Goldberg. As she saw it, the Israeli writer had to learn from Dostoyevsky and Gorky – who were not deterred by ugliness, stench and degradation. What one had to reveal in the new immigrant, the Holocaust survivor, was the true image of Man, which was hidden deep inside the man with the black-market dollars in his belt. Yet, she added, it required “tremendous effort”. Ben-Gurion stated: “Among the survivors of the German concentration camps there were people who would not have survived if they had not been what they were – hard, evil and selfish people, and what they underwent there served to destroy what good qualities they had left.”

—–

Glib in places, the book is replete with anecdotal pearls: ” ‘[Moshe Kolodny:]… Now I should like to see us making the tremendous efforts needed to overcome the problem of immigration [absorption].’ In those days planning was considered a useless effort and improvision was the order of the day. ‘If we had worked with a plan,’ said Berl Locker, ‘we would never have dared to think of absorbing 150,000 immigrants (the number at that time).’ “

These days I don’t have a TV, having donated the two sets I had to charity a few years ago (anything truly worthwhile one can see anyway through “video on demand” on the internet).

One of the kinds of programs of quality which we lack these days is something like “Pillar of Fire”, Channel 1’s epic documentary on the rise and establishment of Israel. The accompanying photo-history book with all the text of the interviews is no less of a landmark, and it happened that when purchasing it recently for a friend I read the author’s (Yigal Losin) opening comments and laughed at their poignentness (circa. 1981):

“Five years ago I approached the late Professor Gershom Scholem, seeking to interview him for the ‘Pillar of Fire’ television series. The renowned scholar refused: “Aren’t you aware of my fervent opposition to television?” I asked him: “Don’t you watch television at all?” The octogenarian professor, the famous historian of Jewish mysticism, and one of the greatest Jewish scholars of the century, hesitated for a moment and said: “…only thrillers.” He told me that he himself does not have a television – but his wife does! Sometimes, he joins her to watch the news. “It may happen that I don’t exactly catch what they’re talking about,” he said, “so I ask my wife: ‘What did they say?’ And she replies: ‘I don’t remember…’ Now do you see the difference between a book and a television? When I encounter some kind of difficulty with a book, I can reread the sentence or paragraph as many times as I like. On television, words are elusive… there’s always room for error and misunderstanding… No! I’ll record my memoirs in a book and not on television…” ”

—

‘Pillar of Fire’ is nevertheless a remarkable documentary, based on first-hand interviews with about 250 individuals who played a role in the events leading to Israel’s establishment: a 95-year old woman who was a delegate to a Zionist Congress and met Herzl, the daughter of the first family to speak modern Hebrew as their mother tongue, an Arab fighter, one of Lawrence of Arabia’s men, Trotsky’s aide in the Russian Revolution, an American correspondent who reported on the conquest of Jerusalem in 1917, and a vast array of pioneers, politicians, ghetto fighters, refugees, members of the underground, Palestinian Arab personalities, British mandatory officials and others.

The full 19 episodes in Hebrew can be viewed here (many of the interviews are held in English): http://www.iba.org.il/media/?site=152&page=252&topic=928

The follow up series, “Tekuma”, (Establishment), in Hebrew, can be viewed here (in particular, episode 10 on the Yom Kippur war is fascinating):
http://www.iba.org.il/media/?site=152&page=252&topic=950

The English edition (narrated by Ian McKellan) isn’t available in full length on the main video sites, but the full 7 episodes in German can be viewed here (to view them in full you have to install “veoh” web player:
Chapter 1: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19024885qjFZzsw5?h1=Pillar+of+Fire-+Israel+-+Ein+Staat+entsteht+-+1v7

Chapter 2: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19024884gwnratzz?h1=Pillar+of+Fire-+Israel+-+Ein+Staat+entsteht+-+2v7

Chapter 3: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19024886pzpd9tqm?h1=Pillar+of+Fire-+Israel+-+Ein+Staat+entsteht+-+3v7

Chapter 4: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19025475qr6dgtd6?h1=Pillar+of+Fire-+Israel+-+ein+Staat+entsteht+-+4v7

Chapter 5: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19024883HfTTYZRQ

Chapter 6: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19027031gznfhcja?h1=Pillar+of+Fire-+Israel+-+ein+Staat+entsteht+-+6v7

Chapter 7: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19027032at3efktg?h1=Pillar+of+Fire-+Israel+-+ein+Staat+entsteht+7v7

Azriel Carlebach was a German-Jewish immigrant (to Palestine) with a Rabbinic education who took up a career in journalism, and in his time earned the ire of both Bolsheviks and Nazis alike; he became one of 37 Germans, along with Albert Einstein, blacklisted as “traitors of the fatherland” (1934) and eventually had to disguise himself in an “SA” (Nazi party stormtrooper) uniform in order to travel outdoors. Arriving in Palestine in 1937 he eventually became the chief editor of the ‘Yediot Achronot’ newspaper though broke away (partly due to ethical and person problems with the management) and founded the ‘Maariv’ newspaper in 1948. His paper’s editorial line was non-partisan and it criticized politicians and policies from all parts of the political spectrum. In the early years of Israel, Carlebach’s daily editorial pieces were considered the most influential printed text on the general public.

Below is Dr. Azriel Carlebach’s greetings for the new Jewish year (“Rosh HaShana”) 5712 (1951-1952). The backdrop of his greeting is Israel’s attempt to absorb up to a million new immigrants (most of them persecuted Jews from Arab states), build mass low-cost residential housing, cope with the ‘austerity regime’ and build an economy with relatively meager means. The reparations talks with West Germany had not yet yielded an agreement and the Israeli street was torn between those for and against an agreement with Germany. The title of Carlebach’s piece is a play on the famous phrase written by the ideological founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, who wrote “If you will it, it is no dream”.

If You Will It, It Is No Failure

October 1951

Without fear, dear Jews, and without deception – draw your heads out from the sand dunes and gaze fully at it – at the list of our failures: the failure of our absorption of immigrants which we didn’t absorb, and the failure of our settlement of the land which didn’t put down roots, and of the agriculture which didn’t expand, and the industry which didn’t develop, the investments which didn’t continue, the residential housing projects which didn’t house them [residents], the productivity of the labor which didn’t bear produce, the output which didn’t yield any.

We shall gaze at all these and even if at first glance it shall hurt, we should not lower our eyes or recoil. For these are fully ripe failures, absolute, obvious and clear as daylight – nobody disagrees any longer that these are failures. And this is a great blessing. Because nations are allowed to err. And most of their days are those of error. Many other nations spent on experiments and erroneous paths like these long years, whole generations and vast sums of money – until they sobered up and abandoned these projects. For our part, we don’t have and we didn’t have much to invest in ‘experiments’ [Carlibach uses the English word in Hebrew – 'experimentim' - to imply sarcasm]. The little we had – was exhausted very quickly. And in just a matter of months we tried on the battle-front of the economy methods of ‘war’ on which the British and French and Belgians and Germans wasted the better part of a generation’s strength. And we completed an accelerated course in failures – we completed it with honors and with a certificate of completion which says what isn’t good with us, what didn’t work. Indeed it is: this is a negative pronouncement. But only through you knowing what is bad – will you know too what is good.

There will come a day and they will take this year’s budgets, the State’s revealed budget – and its hidden budget, the budget for development and the budget for the Jewish Agency and the budget for the State’s institutions – and will determine, that 90 percent of them were tuition fees. And they will determine that there hasn’t been a year such as this where the tuition fees which we paid by ourselves – in our health, in our poverty and in the comfort of life – to the exhausting school where they teach the ethos of building a Jewish state, were so high.

We didn’t get to this school as a day old baby who doesn’t know anything and can yet be taught something straightaway. Rather, we arrived from many different schools which educated us for everything which isn’t suitable for here. We learned there, from the distance of the ghettos, how the ‘Goys’ run nations. We should have first forgotten much of the ways of the land and the doctrines of ‘the exile’ [reference to the world outside Israel] which were entrenched and established before the State, before we could even begin to learn what the great revolution the State brought upon us and what change in values for us and for the diaspora she forbode, and how to establish and build her. And the failures which we failed – they are in fact the diminishment and uprooting of all the old and incorrect doctrines.

Now they’ve been uprooted just as they would uproot the remains of an old house and clear the place on which they intend to build a new house. Now we know a whole lot more about the establishment of a Jewish State than what we ever knew and than what our forefathers knew and than what the Prophets foresaw. We learned – by process of elimination, selection and error – what is the strength of a Jewish state and what her boundaries are and by what she is distinguished from other nations. And a Zionist State is a very unusual creature – rich in strength and poor in accomplishment, possessing enormous credit and possessing little cash. And all of her management being – the cleverness of the management of that credit. The cleverness of the rule over those who we are not their rulers. The wisdom of the management of the massive Jewish empire.

Of all these no’s – we are beginning to hear the yes’s. For if we failed in 101 ways – this still doesn’t prove anything at all regarding the goal. If with this and that system of government we didn’t succeed, this still doesn’t prove that the Jews are incapable of running a country. And if with this program or that we didn’t absorb the immigrants – this doesn’t mean that we have to stop receiving immigrants. And if the nation is hungry – we can’t conclude from this that she is unable to provide for her people. The doctrine of Zionism is truth [a play on the phrasing of the Jewish prayer – "The Torah is Truth"], and her aims are true – here is the solution for all our problems, the problems of the community and the problems of the individual, and there is no other [truth], and here we shall be redeemed.

We, children of this generation, cannot afford to fail again in the face of the mission. The hard part is behind us, in Majdanek [death camp], and Auschwitz. Those who withstood the blow and lived – what more could strike them? He who withstood the tortures back then because of his Jewishness – what could any further expected unpleasantness here in the name of his Judaism to do him?

And so if you will it – it is no failure, rather just education. A necessary education of a new ‘Torah’ [doctrine] which no man knew what her ‘Mitzvot’ [good tidings] are. And a nation doesn’t learn through common sense. A nation only learns through experience. And if the experience is more bitter, so its lessons are better learned.