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Published: 2001. 09. 17.
Price: EUR 2,09
The longset crisis
 Short summary of articles
Although this issue of Past and Future goes to press in the first third of 2002, it bears a 2001 imprint. Beyond the usual and regrettable delay, this fact also has a symbolic significance. We have been unable, or rather, we could not get over the woeful beginning of the new millennium. The question mark posed to Jewish existence in the twentieth century has not been removed from the world’s agenda. Jews, first of all Israelis, keep dying terrible deaths every day as the result of not being accepted and not being allowed to have a homeland; this attitude has remained traditional, its scope world-wide, and only the cowardly, those unwilling to look into the heart of the problem, would consider it a political problem, the escalating spiral of wrong decisions and responses. The millennium getting off to a bad start, and within that the devaluation of Jewish history and the Jewish cause, also determine the minuscule existence of our periodical. Yet how could this existence be independent of the larger cause, financially or spiritually? But we do not want to be independent of it! We are one with it. If our fate takes a turn for the better, we shall consider it a sign that the deep crisis has passed.
Accordingly, our subjects are still in areas dealing with Israel’s longest and most profound crisis, its sources and ramifications throughout the world. Puddington’s essay, “Durbans Ways” (with the kind permission and cooperation of Commentary) probes the spiritual roots of September 11, 2001 and of the Intifada. Alain Finkielkraut presents a picture of France, with the effects of the most vehement center of the new anti-Semitism. The excerpt from Daniel Sibony’s book allows a glance into the nature of the Islamic faith, the way Islam looks at religions to which it is related, but which are older in origin. (We will soon publish the entire Sibony book which deals with the relationship between the three monotheistic religions.) Yossi Klein Halevi, in the segment of his book “At the Gate of Eden” depicts, in a Holy Land setting, the beauty of coexistence which is not affected by the waves of major politics.
We are pleased to introduce three new Israeli artists to our readers: Ariel Hirschfeld, who teaches at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is a brilliant essayist, art critic and aesthetician. Miriam Neiger-Fleischmann is a painter and poet of Hungarian origin whose first volume of poetry in Hungarian will be published in May. Rami Saari’s Hungarian connection lies in her mastery of our language, from which she also translates. (She translated into Hebrew, for example, Péter Eszterházy’s Auxiliary Verbs of the Heart.)
Immigration will most likely remain a characteristic movement of the twenty-first century, as it was that of the twentieth. This is the theme of the extract from Gábor T. Szantó’s novel, which is also a rare document of the age, and that of the correspondence in the years 1957 to 1967 of two girls from Damjanich Street, sending their letters between Hungary and Israel.
In this issue of Past and Future we say farewell to our friend and faithful author, Mária Ember. We also say goodbye to the Soros Foundation-though not the way we would have liked to. By recording the moment of this parting of ways, we have thrown some light on the intellectual and political environment which is also the environment of our daily labor.
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