The Ashkenazi Revolution

157A few years ago I attended a speech by the author and critic AvrahamKariv, about Yosef Chaim Brenner, which was arranged at the Tzavta Clubin North Tel Aviv for the “Month of Brenner”. I knew the opinions ofKariv on Brenner and I prepared for a murderous critique, but I heardsomething completely different. I heard an almost medicinal expertise thatsaid the psychological condition of Brenner was fragile and that he shouldhave been in a mental hospital. Kariv brought with him all his“ammunition”, several stacks of manuscripts, and from among them hebroadly outlined inflammatory quotes of Brenner against the AshkenaziPeople. As he was explaining several particularly abusive quotes, he saidthat had we encountered similar statements within anti-Semitic, and Nazi,writings, we would not be surprised for that is where they belong.Avraham Kariv even said he had medical details about the illness ofBrenner but that they should not be mentioned at a public gathering. Thewritings of Brenner are the perfect example, and even the most lethal, ofthe use of the literary method in the political arena. Brenner spoke to anentire people and about an entire people. His words related to politics butthey arrived through the conduit of the literary method that does notconsider itself obligated to produce any logical, or historical, proof as itclaims whatever it pleases.Brenner’s slander enraged even his friend, the author David Shimoni, whowrote an open letter to Brenner on the first day of Hanukka, 1912. In thisletter, which was never published, he writes, among other things:Verily, to my dismay I see that you yourself have gotten your head stuckthickly in possession of a platitude, the platitude about “the life of creativework and culture”, that you return to it constantly any time you wish toprove that our people, the People of Israel, is a people that does not work.In simpler words: A parasitic people.There are only a few questions I shall ask you and that is all:Would you consider all the great masses that groan under their burden inthe sweatshops in all corners of the world to be parasites?