Matti Friedman on How Americans Project Their Own Problems onto Israel

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1958, the American author Leon Uris published Exodus, the novel about Israel’s founding that became an international phenomenon. Its hero, though an Israeli kibbutznik, was portrayed as a blond, blue-eyed man of culture and elegance, a portrayal reinforced by the film version of the novel, which starred Paul Newman. Whether or not this was his point, by portraying Israelis as racially white and as Western in their sensibilities, Uris was making it easier for most Americans to identify with Israel and its cause.

This week’s podcast guest, the frequent Mosaic contributor Matti Friedman, argues that Americans still see themselves in Israel―just not always in the way that Uris hoped. In a recent essay, Friedman finds in the American reaction to the Jewish state’s recent confrontation with Hamas the same mythology that once animated Uris’s writing—only in reverse. Where in Uris characters are portrayed with distinctly Western sensibilities so as to attract Americans to Israel, contemporary portrayals of Israelis are now advanced by those who wish to distance Americans―and the world―from Israel.

Musical selections are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Back in 1958, when Israel was just 10 years old, the American novelist Leon
0:13.9	Joris wrote Exodus, a novel about Israel's founding.
0:18.4	Shockingly, it went on to become an international phenomenon. It ranked
0:22.4	second only to Gone with the Wind as a bestseller, and it remained first in the New York
0:26.9	Times bestseller list three quarters of a year after its publication. The novel was then made
0:32.2	into an Otto Preminger film, starring the A-List celebrity actor Paul Newman its hero Ari Ben-Kanan. Readers of this
0:39.4	book and viewers of this film took note of something strange about its hero. As a blonde, blue-eyed
0:45.7	man of culture and Western graces, he didn't actually look like the Israelis he was meant to
0:50.8	represent. He looked American. And that was part of the point of Exodus. In
0:56.5	portraying Israelis as racially white, Western in their sensibilities, and as smitten by the
1:02.4	novel's non-Jewish love interest, the very American Kitty Fremont, the novel's author was making
1:07.7	it easier for most Americans to associate with Israel. Its struggle for existence. Its cause.
1:14.6	Those people over there, the novels seem to be saying, those people like Ari Ben-Kanan, they're like me.
1:20.6	My guest today is Mati Friedman, frequent podcast guest and contributor to Mosaic.
1:25.6	In the context of Israel's last confrontation with
1:28.3	Hamas, Matti came to an interesting recognition about the American public opinion and Israel.
1:35.3	For whereas Leon Yuris advanced as a representative Israeli, a mythological person with
1:42.3	distinctly Western sensibilities, in order to attract Americans to Israel.
1:47.4	The very same mythology is now advanced by those who wish to distance Americans from Israel.
1:52.8	Then Israel's friends thought that the nation was full of white, rugged, frontiersmen patriots.
1:59.5	Today, Israel's enemies think that the nation is full of white, rugged frontiersmen patriots. Today, Israel's enemies think that the nation is full
2:02.9	of white, rugged frontiersmen patriots. The same mythology, equally as inaccurate then as it is now,
	...

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