Renewal

Daniel Gordis is the Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College and the author of thirteen books about Israel and Jewish life. 

I still recall the first time that I saw what would become the new home of the National Library of Israel. And I still remember how sad it made me feel. 

It was very much a construction site, far from completion. But with the help of the renderings that our small group was shown in a makeshift office on the level that is now the parking lot, we could sense what this place would become: something extraordinary was being created here. This would be a building unlike anything Israel had ever had, a virtually sacred space devoted to the greatness of Israel’s indomitable intellectual, national and literary spirit. 

After the presentation of the drawings and the plans, we donned hard hats and thick-soled shoes and made our way around the site. The central stairway was just a long ramp built out of plywood. The cutouts in the exterior wall, designed to make the stone look like it had weathered, were already there but as yet unmatched by any of the internal echoes of that design that now give the building its unique feel. There was no hint of the future grandeur of the reading hall. But even at this early stage, one could tell. This was going to be one of the places in Israel that spoke to our capacity to dream, to imagine, to create and to represent the very best of our thousands of years of national life. 

So why the sadness? Because this visit took place early in 2023. Israel was busy ripping itself asunder over the proposed judicial reform. Across the street from the library-under-construction, a building that would have no fences around it when it was completed, stood the Knesset, encircled by ring after ring after ring of fences and barriers, as removed from the public as the library would be accessible. 

On one side of the street, brutal politics that were threatening to destroy everything we had built. And on “our” side of the street, the new home of the National Library of Israel was rising from the ground. That was the reason for my sadness: 

In this building, the greatness of the three monotheistic traditions that have long shared this land will be revered, while across the street, nothing felt sacred? Here we see what we’re capable of, while there, the quest for power might destroy everything? 

Everyone I know who visits the NLI for the first time leaves speechless, overwhelmed not only by the beauty of the building but also by the broad embrace of the vision that undergirds it. Even in these terribly sad times, a visit to the library renews them, just as it has begun to renew our city and our nation. I pray that this extraordinary edifice and the collection it houses continues to inspire and renew us, renewing our embrace of the sacred and our capacity to dream.

A poet and a writer, a father and a husband. He lives in Jerusalem, yet dreams of faraway places.

In my dream it was early morning, the Jerusalem air was cool and soft, the houses were quiet and dark, but light was beginning to bloom. I had to get outside, to move, I got into my car and threw my notebook and apples on the seat. The city stood heavy and eternal, but I needed a smaller measure of time, a breath of air, water. The homes of Kfar Lifta were visible on the slopes on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and I felt like them, made of stone which has known smoke and mold, known the sound of a guitar moving up the walls and becoming a creeping plant, stone that has known fire and sunrise.

I drove south, far from the city to the small places in which people leave their houses every morning, their breath mimicking the horizon visible from their small yards as far as eyes can see. They stand there listening for a few minutes till the cry of a distantly dwelling animal is heard. Its voice knows no walls, nor the entreaty born within humans.

The road widened and sounded its own music through the open windows. There were the resounding steps in the Great Crater, the night in Eilat on the shore with the smoke, the crimson of the sunset along the Basor Road, the open fields from the poems of Israel Neta of Be’eri and the dry and open smell of S’derot, the Ashdod and Ashkelon shores and those empty afternoons on the way to the hall in Ofakim with the songs by Aviv Guedj.

The city behind me and the south before me. In my dream everything happened quickly and with a touch of mystery, since it was clear that there, in the small and open places, lay a message, an explanation of the earth and the water and the crops and the poetry of the land that doesn’t allow us to sleep. All these years I have known that I must go there to listen, in the open air, surrounded by the fragrance of eucalyptus, while speaking the ancient language that grabs and intoxicates the heart.

I knew but I couldn’t get out, because the city grew and expanded around me, human enterprises, negotiations, finances, the shelves and books, taverns and the many ongoing conversations which cause people to forget their inner voices. I went in and out of rooms, but now, in the dream, I am going south, traveling towards the tidings and, in the dream, everything is blooming, a blossoming that knows nothing of what was or what will be, a blossoming that is not concerned with human beings, but rather answers to higher and incomprehensible laws, the laws of life which roll inexorably onwards, unable to stop.

I stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out, walking on the path beaten by the feet of others. I knew that these paths always lead to water, a spring or a stream and to a tree standing over the water, an olive tree surrounded by bushes and grass. There in the shade, it is best to slightly roll up one’s clothing and let the wind visit one’s skin. There, in contrast to the surrounding endless arid wilderness containing nothing but desolation and blazing, unrelenting sunshine, is a place always full of tall and shining growth.

Yes, most of the time he is parched, exposed to the dry scars in the earth, the man walks the path for a long while, getting entangled in the thicket, clothes and skin scratched by thorns. He sits on a rock, flesh burning from long hours of walking in the hot sun. He puts his head between his hands and counts all those who left and won’t return. But in the end, on the strength of an unnamed, continuous command from an unknown source, he rises and walks on, again finding the path beaten down by his brothers and sisters, and there, in some corner he moves aside some branches and reveals the stream.

In my dream I arrived at the stream in the center of the south. The sunlight that was collected in my shirt and trousers, in my hair and skin, and the dust that rested in respiratory openings and pulse points, were defeated by cool water. The tamarisk, eucalyptus and olive trees slowly played their musical instruments, their leaves, and in the heart of the enormous heat my face was satiated, in my dream, in the heart of the south, I sang with the trees and the bushes and crannies, the crazy song of the land, this beloved and wounded land.

Translation by Rena Bannet