This gallery contains 10 photos.
I have many kinds of flowering plants on my ten acre hobby farm, and the bees seem to enjoy all of them. Early in the spring, the daffodils bloom, attracting small slender bees. The redbud tree is one of the … Continue reading
This gallery contains 7 photos.
Weigela is an entire genus, and I do not know which species of it I have growing on my property. Whichever one it is, the blossoms are delicate and fragrant, and the bees love them. The buds, before they open, … Continue reading
This gallery contains 6 photos.
Everybody recognizes dandelions. They belong to a large genus called taraxacum. The common dandelion is a species known as Taraxacum officinale. That is the kind I have growing on my property in abundance. Often people think of dandelions as invasive … Continue reading
This gallery contains 8 photos.
We usually remember the dogwood blossoms as showy flowers with white petals. But that is not how they start out. When they first emerge they are green. The little green balls in the center seem overpowering in their presence, and … Continue reading
This gallery contains 6 photos.
A cluster of flowers hangs down from a limb. You look up. They’re so beautiful, with a perfectly round, deep-set yellow center, and a white stigma like a dot sticking out. The symmetry in each blossom is so perfect, you … Continue reading
This gallery contains 7 photos.
At first, I misidentified this plant as liverleaf. The name liverleaf did not seem nearly as beautiful as these delicate little wildflowers that grow in my woods, so I was pleased to find out that is not what they are called … Continue reading
The first time I saw a native wood violet, it did not look like a violet to me. I thought it was more like a miniature iris.
![IMG_3371[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_33711.jpg)
It had sprung up from the unmown lawn, and I could not see its leaves, so the blades of grass that surrounded it seemed like the foliage around a miniature iris. But as beautiful as it was, it was cut down as soon as the grass was mowed. I did not think I would see another one so soon.
![IMG_3678[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_36781.jpg)
Then yesterday evening, as I was walking in the woods, I spotted a violet by a tree trunk. Because there was no grass to hide the violet’s leaves, I recognized it at once!
![IMG_3679[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_36791.jpg)
It reminded me of one of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems: “A violet by a mossy stone, half hidden from the eye, bright as a star, when only one is shining in the sky.”
A big part of the violet’s attraction is that it does not try to draw attention to itself. It lives in hidden places, and very few of them are seen at all. If you have spotted a Native Wood Violet in its natural habitat, consider yourself very lucky.
If you have not, you can share this experience with a friend through these inexpensive photo postcards.
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On my property there are two kinds of phlox, tall phlox and creeping phlox. The creeping phlox blooms early and comes in two varieties. The dark pink variety blooms first and also fades sooner. The light blue variety is … Continue reading
[This article was first published on Hubpages in 2010. It has since been de-indexed.]
By Aya Katz
A friend of mine is a big fan of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I haven’t read the books, nor do I feel any particular desire to do so. But I have seen the two movies that came out, mostly by accident. My daughter and I were hoping to see something else, but in a small rural location the choices are limited, and once we take the trouble to make it out of the house to see a movie, it seems a shame to cancel the outing just on account of the movie itself.
I mentioned to my friend that I’d seen the movies and hadn’t been impressed. She answered: “Well, of course, you weren’t. It’s just a love story!”
Now what’s that supposed to mean!?!
Does it mean that she thinks that I wouldn’t be interested in a love story? Because I’m not into love? Or because I’m not into “just love”? And what exactly is “just love”? Can any story be just a love story? Doesn’t it also have to be about something else? Can love exist in a vacuum?
This is the same friend who prefaced another movie recommendation like this: “I’m not sure you’re going to like it, because it’s not about justice.”
My friend knows me really well. Yes, I do have a fixation on justice. I would have been a really good lawyer, if justice had had anything to do with it. But… I’m not nearly that limited. I write love stories, too. Only they’re not “just” love stories, because I don’t see how love can become disembodied and detached from every other aspect of life.
But let’s face it: Twilight is a particular kind of love story. It is story about love and vampires. And it’s selling really well! Supposedly intended as a teen romance, it is being read by people of all ages — mostly women.
My friend knows a lot of the back story, because she is a true fan. According to her, Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, saw the first glimmering of the story in a vivid dream. At the time, she was a wife and mother, a full time housewife, with laundry and diapers and swim lessons and all the usual. And suddenly, in a dream, she saw an ordinary girl and a shimmery, beautiful young man talking to each other in a meadow. During stolen moments from her domestic chores, Meyer began to write down the story, until she had a complete five hundred page manuscript. And then…. she showed it to her sister.
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted my friend. “Her sister? Why her sister?”
“Well, they’re very close. Her sister is her best friend.”
“Okay. Well, what about her husband?”
“Oh, she didn’t show it to her husband. He wouldn’t have understood.”
“Huh. How come?”
“Well, you know how men are.”
I laughed. “No, actually, I don’t. What are men like?”
“You can’t tell them anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t listen.”
But apparently vampires are different. Vampires listen.You could tell a vampire just about anything.
In case you think I don’t appreciate Twilight because I am just too snobbish to enjoy a good vampire story, I’ll let you in on a secret. When I was ten years old, my favorite TV show was Dark Shadows, and I was very much intrigued by a vampire named Barnabas Collins. We were living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We had just left Israel for good, and I didn’t have any friends. I would rush home to watch Dark Shadows, and that was about the most important thing in the world to me at the time.
Now, Barnabas Collins had a taste for pretty young women, starting with his sweetheart Josette, and continiuing with every other ingenue who showed up at Collinwood. Maggie Evans, Victoria Winters, they were all the same. Young, pretty and not very smart. They made good victims, and he was constantly at work to transform every one of them into the spitting image of his dear, departed Josette. I was just ten years old, and yet, I didn’t really identify with these girls. My heroine was Dr. Julia Hoffman, a middle aged woman who wanted to cure Barnabas of his condition.
Julia Hoffman was played by Grayson Hall, and because I was such a Julia fan, I cut out the article about her in TV Guide and pasted it to my closet door. I wanted to grow up to be just like Julia!
The video I’ve embedded above is fairly representative of both Dark Shadows, as a series, and of the Barnabas-Julia relationship in particular. I can’t watch it now without laughing, but it’s still good clean fun! I love, for instance, that Barnabas starts choking Julia while saying: “I’m going to kill you, …. Miss Hoffman.” (It’s hard to remember a person’s name when you are choking them, but it’s nice that he announces his intentions so clearly, and bothers to acknowledge her formally.) Julia corrects him: “Doctor Hoffman!” Barnabas is so impressed by her new title that he relents in his efforts to snuff her out.
What was Dark Shadows really about? Why did I like watching it as child? To me, it explored the boundaries, not between life and death, as Julia announces in her appeal to Barnabas, but between good and evil. Barnabas was intriguing, because, despite his twisted life style, there was always some glimmer of hope. There were the moments when he was pure evil, and there were times when despite this, he was overcome by remorse or tenderness and did something unexpectedly good, sacrificing his own self-interest for what was right.
Conversely, the “good characters” were seldom entirely good. They had moral lapses. They were selfish. Like Julia in this scene, they were not always aware of their true motives.
But what about the stilted dialogue and the wooden delivery? Well, guess what: I really like those, too. You probably think that nobody actually talks like that, but I do! I really do. I talk like a book. I learned English from books, not people. And for years, I looked around waiting to find a man who also would talk like a book. Wooden delivery, stilted grammar, outdated vocabulary and all.
I’m not sure if Dark Shadows was intended to be this funny, but I still enjoy the melodrama. What I’m trying to say is this: it’s precisely because of the seriousness with which these lines are delivered that I still find them effective. There is no point in poking fun at something, unless on some level we find it deeply moving. It wouldn’t be this funny if it weren’t so true to life.
Take this exchange:
Barnabas: What is it you want?
Julia: You!
Barnabas: I don’t know what you mean by that, but it doesn’t matter…
That, in a nutshell, is the story of my life! And it is because this is exactly the opposite of what my friend has experienced at the hands of men that we have very divergent views of what men — or vampires — are like. For her, they are people you can’t have a conversation with, because they are all action and no talk. For me, they are all talk and no action.
The problem with vampires is that they are what we make of them. Much like men and women and dogs and apes. As somebody in My Fair Lady once remarked, the difference between a flower girl and a lady is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.
What are vampires like? What was Barnabas Collins like? The answer depended on who he was with. With his trusty, but dimwitted assistant Willy Loomis, he was tyrannical, despotic and a pain in the neck. With Josette, and all the Josette look-alikes, he was tender, gallant and a pain in the neck. He wanted to drink everybody’s blood — except Julia’s. He found her unappetizing, so he was just going to choke her. But his dialogue with Julia was generally better than the lines he had with his sweet young victims. Julia was somebody he could talk to. Eventually he came to trust and rely on her.
We make our own histories. Our own behavior writes the script for whoever is with us. If my friend finds it impossible to talk to men, it may be that she makes it impossible for them to talk to her. If Stephanie Meyers couldn’t share her deepest, most intimate longings with her husband, then maybe her view of romance is due for a revision. And if I want to stop being treated like Dr. Julia Hoffman, maybe I should stop behaving like her. But old habits die hard!
My friend says that the Twilight books describe experiences that all women have shared and that they give vent to the longings of all womankind for intimacy and love. But not all women long for the same things, precisely because not all women have been deprived of the same things. We long for what is missing in our lives. And the Twilight series, from what I’ve seen of the movies, appears to have been written to satisfy the fantasies of Maggie Evans and Victoria Winters and Josette DuPres. Neither Julia Hoffman nor Barnabas Collins would get much out of it.
(c) 2010 Aya Katz
nhkatz 5 years ago from Bloomington, Indiana
Aya,
I haven’t seen either Twilight movie, but enjoyed this National Review review entitled “Just bite her, already.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/415299/just-bite…
If you’re interested in a “just a love story” movie, I highly recommend “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel. It’s not really about justice but has interesting things to say about chastity and the lack
thereof.
Aya Katz 5 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Thanks, Nets. That was a pretty good review. However, he’s mistaken about the target audience and the fan base. It’s not just twelve-year-olds, surprisingly enough.
Jerilee Wei 5 years ago from United States
Read all her books, just because my adult daughter and granddaughter and all their friends and co-workers were soooo intrigued and into them. Just had to know what it was all about. Found the books well-written, and must say if I had not read them, I would not have remotely enjoyed the movies, although they were age appropriate for teens. I found it most interesting that mothers and daughters who during teen years often don’t like the same things both were clearly enjoying a shared moment.
For me, the better book was the one not about vampires.
I don’t think it’s possible for most men and most women to ever view “love” in the same context.
Aya Katz 5 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Jerilee, thanks for your comment and for sharing your take on the Twilight books. Though I have not read her, I have no doubt that Stephanie Meyer is a skillful writer. After all, she has achieved huge success among a much bigger group of readers than her original target audience. In today’s publishing market, that is a remarkable achievement.
My hub was not really a review of the Twilight movies, so much as a commentary on American sexual mores. Maybe it’s not possible “for most men and most women to view love in the same context”, but it seems to me that a romantic relationship can’t really be satisfying unless the two people involved do share a context.
My frame of reference is Rand’s view of romance. While I recognize that most men (or women) are not capable of delivering a ten page philosophical diatribe immediately prior to, during, and after sex, there has got to be some sort of middle ground where ordinary people can meet.
Most men are not Cyrano de Bergerac and can’t compose poetry off the cuff in middle of a sword fight, but in my experience they are not nearly as inarticulate as American women seem to believe them to be.
gramarye 5 years ago from Adelaide – Australia
I haven’t read or watched, but this hub has filled me in with all that I need to know – thanks.
Aya Katz 5 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Gramarye, thanks! Glad you got the information you needed.
Susana S 5 years agoLevel 1 Commenter
A very interesting read Aya 🙂 I have never been into vampires in anyway shape or form – I guess I must project onto other things, lol. The only vampire film that ever really intrigued me was “The Hunger” that had David Bowie in it – it broke down boundaries around sexuality and asked philosophical questions about how long we’d really want to live for.
I can see why vampire mythology is attractive to so many people – you point out some very good reasoning as to why this might be the case.
Aya Katz 5 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Susana, thanks! I haven’t seen the “The Hunger”, but your description makes it sound like something I might enjoy.
Shalini Kagal 5 years ago from India
Hi Aya – as always, a wonderfully written hub and if I’d read it before I read the series, maybe I would have been just a wee bit dissuaded, However, a teenage daughter and with all of us greedily devouring every book that comes into the house – I’m glad I did. I’ve put off watching the movies because right now, this whole fairytale like romance is so vivid the way I’ve imagined it.
Why do most women like fairytale romances? I think it goes beyond all the fairytale stories we were fed with, the Mills and Boon, the soppy love songs. Somewhere inside, is every woman’s ideal man and while men don’t really fall in line with this image we carry inside, we keep the ideal alive in our minds and hearts with fare like this. And of course, the ‘bad’ man who changes thanks to the woman is even better! Somehow makes us feel all powerful I think. This is not to say that we are not happy – we could be as happy as can be and yet feel the need for these delicious escapades!
A few grow out of these dreams. They are the wise, mature souls who see and think logically – and hats off to them! However, it’s also nice to feel that the rest of us are pretty happy escaping to the fairytale corners of our mind through the pages of our book or a movie 🙂
Aya Katz 5 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Shalini, it’s good to have fairy tales and dreams and fantasies and ideals that are bigger than life. I don’t want to stomp on that at all. I have fantasies, too, and I cherish and nurture them.
The points I was trying to make are these:
1) While all women may have fantasies about romance, not all women share the same fantasy. It depends to some extent on your experiences. Women who are happily married and have all their basic needs met may fantasize about a man who can hold back. Women who are not so lucky fantasize about a man who can’t wait. It’s really quite logical, if you think about it.
2) There IS something wrong if the male and female heterosexual ideals are greatly at variance. This is completely different from saying that we as individuals fall short of our ideals. For instance, avid Ayn Rand fans, if they are female, might fantasize about Howard Roark or John Galt or Francisco D’Anconia. It goes without saying that most men fall short of that. Avid male Rand fans may fantasize about Dagny Taggart. Most women fall short of that. But there is something definitely wrong if most women fantasize about an effeminate prince charming who does not act on his sexual desires, while most men fantasize about a racy woman. Their actual, real life romances are bound to be disappointing.
And anyway, no two people really fantasize about exactly the same thing, do they?
Crazy888 5 years ago
hello aya. have not been on for awhile and i am teribly sorry abou that.
my duaghters are all about twilight. its the only thing that matters to them. the last book in particuar was a little to inaproropraite for a 6th grader. i have read all of the books and only enjoyed two of them. the first movie was not very good nor the second oe. of cource my daughters loved every second of it and bought it on DVD. i am not going to allow my daughters to see the last movie, more because it is very inapropriate. they will probualy not like my desicion but, a parent is the head ruler of the house, no mater what happends
Aya Katz 5 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Crazy888, good to hear from you again. As a parent of a sixth grader, you certainly have the right to make that decision. However, be aware that as soon as the video comes out, they can always watch it at a friend’s house.
My daughter enjoyed the two Twilight movies we saw more than I did, but she’s not really a big fan of it, either. She thought the second movie was better than the first. When I scoffed at the idea that marriage would somehow legitimize blood sucking, she replied quite coolly: “Well, they’re old enough to get married.” I had to agree with her there. ;->
glassvisage 4 years ago from Northern California
Aya, you’re so wonderful. It’s these personal, honest Hubs of yours that I appreciate so much. Thank you for this insight into the influence and role of vampires (and telling us about some vampires we may not be so familiar with. From the title, I was expecting a Hub about how people have a problem with the obsessive love shared between the characters of “Twilight”, but I see it’s much more 🙂
Aya Katz 4 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Glassvisage, good to hear from you! I always enjoy your comments, as you are able to see beneath the surface.
Crazy888 4 years ago
thanks for the advice aya. I know i cant hide the innapropraite stuff from her forever but i think i should wait nutil she is more mature, dont you?
Aya Katz 4 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Crazy888, I agree that it is your prerogative as a parent to monitor your children’s viewing. However, if the movie you don’t want your daughters to see has not yet come out, maybe you should wait until it does and view it yourself before making up your mind.
Crazy888 4 years ago
thanks for the tip
Aya Katz 4 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Crazy888, no problem.
lxxy 4 years ago from Beneath, Between, Beyond
I’d hate to think my lady couldn’t be up front with me. I’m sure up front with her. 😉
Aya Katz 4 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Ixxy, I hope your lady feels free to be as up front with you as you are with her.;->
Sunshine625 3 years ago from Orlando, FLLevel 6 Commenter
I read the Twilight books. I wrote a hub about them. Book #4 was my least favorite. I watched the first movie, it was dull so I passed on the rest. I think I remember Dark Shadows as a young kid, but I think I’m blocking it since it probably scared the life out of me. Haha! I intend to see the movie because Johnny Depp will be starring in it. No other reason. Just to see Johnny. 🙂
AudreyHowitt 3 years ago from CaliforniaLevel 6 Commenter
I loved Dark Shadows when I was a kid! We would troop home from school, get a snack and pile in front of the tv–
Aya Katz 3 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Audrey, me, too! It was the best thing on at the time!
Aya Katz 2 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Sunshine625, I just now read your comment. Yes, DS was scary back then! Gave me nightmares!
Aya Katz 2 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
Sunshine625, I just now read your comment. Yes, DS was scary back then! Gave me nightmares!
SweetiePie 2 years ago from Southern California, USALevel 2 Commenter
I found your hub via Pinterest, and just wanted to add my observations of Twilight. Honestly, I really did not have an interest to read it initially, but I only did because everyone was reading it a few years ago, and I sort of need to be in the know about books to some extent. Many people would ask me my opinions about Twilight, and I thought the best way to explain it to people would be by reading the books.
There was no crazed teenage sex in the Twilight series, well at least not until Bella and Edward get married, but there were some odd masochist aspects to it. For instance, Bella can be intelligent when she applied herself, she was good with chemistry, but early on in the book it seems her obsession becomes Edward specific. There are many other boys who like her because she is new to Forks, and thus mysterious, but she only has eyes for Edward.
At first she thinks he is ignoring her, but eventually she realizes he tried to keep his distance because he is overly attracted to the scent of her blood, and perplexed because he mind is the only one he cannot read, which is one of his vampire gifts.
Eventually Edward and Bella become a couple and go to prom together, which I guess plays into the fantasy of a lot of women who wish they could have taken their dream date to the prom. I think some women marry men that are different than their ideal, and I am not saying Stephanie Meyer did that per se, but perhaps she did because she felt she could not show the novel to her husband at first. Edward likes to play classical music and he reads the classics, and some men find that foo foo, and I think what is wildly popular about Edward is he is a guy that is everything the typical red blooded American male is not. Whereas many men would prefer to go off roading or watching the football game, Edward is the type of guy that would write you a love letter and take you to watch the ballet.
Okay I do not completely relate to this, but I kind of see the appeal because I once dated a guy who just refused to ever write a romancy type love letter, but then I realized I would only want someone to write a letter like that if it were genuine. However, there is a Sex and the City episode that sort of deals with this phenomenon about how culturally American men really do not do the ubber romantic thing, such as taking a woman to the Opera and composing love songs for her. Not that there are not American men like that, but I think this novel taps into the fixation many American women have long had with the romantic type of men of years ago, or maybe the type of man who goes to operas and ballets in a sophisticated European city. It is pure fantasy, and I have talked to a lot of women whose husbands sort of poke fun at their chick flick fantasies, but the women also do not want to partake in the men’s favorite shows. This is not with everyone to be honest, but I have just seen this is in some relationships, but is why I am holding out for a person I have much more in common with. I have also seen some relationships break up over differences like this.
What I find creepy about the series is the masochist undercurrent. Edward always shows up when Bella is in mortal danger, and thus she comes to associate he with this. In the second book New Moon Edward’s family throws Bella a party for her eighteenth birthday, and she accidentally cuts her finger on a piece of glass and it bleeds. Edward’s adopted brother Jasper tries to attack her, and has to be held off by Edward and Doctor Carlisle, their adopted father. Carlisle is the only one who can handle the scent of Bella’s blood because he works as a doctor, and he is one of those vampires who is 100% disciplined.
Anyway, Edward comes to Bella the next day and tells her he needs to leave, and she is completely devastated. Thus begins a series of events when Bella begins acting like a jilted woman, and putting herself in danger hoping it will bring Edward back.
I was completely turned off by the masochist aspect of New Moon, and eventually Bella dives off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean, which brings Edward back because this time she nearly drowns. The entire concept behind these novels is about how women want to secretly be rescued, and I really just cannot identify with it. I think you might be right about people lacking something in their love life if they need to find it in a book. I am not saying that is the only reason people read this book, but it makes me wonder.
Aya Katz 2 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
SweetiePie, I can see why the masochistic element in Twilight could be disturbing. To me, it is more annoying than disturbing, because Bella is so self-involved that she doesn’t seem to realize there are other dramatic things going on in the world, besides the drama she creates artificially by endangering her own life.
I think that to a lot of American women, the idea that a man would “restrain himself” and avoid indulging his appetites is alluring because they have never encountered men who were self-restrained around them. The idea that men don’t like poetry or art is also a weird American assumption. If you talk to real men, even real American men, you will find that many do read poetry and enjoy art and are just as artistic as the average woman. But I suppose the real problem is that they show this aspect of their personality only to the women they are not trying to get into bed with. It’s as if the American culture doesn’t allow sex and intellectual pursuits to mix, so that the women who are getting the sex are not getting to see that their men have minds, too. So they end up longing for “effeminate” men, whether they realize it or not.
SweetiePie 2 years ago from Southern California, USALevel 2 Commenter
Well I grew up in a very populated state with lots of men, and there is definitely a large group who are not into ballet, theater, and going to art museum. A man showing a dislike for art and ballet often happens in a marriages, not just when the guy is wanting something on the side.
Of course you have the artistic types who are, but there are a lot of guys who would rather watch football or play xbox. There are men who can inhabit both worlds, but they are not the largest segment of the population. They poke fun at women and their Twilight fantasy type movies, but the women also poke fun at their ubber guy shows and sports fixes. Of course now there are more women who are getting into sports, and things are changing in this regard. Also, there have always been men who like art, but a lot of mainstream guys I talk to do not like the fantasy ideas that women long for with art. Also, I think being attracted to or longing more effeminate type of man is not always a bad thing, if that is what a woman truly wants. The problem is when women want guys to be macho and effeminate at the same time, and to want men to have different responses in different situations. There is definitely a lot of expectations women have out of men, and I have never actually been one of those type of women who are demanding like that. It is funny because guys are usually attracted to these type of women, and then later complain she is so bossy and demanding.
SweetiePie 2 years ago from Southern California, USALevel 2 Commenter
I got cut off before I added something else. I think a lot of women are yearning for this Edward type of man who write them love poetry, and who takes them to the ballet, but in every day life a lot of women do not really do those things everyday either. It is a fantasy about wanting someone from a bygone era of sorts. Women are yearning for a type of man who is not prevalent in every day society because people in general do not exclusively listen to classical music because there are many different types of music to listen to today. Back in 1914 more men would have listened to classical music because that was sold more widely. When culture in general changes, often women do not realize they have changed with it. The Twilight thing is a fantasy for a long ago era of sorts, that really only existed in the imagination.
Aya Katz 2 years ago from The OzarksHub Author
SweetiePie, you’ve made a lot of good points. Women who are themselves not interested in poetry and art have some twisted idea that if a man were interested in those things it would necessarily be a romantic expression of his love for them. But men who are really interested in poetry do not confine themselves to love poetry. Real artists have other things to say besides “I love you.”
SweetiePie 2 years ago from Southern California, USALevel 2 Commenter
I do not even think it is real or genuine when a so-called love poet says that frequently. The most artistic poetry I have read is about nature anyway.
I was born in Israel of Israeli parents, and spent my early childhood there. My mother was also born in Israel and grew up in a town called Beit Oved, to Zionist parents who took up agriculture and speaking Hebrew, neither of which came naturally to them, as part of their dedication to a movement to form a Hebrew speaking, self-supporting nation in the Land of Israel.
My father, on the other hand, was born in Poland to Zionist parents who spoke to him only in Hebrew. He came to Israel when he was four years old and grew up in Jerusalem.
All my grandparents were Zionists and atheists. They did not attend religious services, they ate non-kosher food and they did not follow Jewish traditions. They rejected the traditional Jewish background of their grandparents in order to build something better in a land they hoped one day to claim as their own. They chose Hebrew not as a holy language, but as a secular one to unify people who came from many different countries to build a new home together. They read the Old Testament, not for the religion, but for the history, the literature and the language. The Old Testament is not a Jewish book. There are no Jews mentioned in it until we get to the Book of Esther. By then they are in exile. The point of Zionism was to end the exile and go back to what people did when they were not called Jews.
If I tell people these facts, or even a small part of these facts, they will jump to the conclusion that I must be Jewish. But Judaism is a religion, and I don’t belong to it. And to the extent that “Jew” is also an ethnic designation that is related to the culture of the diaspora, I was never raised that way. I was raised Israeli, though my great grandparents all hailed from Poland, where they were considered Jews, and this fact was not up to them to decide — it was stamped into their identity papers.
Theodor Herzl, who founded Zionism, was no fan of traditional Jews. In fact, religious Jews to this day are incensed at some of the “anti-Semitic” things that Herzl said and wrote. If you don’t speak Hebrew, the video below will be too tiring to watch, but I can at least tell you about the opening sequences. The first story is about how Herzl hoped to get people of Jewish ancestry to be baptized en masse in order to get them equal rights in Austria-Hungary with other citizens. Then we hear that he liked to listen to Wagner and admired Bismarck. Then he is quoted saying things against Jews, especially traditional Jews and wealthy Jews. At about 6:33 in the video, various people in Israel in a mall today are stopped by a pollster and read a shocking statement against Jews. Then they are asked: “Who said this?” Most of them guess “Hitler.” The true answer is Herzl.
Naturally, this video is produced by a religious group in Israel and is very anti-Zionist. Zionists and traditional Jews never got along. The reason is that the existence of the Zionists threatened the state-sanctioned monopoly of the leaders of the traditional religious Jews. Since the State in most of the countries of Europe assigned religious affiliation to people at birth, and people had no right to leave one religion except by converting to another, many people of Jewish origins had no choice but to remain Jewish, whether they liked it or not. For most atheists, converting to Catholicism was not something they were willing to do just to get out from under Judaism, since they had no religious conviction and would feel like hypocrites. Zionism offered another option.
Zionists had been living in the Land of Israel (aka Palestine) long before World War II, as far back as the turn of the century. They lived there under the Turks, and later under the British Mandate. Today very few people outside of the State of Israel understand this, thinking that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust. In fact, the Holocaust was an unfortunate event that had nothing to do with Zionism. It was a calamity for the people in Europe, but it was also a calamity for Israel, because what was meant to be a secular utopia was co-opted by traditional Jewish elements.
People in Israel became much more identified as “Jewish” after the holocaust happened, partly because they were forced to assimilate and integrate into their society on short notice a lot of dislocated diasporatic Jews who were not at all Zionist before the Holocaust happened, and who would much rather have stayed in the European countries where they were born. There was even a forced re-indoctrination program called “the Jewish Consciousness” that was instituted in the schools after Israel became a State, that went into effect sometime in the 1950s. Before that, Zionists liked to distinguish themselves from Jews, just as Herzl did, and they said not a few unflattering things about the practitioners of Judaism.
It’s a complicated story about shifting cultural allegiances, and different people will find themselves remembering it differently according to their sensibilities. My mother, for instance, is a very well-socialized, gregarious person, and she never was exposed to life outside Israel before she became an adult. She has no anti-Jewish sentiment, unlike my father. She does not mind it if someone calls her a Jew, though she is an atheist. Her sense of herself came from her community, where agrarian values of hard work and thrift were emphasized. She is a native born Israeli.
Early pictures of my mother often show her in a group with other children close to her age in Beit Oved (בית עובד). Children were sent to the kindergarten from the age of two and a half. Both parents worked on the farm, so this was in actuality a shared day care arrangement.
My mother (standing, right) in 1940 with her kindergarten teacher Esther and fellow students.
Beit Oved was built on Qeren-Qayemet land (קרן קימת) — this was land lawfully purchased and paid for by Zionist organizers. Zionists abroad would collect money donations, and then Zionists who wanted to be settlers were given plots of land to farm on. It was all open and above board and legal. If you look all around in the picture, you can see that this was a desolate, uninhabited place where the Hebrew settlement was part of the Zionist program to make the deserts blossom. The land there was so sandy that children did not need sandboxes to play with.
My mother’s parents planted orange groves and avocados and other fruit bearing trees. They worked very hard at work that traditional Jews in Poland did not do. They came from the middle class, but they performed the work of laborers. It was a labor of love that was rewarded, in their case, with success.
In order to be a settler in the Moshav of Beit Oved, you had to be married. Unmarried men and women were not allowed to live there, but outsiders did come to work there in support positions. For instance, Esther the kingdergarten teacher, pictured above, was a single woman living in Nes Ziona when she started keeping the children in Beit Oved. In time, she did get married, but she kept living in Nes Ziona and working in Beit Oved.
My mother’s parents had an equal partnership on their farm. Both worked very hard. My mother grew up among the children of the other Moshavniks, and they all treated each other like extended family. They were more like brothers and sisters than just neighbors. That is why people from Beit Oved did not tend to marry each other.
My mother is the girl on the top right
In pictures from her early childhood, my mother is usually part of a group. On the other hand, early pictures of my father show him alone or with one or two other people. My mother’s running memory only begins at age six, but my father had very vivid memories from his early childhood in Krakow. I know, because he not only shared them with me verbally. He also wrote them down in his unpublished autobiography.
My father on his tricycle in a park in Krakow in 1939 when he was four
My father had memories of being in his crib in his parents’ bedroom in their Krakow apartment. He remembered his mother, a native speaker of Polish, speaking to him only in Hebrew, because that is what Zionists do. Even though her accent was imperfect in Hebrew, Hebrew was the first language my father spoke. His father was a classicist who knew Biblical Hebrew inside and out.
Page one of Chapter Two of Amnon Katz Autobiography Manuscript
My father had a lot more toys than my mother seems to have had. One of his favorite toys was a horse.
His first word was סוס (horse)
The first word he ever spoke was סוס.
Although they lived in a very small apartment, they always had a live-in maid.
The maid, a Polish young woman, also served as a nanny. She took my father to the park. The first one, that my father could not remember, but that my grandparents were so impressed with that they mentioned her even when she was no longer in their employ, was named Manya.
My father and Manya
I know this, while my father did not know it when he was writing this, because I found her name on the other side of this photo. For a long time, I believed that this photo was of my grandmother and my father when he was a baby. I inherited the photo in a frame from my grandmother. But over time I became skeptical that it was my grandmother, because it does not look like any other photo of her. So yesterday I opened up the frame, and on the other side of the photo my grandmother had written in Hebrew: “Amnon with Manya in Krakow May 12, 1936.”
We have no pictures of my grandmother holding my father as a baby, but we do have a picture of Manya the maid! Please keep in mind they had to traverse borders at night with a very light load to leave Poland in 1939. What pictures we have are the pictures they carried on their person. Manya must have been remarkable! She picked up Hebrew from her Zionist young charge.
Keep in mind that all this time my father was being groomed for the Hebrew settlement in Palestine, nobody told him anything at all about being Jewish. His parents did not discuss anything like that with him. When he played with other children in the park, and they spoke up in Polish against Jews, (“Beat the Jews!”), neither they nor he had an idea that it might apply to him. Hebrew was being taught, but “Jewish consciousness” was withheld on purpose, according to the teachings of Herzl.
Once arrived safely in Palestine, my father grew up in Jerusalem believing that when Israel achieved its independence, it would be a secular state without establishment of religion, where everybody who spoke Biblical Hebrew fluently, Christian, Moslem, Pagan, Jew or atheist, would be treated the same. In the end, people whose Hebrew was not nearly as good as that of his classical scholar father or his Zionist mother, came to dominate and set the agenda. Establishment of religion was part of the new state apparatus. Eventually my father joined the Canaanite movement. And when that did not help, he left Israel for good.
Zionism was never meant to lead to the establishment of a state Jewish religion in Palestine. That is not why Herzl invented it. Herzl wanted to free Jews from both Judaism and Jewishness. But most people are so confused about the history of Zionism that they don’t know this.
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