Mila 18 - Leon Uris [33]
There were many types of Zionism, each with its own variants. Alexander Brandel said there was a different type of Zionism for every Jew.
The largest single philosophy, labor Zionism, emerged from Poland and Russia after terrible massacres of the Jews at the turn of the century. Labor Zionism called for self-sacrifice by a dedicated Jewish labor force as the key to the redemption of Palestine.
The second of the major philosophies was that of the revisionists or activists. These were angry men whose mold demanded retribution. Often super-nationalistic and military-minded, they wanted the injustices of anti-Semitism atoned by “an eye for an eye.” From the ranks of the revisionists came many of the terrorists who fought British rule in the Palestine Mandate.
Alexander Brandel’s Bathyrans, formed by a small group of intellectuals, were a third group. Their concept was Zionist purity. They believed in a single principle: the establishment of a Jewish homeland was a historic necessity, as proved by two thousand years of persecution.
While the other groups agreed that the Bathyrans indeed had idealism to spare, it was impossible to put ideology into practical use without dogma.
Brandel countered charges that the Bathyrans were an antiseptic social club by taking the best of all the ideas and putting them into practice while being bound by none of them. He did not agree with the restrictions on the individual demanded by the Labor Zionists, nor did he believe in the dedication to force of the Revisionists as a complete answer. Some force and some restrictions—yes, but not completely.
When he had quit his job as an instructor of history at the university to assume leadership of the Bathyrans, the group was struggling and floundering. From chaos he developed concepts and philosophies which brought it into respect.
He lived in abstraction in his personal life. His income was always modest, his person disorganized in a scholar’s absent-minded way. The light always burned late in the Brandel flat, for even beyond duty to the Bathyrans, Alexander Brandel was a Polish historian of note.
Wolf knocked off Andrei’s second horse when Sylvia, Alex’s wife, came in with a pot of tea and some cookies. She was six months pregnant and starting to show very much. Bathyran humor had it that Alex had come home only twice in sixteen years and both times made Sylvia pregnant.
She was the personification of the “good Jewish girl.” Plain, pretty with dark and plumpish features, she was sharp in mind and the clever homemaker who created ideal conditions which allowed Alex to pursue his work.
To Sylvia, a Zionist from birth, Alex had achieved the pinnacle of accomplishment for a Jewish man. He was a writer and teacher and historian. Nothing could be greater than that. She had attended her first Labor Zionist meeting in her mother’s arms before she could walk and she was completely dedicated to her husband’s work. She never complained that they were poor or that he was gone half the time.
In his own lackadaisical way Alex loved Sylvia very much. Almost as much as she loved him.
Alex thrived on work. Only once in a while did he seem to need the comfort of a warm bed and his woman’s arms and soothing voice. While the world revolved around him in haste and anger and frustration, he never seemed to vary his pace, never raised his voice, never panicked, never seemed torn by those inner conflicts of other men.
Alexander Brandel had achieved that state of heaven on earth which is called peace of mind.
It seemed paradoxical and almost humorous that it was the team of Brandel and Androfski that made the Bathyrans go. Andrei was fifteen years Alex’s junior and his opposite in temper and outlook. Andrei was an activist in thinking. Yet they recognized in each other a particular strength the other lacked. The symbol of strength ... the symbol of mind.
“You and Gabriela will stay for dinner,” Sylvia said.
“If you don’t go to any trouble.”
“What’s trouble? Wolf, the minute you are through with that game, you practice your