Free My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit

sheep foray into the fields, and their young, armed horsemen terrify the kibbutz girls. So mission is not yet accomplished. There is indeed a solid Jewish base in the valley. Five different kibbutzim have begun to establish one of the first strips of Jewish territorial continuity in the country. But the work isn’t done. The Arabs of the Harod Valley still stand in the way of the Jewish liberation movement that needs to remove them from this valley.
    At noon on April 17, 1926, the working day is cut short in the Valley of Harod, and the last blast is heard in the quarry. An hour later all harvesting stops in the fields. The young comrades of Ein Harod are called back to camp. So are the young comrades of the neighboring Tel Yosef, Gvat, Beit Alpha, and Hephzibah. Throughout the valley, kibbutz members are showering, shaving, and donning their white Shabbat outfits. Back in the quarry a wooden stage is set up. By four o’clock all is ready. The old piano is on the stage decorated with green palm leaves. By horse, by mule, by carriage, by wagon, and on foot, thousands of pioneers flock to the valley quarry turned amphitheater.
    From day one, the rough Labor Brigade pioneers of Ein Harod have had a soft spot for all things musical. One of them has an explanation. “The playing of classical music fills the void in our lives,” he writes.
    The time of music is the only time that our communal dining room resembles a place of worship. There is a reason for that. Leaving God behind caused a terrible shock to us all. It destroyed the basis of our lives as Jews. This became the tragic contradiction of our new life. We had to start from scratch and build a civilization from the very foundation. Yet we had no foundation to build on. We had no Ultimate. Above us there were blue skies and a radiant sun, but no God. That’s the truth we couldn’t ignore and cannot ignore for a moment. That is the void. And music for us is an attempt to fill the void. When thesounds of violins fill our dining hall, they reacquaint us with life’s other dimension. They raise the deepest, forgotten feelings buried in all of us. Our eyes close, turn inward, and an aura almost of sanctity enwraps us all.
    Just a few months earlier, in the late autumn, the first quarry concert was held. Thousands gathered from all over the valley to hear the local choir and string quartet play Beethoven, Bach, and Mendelssohn. A local teacher said that on this great day the mountains of Gilboa were revived. A young girl read Ezekiel’s Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. And all were silent as the tall, lanky violinist of Ein Harod played Bach against the backdrop of the quarry’s walls. But today is different. Today it is Jascha Heifetz who is about to play.
    Heifetz was born in 1901 in the Lithuanian capital of Vilna. He began playing the violin at three, and by the time he was seven he played Mendelssohn’s concerto brilliantly in public. At the age of twelve he was considered one of Europe’s musical prodigies, and at the age of sixteen—a week before the Balfour Declaration was issued—he made his legendary American debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Now an American citizen and star, Heifetz is to the music of the twenties what Chaplin is to comedy and Einstein to physics. An astounding talent; a rare incarnation of man’s extraordinary, almost divine gift.
    That’s why the Harod Valley pioneers are so excited. It’s not only that they appreciate music and regard it as almost sacred. It’s not only that music is the one thing that allows them to let go and allows suppressed pain and longing to moisten their eyes. It’s also the fact that the world’s most renowned violinist recognizes the importance of their endeavor by giving a concert in their remote quarry. It’s the fact that the best that secular Jewish Diaspora civilization has produced is about to pay homage to their audacious attempt to create a new secular Jewish civilization in the valley.