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ABSTRACT
Trumpeldor’s last words, “it is good to die for our country,” have been celebrated since his death as a fulfillment of Zionist ideals, but were devaluated as decades went by. I contend that this change is not only a change of evaluation, which followed a change in Zionist pioneering ideology, but primarily a change in interpretation. In the historical context of the 1920s, the sentence had a different meaning: it was an authentic expression of experiences that dissipated in favor of ideological propaganda. Due to historical circumstances, in the 1920s the inevitability of death was taken for granted. Therefore, Trumpeldor’s sentence was not understood by his contemporaneous comrades as a preference of death over life but as a dedication of life, as well as its impending end, to a noble cause. Half a century later, as the situation changed and Jews became more optimistic about their future in the Land of Israel, the earlier experience faded and was forgotten, and the understanding of Trumpeldor’s last words changed.
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Notes
1. Laskov, Trumpeldor, 241–244; Rogel, Tel Hai, 190–195.
2. Shapira, Land and Power, 98–109.
3. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, 147–177. See also Rogel, Tel Hai, 125–129.
4. Altman, Martin Heidegger and the First World War; Bombach, Heidegger’s Roots, 312–314; Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism.
5. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 9.
6. Heidegger, Being and Time, 238–241 (pages in this book are given according to the German original pagination mentioned in both English canonic translations).
7. Altman, Martin Heidegger and the First World War, 79–80; Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 2–3.
8. Heidegger, Being and Time, 382-387.
9. Derrida, The Gift of Death, 41–46.
10. Rabbi Benyamin, Al ha-gvulin, 315.
11. Ruppin, The Jews of Today, 300; Herzl, Altneuland, 3–50.
12. Alroey, An Unpromised Land, 33–49.
13. An-Sky, Hurban ha-yehudim be-Polin, 33.
14. Yaari, When the Candle was Burning, 61.
15. Laskov, Trumpeldor, 148–186.
16. Trumpeldor, From the Life of Yosef Trumpeldor, 33.
17. Neuman, Land and Desire, 134–141; Shapira, “The Origins of the Myth of the New Jew,” 259–263.
18. Giladi and Goldstein, “The Attitude toward Bereavement in Everyday Life.”
19. Shapira, Yosef Haim Brenner: A Life, 163–166.
20. Brenner, Ktavim, Vol. II, 1432.
21. Ibid., 1433.
22. Ibid., Vol IV, 1622.
23. Ibid., 1751.
24. Owen, War Poems and Others, 17.
25. Laskov, Trumpeldor, 88.
26. Zeev Jabotinsky, “Tel Hai”, Haaretz March 8, 1920.
27. Yudkin, Isaac Lamdan, 49–75; Zerubavel, Recovered roots, 114–144.
28. Assis, “Full Circle,” 24–35.
29. Haskin, “Dancing Amidst Flames of Fire,” 138–142.
30. Yudkin, Isaac Lamdan, 214. Translation slightly changed.
31. Assis, “Hora as a Ritual in Lyrics,” 1047–1050.
32. Yaari, When the Candle was Burning, 114.
33. Ibid, 114–115.
34. https://www.zemereshet.co.il/song.asp?id=309. Accessed August 15, 2020.
35. Feldman, Glory and Agony.
36. See note 20 above.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Amit Assis
Amit Assis is a scholar of Hebrew Literature and Zionist Culture and the author of “Facing a Silent Autumn Eve”: S. Yizhar and the Birth of the Sabra from the Spirit of Literature (Ben Gurion Research Institute, 2017). He taught at the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University and currently serves as the editor of the Hebrew edition of Segula – The Jewish History Magazine and as a Deputy Researcher at the The Azrieli Center for Israel Studies, The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism Ben-Gurion University in the Negev.