Yitzhak Navon, who died earlier this month at the age of 94, served as the fifth president of Israel (1978-1983). He time in office coincided with a period of increased political, social and ethnic polarization, and public controversy over the withdrawal from Sinai and the evacuation of Jewish settlements there. His warmth and diplomacy and the prestige of his office did much to defuse a potentially explosive situation on the eve of the Sinai withdrawal.
Though he strove to act as a bridge between all Israel’s ethnic groups, he was both spokesman for, and a source of particular pride to, the Israeli Sephardi community. Highlights of his term of office included two state visits: the first to Egypt at President Sadat’s invitation (1980), when he impressed his hosts with his eloquent Arabic and erased stereotypes of Israelis and Jews as a “foreign element” to the region, and the second to the United States at President Reagan’s invitation. Exhibited with this column is a photograph of that meeting between the two presidents at the White House, signed by Navon in both Hebrew and English.
Above and beyond his remarkable political career, Navon was also a brilliant writer and playwright who won acclaim for his prose, plays, and television programs, as he presented and popularized the life of the Sephardi communities in Spain and Jerusalem.
Perhaps his most famous work is Sephardic Bustan (“Spanish Garden,” 1970), which won the Kinor David prize, in which he addressed the life of a Sephardic family in Jerusalem. He also wrote many stories dealing with Jerusalemite folklore, including The Six Days and the Seven Gates (1979), a modern legend of the reunification of Jerusalem. He also presented a television series called Jerusalem in Spain, which unfolded the history of Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, and he published an excellent collection of essays about David Ben-Gurion.
Shown with this column are the first two pages of Navon’s handwritten Megilat HaZekenim asher BaKotel HaMa’aravi (“Scroll of the Elders in the Western Wall”), an incredibly powerful and beautiful piece he wrote in May 1971 in honor of Yom Yerushalayim. The text is a short story written in a “legendary” style, telling of 32 elderly men and women from Jerusalem who gather and make an agreement with God according to which their souls will be taken instead of the souls of soldiers who are about to be killed in battle.
The story, which is dedicated to Simcha Holzberg, a Holocaust survivor who became renowned as “Father of the Wounded Soldiers,” was distributed by the Ministry of Defense to bereaved families. What follows are several excerpts, translated into English, to give readers a flavor of the late president’s beautiful prose:
I went to the house of the wise man, Ben-Saadon the Jerusalemite, to comfort him in his heavy mourning for his son, [who fell during the Arab terrorist incursions into Eretz Yisrael between 1948 and 1956]. We were silent, because we saw that he was in very great pain. Later, the wise men began discussing words of comfort and of understanding God’s justice.
The wise man Azulai stood and said:
Hashem gave, Hashem took, who can understand His ways and who can descend into understanding the end of His mysteries? Deep, deep, who can find it? He is far, far, who will see Him?
Said the wise man Amiel:
Hashem is one, and there is no other. If He would kill us – we would run to Him to His visage. If He would strike us – we would seek refuge under His shade from His wrath. We have no choice other than to grasp onto the edges of His garment of mercy until He has compassion for us.
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