Judas

Anyone willing to change, Shmuel said, will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are scared to death of change and don't understand it and loathe change.

Judas reads like one of those old-fashioned novels of ideas: Like The Time Machine or The Brothers Karamazov, the plot that Israeli author Amos Oz relates seems incidental to putting characters with differing views into a room together so they can debate an issue from all sides. As the issue in this case is the State of Israel itself – its establishment, character, and right to exist – it's useful to be reminded that right from its creation in 1948, there was no such thing as a monolithic “Israeli point-of-view”: there have always been hawks and doves; posturing saber-rattlers and peace-seeking conciliators. It always feels timely to consider the quagmire of Middle East conflict, so despite the old-fashioned setup, Judas is contemporary and challenging and thought-provoking. With evocative prose and pleasing writing quirks translated beautifully into English, Judas served as a wonderful introduction for me to Amos Oz and the voice he provides (for his own points-of-view) to the body of world literature. I enjoyed this very much. 

The fact is that all the power in the world cannot transform someone who hates you into someone who likes you. It can turn a foe into a slave, but not into a friend. All the power in the world cannot transform a fanatic into an enlightened man. All the power in the world cannot transform someone thirsting for vengeance into a lover. And yet these are precisely the real existential crises facing the State of Israel: how to turn a hater into a lover, a fanatic into a moderate, an avenger into a friend.

So, the setup: Spanning the winter of 1959-60, Shmuel Ash is a 25-year-old student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem working on his Master's thesis, “Jewish views of Jesus”. As the book begins, Shmuel has recently lost his girlfriend, and as his family has gone bankrupt, he loses the funding that allows him to study. Since he has also lost his passion for his research topic, Shmuel has no idea what he'll do with himself until he sees a notice at school, advertising for a live-in companion for an elderly man. When he applies for the position, the achingly alluring middle-aged “mistress of the house” Atalia explains that Shmuel's duties will be to sit with the aged and disabled Gershom Wald from 5-11 each evening, providing him with tea, dinner, and debate; for which the young man will receive room, board, and a small allowance. Although Shmuel and Gershom are in agreement about many things, the older man has firm opinions, insider knowledge, and a mischievous streak. Most importantly, he reveals that Atalia's father, Shealtiel Abranavel, was kicked out of the Jewish Agency for disagreeing with David Ben-Gurion about the necessity of an official state – believing that in the aftermath of WWII, “nationhood” would soon be a thing of the past and a declaration of statehood would provoke their Arab neighbours to wipe out all of the Jews within one or two generations. For these views, Shealtiel was labelled a traitor and lived out his days in isolation. 

Had it not been for Judas, there might not have been a crucifixion, and had there been no crucifixion there would have been no Christianity.

For his part, Shmuel shares his research into the history of Jewish writing about Jesus, and the particular focus of his interest, that ultimate traitor: Judas Iscariot. According to Shmuel's research, Judas was a wealthy landowner who was probably a double-agent sent into Galilee by the Pharisees; a devout Jew who ultimately was the number one believer in the divinity of Jesus. Judas probably convinced Jesus to enter Jerusalem; probably bribed the Jewish High Priests and Roman Authorities to put Jesus on the cross; probably watched expectantly for Jesus to descend from his crucifixion, alive. While this may not be a totally original point-of-view (I have heard the case for Judas before), what's interesting is the notion of Judas – long the face of evil Jewish betrayal in Christian writings – being portrayed as Christ's biggest supporter, perhaps “the first Christian, the only Christian”, and having this idea developed alongside that of the supposedly traitorous Shealtiel Abranavel: by renouncing the idea of a Jewish state, could he have been perhaps “the first Zionist, the only Zionist”? (And in another parallel, we learn that Shmuel's grandfather was a double-agent sent in to infiltrate the ranks of the British Guard; deemed a traitor, he too met a martyrous end).

This is only a brief overview of the ideas in Judas, and the most important point is that there has always been disagreement among Israelis as to how their country should act on the world stage; for her part, Atalia serves not only as an object of longing for Shmuel, but she also represents the feminine/maternal antiwar sentiment: what good is it to send the men off to fight for their right to live in their homeland if they come home in boxes? And in addition to the ideas, I just loved Oz's rich, atmospheric descriptions of Jerusalem. Set in a time when the city was still partitioned, there are snipers in the hills, barbed-wire barriers, and checkpoints. As it's winter, there is rain and fog and a chilly moon:

At the end of the empty fields, the ruins of the destroyed Arab village of Sheikh Badr, on which for ten years now a gigantic festival hall was being erected, stood wet and crumbling in the gloom. The structure had been abandoned while it was still being built, then built a little more and abandoned for a long time. It was a gray, unfinished skeleton with partially constructed walls, wide staircases raked by the rain, and dark concrete joists with rusty iron reinforcements protruding from them like the fingers of the dead.

Yes, it's an old-fashioned manipulation to set up a situation for characters to monologue on ideas, but Oz reads as sympathetic to all sides and the debate that ensues is timely and important. I will definitely read Amos Oz again.