Of Pragmatists and Dreamers
“And they said one unto the other,
Behold, the dreamer cometh….” – Genesis 37:19
The Talmud (Bava Batra 12b) relates that after the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was given over to children and fools. The concept is staggering! Prophecy! Is there any greater level for man to achieve? Prophecy! To be in the deepest communion with G-d, to sense the future, to speak of that which will be. What an astounding gift, and it is given over to fools and children! How can this be?
There is profound, if sad, wisdom in the words of the Rabbis who contemplated a post-Destruction world that saw not only a Temple structure leveled, but also a human level lowered and profaned. The end of the spiritual presence of the Temple and the flight of the Shechina, the Divine Presence, led also to the debasement of the spiritual nature of man. His faith and belief in things that were of the soul were replaced by an inability to believe in that which he could not see or touch. Pragmatism, realism, and logic became his yardsticks and touchstone, and cynicism and doubt were his natural reactions to visions and dreams.
He mocked those who spoke of things that were of the spirit. He derided those who spoke of faith and destiny and the divine decree. He deprecated the dreamers with sneers of “fool!” He labeled the visionaries “children.” No, prophecy is not given over to children and fools, but it is given over to dreamers of dreams who are called those names. One who does not believe in G-d and the greatness of the spirit attempts to tear down the visionary with mockery and humiliation. He laughs at the young who dream great hopes and calls them “children.” He sneers at the few who see beyond “reality” and “logic” and labels them “fools.”
But it is these “children and fools” who possess the truth while the men of pragmatism sink into the graveyards of forgotten persons.
Shimon Peres, promoter of programs of “practicality,” sneerer at seers and realist par excellence, spoke with contempt of the fools and children when he attacked Menachem Begin’s statements after his election victory as “examples of the gap between a realist and a visionary. One can make heart-rending speeches in Kadum,” he declared, “but there are still American interests and I am sure they will not be looked after according to the Books of Jeremiah and Isaiah…. One can change a government but one cannot change the world. One can change the regime but one cannot change the situation.”
The dwarf. The grasshopper. The little man of little faith. Peres is akin to Joseph’s brothers who watch him come and who sneer: ‘Behold, the dreamer cometh….” But it was Joseph’s dreams that proved to be real.
One cannot change the world? One cannot change the situation? One must be “realistic”? Thank G-d that the Pereses of the world could not dissuade the Herzls and the Jabotinskys and the Nordaus. Thank G-d that men of faith throughout the ages, Abraham, Moses, Matityahu, Akiva, overcame the practical men of little faith.
One remembers them. Rabin, in October of 1976, telling Parade magazine: “If the United States deserts us, then our very existence will be truly jeopardized.” Men of “logic and reason.”
One remembers the words of General Shmuel Gonen describing Moshe Dayan at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War: “Dayan was a broken man and predicted a destruction of the Third Temple….” Dayan the pragmatist, the realist, the “logical” military man.
All of them are the doubters, the scoffers, of no faith and little belief. Hussein of Jordan speaks with tears of “Allah taking his beloved wife.” Fahd of Saudi Arabia releases prisoners in an “expression of gratitude to G-d for the recovery of King Khalid,” while Sadat speaks of “Allah’s aid” in the Yom Kippur War. But the “realists” of Labor do not know G-d because He is not a practical concept.
One cannot change a world or a situation? Who says so?
Does the survival of a people that wandered the earth for 2,000 years under incredible conditions of suffering and without a state, government, or army, add up to logic? Does the return to Zion exactly as prophesied in the visions of the prophets constitute “realism”? Do the victories in four and six days over hordes of enemies constitute victories for rationality?
It is precisely the Books of Jeremiah and Isaiah that one turns to, not because of American interests but because of Jewish ones! It is precisely the dependence on political and military and economic realpolitik that brings tragedy on Israel. For not one of these things can save a state that has nothing to convince any ally to aid her.
Only the “children and fools” understand. They, at whom the clever logicians and realists scoff and sneer, understand. They see and perceive because they believe, because they have faith, because they are truly Jewish. The generation of Peres is the generation of the desert. They cannot enter the Promised Land of the redemption. They have no prophecy and it is only the children who believe who will see the glory of G-d.
The Jewish Press, 1977