(Author: Colin Plen, Vol. 66, #2, Rosh Hashanah 2011)
My friend Solly Yellin, of blessed memory, was a voracious reader. When he heard that the great writer James A. Michener had written a book about Poland, he waited excitedly for it to arrive in South Africa. He read Poland right through, very quickly, and then, very disappointed, remarked, “Anyone who can write 1000 pages about Poland and not mention the Jews must be very ignorant…”
However, one cannot write off an author like Michener as ignorant, unless ‘ignorant’ is defined as “one who ignores some facts”. Then I read a book called Iberia by the same author. Fortunately for my research purposes, it included an index. In 818 pages, there are only thirteen entries listed under ‘Jews’. I had to start agreeing with Solly Yellin. Then I read The Source. This tells of an archaeological investigation of a mythical tel in Israel, and the resultant story is a deeply thought out story of many of the problems of that strip of land, Israel, from its prehistoric days almost to the present. Reading it led to my changing my views once more and to start considering why Michener wrote as he did.
Most of Michener’s stories follow the same pattern. He begins with a period before history began and shows how the land came to be formed, as he did in Hawaii and Caribbean, and goes on to introduce characters in the very early days, through periods of history, linking up the characters by imaginary relationships, until fairly recent times. He wrote huge panoramas, including Space, Texas, Chesapeake Bay and The Covenant (about South Africa) down to fine detail like Sayonara and The Bridges at Toko Ri, which are essentially love stories.
Michener was born in 1907. His parentage is not recorded as he was adopted and brought up by a foster mother in the Quaker faith. His first book was only published after he was forty. He made up for it by having more than forty titles published thereafter. One of his first books was Tales of the South Pacific, which was used by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the very successful Broadway musical and film South Pacific. For this novel, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His last book, Recessional, was published not long before he died, aged 90, in 1997.
Jews began living in the Iberian Peninsula around the time of the reign of King Solomon, when trading took place between the various parts of the Mediterranean coast and Israel and Phoenicia. We understand that the Jews were living in Spain before there was a Spanish nation (or a Portuguese nation in what was to become Portugal), that Jews wrote the poetry of the area in a language still being invented. It is believed that Barcelona and Toledo are derived from the Hebrew, with Barcelona meaning son of Colona, and Toledo meaning Toledot – Generations. As the country developed, its commerce developed under the hands of the Jews and under the various rulers – the Visigoth Christians, the Moors and then the Catholic Christians – Jews were always there to guide and to lead commerce and finance. There was anti-Jewish feeling with all the rulers, and attempts were made to reduce their influence, but right until the final edict of expulsion of Queen Isabella in 1492, Jewish men and some Jewish women, dominated Spanish commerce. Even after Jews were evicted from Iberia, many powerful members of the Church and commerce were still of Jewish origin. This lasted for more than 200 years, as the records of the Inquisition show.
In Iberia, however, Michener only states that Jews lived there from the 700s and were badly treated. He does not give the credit to the Jews that their history in Iberia warrants.
Jews came to live in Poland under the protection of King Boleslaw III in about 1098, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica. While the Jewish religion flourished there, Jews developed trade and commerce. They traded into what was to be Russia and the surrounding countries and their trading brought wealth into Poland. The Polish rulers realised the value of the Jews and to a great extent protected them from Christian outbursts. At the same time, while the leaders of the Church sided with the rulers of the country to protect their financial interests, the lesser clergy continually stirred up hatred against Jews and there were many pogroms over the years. But Michener only mentions some individual Jews, without mentioning the great assets that the Jews brought into the country.
In The Source, Michener shows the development of religion, from his own perspective. He shows how the early cave people first worship the sun and the seasons, and the rain, and then gradually began to worship a single idol which eventually comes to be Baal. Over the years, the people go through the stages of a Moloch, a fiery child eating god in various forms, and eventually come to the realization that there is an all-powerful, invisible God. The Jewish religion is formed. With it come breakaways and divisions, but it is always advancing. He goes into wonderful detail about the Rabbis in Safed writing the Talmud and gives examples of the minutiae that they argued about, giving both the good and the bad sides of the developing religion.
Michener then tells a story of how the Christian religion started and grew, and writes candidly about the errors made by members of the various Church groupings. He records how the Egyptian Christians were antagonized by the Turkish Christians, who were in turn antagonized by other groups because of disagreements over what constituted Christ’s human and godly proportions. All this led to internecine killing sprees between these groups. Michener relates the story of the Crusades and how these went from being an idealistic religious mission to becoming a killing frenzy, in which some Muslims, but a lot more Jews, Christians and other innocent bystanders were killed and which finally degenerated into a total waste of time, money and manpower.
Michener writes about the source that was Tveryah (Tiberias), where Rabbis met to discuss the Talmud. He cites several examples of the kind of discussions that took place, and treats them with great respect and admiration. He then goes on to show how, with the Roman conquest and their subsequent laying waste of the land, the group of Rabbis was forced to move to Babylon to continue their work.
Next, he goes on to explain how his mythical city of Makor was involved with the new Islamic army and how, while Akko was destroyed by one part of the army of Islam, Makor was conquered in a peaceful manner by another section of that army, and the two sides were able to co-exist without war.
Michener then continues with a description of the Rabbis at Safed. Again, he describes the kinds of arguments and discussions that they had and treats these, too, with respect, sensitivity and, apparently, knowledge.
The book concludes with an account of the fighting during the 1948 War of Independence. It depicts Israelis of differing religious outlooks combining to win the battle for Sefad, where the Arab forces, although defending an impregnable British-built fortress, flee from the area because they had been promised the chance to return with the victorious Arab army and choose their booty.
At all times in The Source, Michener gives a fair opinion of the Jews and their victories and defeats. This begs the question as to why he failed to mention the value that Jews brought to Spain, Portugal and Poland in his books on those countries. Did he delegate the necessary research to underlings and then skim the best of this for his books on Poland and Spain-Portugal, without considering transferring the knowledge that he displayed in one book into the others?[/vc_c][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Colin Plen is a past manager of the Zionist Record and spent some years in publishing on the South Coast of Kwazulu-Natal. He lived in Johannesburg for many years, inter alia working as an insurance broker, and today he lives in Durban.
