This site’s posts are divided into two kinds of content. The Main content is the text of Solomon Simon’s book Medines Yisroel un Erets Yisroel, translated into English as “The Nation State and the Promised Land: An American Yiddish Writer in Israel, 1949.” Each English chapter is accompanied by a pdf of the corresponding pages of the Yiddish original, published by Undzer Bukh (Buenos Aires, Argentina), in 1950. To read the book in order, without interruption from my additional comments, you can click the “Chapters” link at the top of the home page (or here), and read the posts in reverse order, starting with the introduction.
The other kind of content will by my (David Forman’s) personal observations regarding the text, or information about the author and/or his other work that could be useful in understanding the book in context. Occasionally, I might comment about the translation process. Notes with simple clarifications about the meaning of specific words or phrases are included in the chapters themselves.
In my commentary, I will not be writing about contemporary Israel and Palestine. I will say that I am devoting my time and effort to this project at this time because I believe that Solomon Simon’s observations and perspective are interesting and relevant now. The war in Gaza has led many American Jews to rethink one or more of a set of fundamental issues, including the nature and meaning of the State of Israel for Jews in the diaspora, antisemitism’s causes and our responses to it, and others. This trip back to 1949 could provide something the daily news reports do not, in support of those reflections.
Why Two Chapters at Once?
The first two chapters do very different things. Chapter 1 positions the author as a reverent secular Jew, a space occupied by very few people of his time. Simon never fully rejected the tradition in which he was raised. He retained his admiration for the textual tradition and the ethical teachings, and searched for some formulation which could create a synthesis between the old ways and our modern understanding of the world. It may be a useful reminder that political Zionism was a secular movement and that the nation was founded largely by socialist and other avowedly secular Jews. In that era, Simon was more afraid the wholesale rejection of Jewish religion than of he was of Orthodoxy, whose future strength he could not foresee. Chapter 1 also reflects the astonishment nearly all Jews felt at that historical moment, which saw the return of the state after two millenia, hard upon the worst tragedy in Jewish history.
Chapter 2 immediately plunges you into some of the core subject matter of the book. The voices of children reflect the Israeli Jewish mindset of the time with its joy, warm solidarity, and arrogance. Here you see how the author will be telling the story of his trip. I am grateful to my friend Itamar who gave me the correct name for it. The book is not primarily a travelogue or a history but an ethnography (with a little polemic thrown in at the end). Chapter 2 also introduces us to the author’s sharp eye, love of language, and sense of humor. Enjoy!
The Nation State and the Promised Land 