The Israeli Spirit Today (2000-2010)

This volume, in its title and several identical characters, resembles another interview collection of mine: The Jewish Spirit Today (1999). And it could also resemble my other two books – The Jerusalem Decade and The Jerusalem Millennium, because the interviews are connected to the events of a decade in Israel, to the narrative that contemporary history writes. The questions of the conversations conducted between 2001 and 2010 stretch the problems, the search for a path, and the attempts at synthesis of the Israeli and Jewish cultures – an ancient one, and one that is barely half a century old and is now in the process of being born – onto the historical framework of a decade that began with hopes and then manifested itself in a bloody wave of terror and wars. They also emphatically ask what the Hungarian experience has brought or grafted into this uniquely old-new, and strongly pulsating culture that is unfolding before our eyes. The interviews, with the exception of the Hungarians, were all conducted in Hebrew, which created a new depth of focus compared to the previous immersion volume. The subjects of the essay interviews are: social scientist Slomo Avineri, writer Aharon Appelfeld (with whom the conversation was conducted in 2002, on the occasion of his friend, Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize), Sidra DeKohen Ezrahi, one of the first researchers of Holocaust literature, writer AB Jehosua, musician András Hajdú, poet Itámár Jáoz-Keszt, and the only high-level interpreter of Hungarian literature, Mira Zakai, world-famous singer (granddaughter of József Patai), and Menashe Kadishman, a sculptor and painter recognized worldwide. The conversations also draw a portrait and life path of each artist and scientist, from which we can learn about how their careers developed and what background their talent emerged from, so that they could represent this brand new country in a representative manner.