A new biography of Ariel Sharon has just been released. It's a long, detailed account of his life, almost as heavy as the protagonist. I haven't read it yet, but I have taken note of the title -- The Shepherd. The name brings to mind the familiar photos of Sharon on his ranch: visiting the goat pen, shouldering a sheep, cuddling a lamb. But the meaning is far deeper and more significant than that. The Hebrew language harbors 3,000-year-old turns of phrase. Hebrew speakers can still understand biblical passages in their original form, and in the Bible's Hebrew the shepherd is not merely someone who raises animals, brings them to greener pastures, and milks them in their cowshed. In Hebrew, a shepherd is a leader.
On many occasions the moniker is bestowed on kings, even God. “God is my shepherd, I shall not want.” He herds and shelters us “like the shepherd of his flock.” Moses, before presenting himself to Pharaoh and releasing the Hebrews from slavery, tended his father-in-law's flock. According to the Midrash, a multi-volume compilation of rabbinical commentary on the Bible, Moses was singled out as a leader after rescuing a stray kid and carrying him on his shoulders to safety. The Blessed One said: “You shall shepherd the flock of Israel.” King David, too, led livestock before he led the people. He saved his sheep from mountain lions and bears, and God said to him: “Thou shalt be a shepherd for my people Israel.” The prophet Amos identified himself as a herdsman, explaining to Amazia that: “The Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” In modern times, David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, recorded in his dairy the joy he felt while caring for the animals in Sejera before entering politics. The same is true for the generals Sharon, Mofaz, and Ya'alon. In short, anyone who entertains notions of leadership in Israel highlights his prior experience with animals.
This wakens in us pastoral and romantic feelings. It is comforting, even alluring, to walk behind a straight-backed, confident shepherd -- someone who knows the way, plays the flute, and chases away bandits and wild animals. It is easy to be a sheep, to count on the shepherd to deliver us to lush pastures and still waters. But we shouldn't forget that the imagery in this metaphor does not end with the grass, the water, and the flute. There are also the shearers, the milker's hand, and the butcher's knife.
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Far-right Evangelicals in America, like the far-right extremists in Israel, have already proclaimed that God is serving Sharon his retribution for the withdrawal and the surrender of the Land of Israel to strangers. That logic can be met with similar logic: Had God wanted to stop the withdrawal he would have crippled Sharon before the event, not after. The Israeli press has been as emotional as the religious leaders. The editors of Israel's papers know that neither scoops nor investigative pieces sell newspapers in this country; what moves papers off the rack is the extended-family feeling, the kitsch inherent in the ceremonies of joy and mourning, the mutual responsibility and the feeling of belonging. We call our soldiers “children,” “brothers,” and “sons.” Our leaders are “fathers”. Since Sharon's stroke a similar tone has prevailed. The daily papers' headlines are not informative, they're kindred howls: “Parting with Dad,” “Praying,” “Without Him,” “Parting from Arik,” “Between Hope and Despair.”
Last Friday, while a machine fed air into Sharon's lungs, the newspapers were filled with eulogies and lamentations, the standard layout of bereavement. Archival pictures of the living-deceased, like those on hand at any grieving house, were published in the papers in separate, easy-to-save sections. The canon of mournful songs, saved for tragedies and the communal mourning of Memorial Day, was played on the radio. Hundreds of people filed in and out of TV studios for interviews. Many spoke of Sharon in the past tense, and all spoke of meetings, of visits to the farm, of things he said to them and they to him. They told of his love for his family, his late wife's superb culinary skills and his wonderful sense of humor.
Sharon, it seems, has a sharp sense of humor, better than most of his peers in the Israeli right, many of whom are somber and severe. We can all hope that Sharon returns to good health so that he, like Tom Sawyer, can read what was said and written of him when he was thought dead. He'll have good reason to smile. But with all the talk of humor we've nearly forgotten that Sharon shaped far more disasters than jokes, harvested more tears than laughter.
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Many a good person has tried to explain the secret of Sharon. Many have tried to interpret how he was able to rise up from the depths after the Lebanon War and become the most popular prime minister in Israel. Clearly, his image as a farmer-warrior and his forceful charisma helped him. Israel has always preferred politicians with a military background, bowing to the myth of soil and blood. But we have other generals in politics -- too many, truth be told -- and none of them have reached Sharon's level of popularity. Moreover -- Sharon, a man of war already in his youth, was at his best when carrying out an act of peace: the “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip.
His abilities, combined with the human frailty of his competitors, found him favor in the eyes of the public, even large swaths of the Left. And Sharon, understanding the Israeli thirst for normalcy, for peace, for a place in the middle rather than on the fringe, was wise to continue in the same vein and start Kadima, his new political party. But there is another characteristic lurking here. The Ladino phrase sums it up well: tangere y tapon -- each pot and its lid. The phrase often refers to the matching of a couple, as it does in this instance. Sharon is the lid the Israeli public wants on its head. He is an intensified personification of the society: daring, clever, prone to improvisation, forceful, disregarding of the law and integrity, unbridled. Hence our ability and desire to forgive men of his kind.
In fact, the majority of the Israeli public has forgiven Sharon for the majority of his sins. Despite the moral loftiness we tend to attribute to absolution, I say this not as a compliment. Sharon has been forgiven for lies, corruption, and criminal allegations. He has been forgiven for the ensnarement in Lebanon and the lives it claimed. He has been forgiven the grave error for which he, more than any other single person, was responsible -- the blunder of settlement and occupation. Sharon, the single person bearing the greatest measure of responsibility for the settlements, was made a hero twice over -- once for building them and once more for destructing them.
Were Sharon the CEO of a financial firm, were he to have invested the stockholders' money in a project he had to abort after suffering heavy losses -- he would have been summarily fired. But politics isn't economics, certainly not in Israel. There is great value in the admission of wrongdoing, of public breast-beating, of absolution. And so, we praise Sharon's virtuous admissions of guilt and his subsequent change of course, without asking why the terrible missteps were taken in the first place.
It's possible we haven't forgiven or forgotten, merely matured and wizened, become pragmatic. We've shed the crazed dreams of occupation and settlement. We understand that Sharon is the only bulldozer that can extract us from the hole he himself carved. But there are deeper, more mysterious themes lurking here. We do not forgive Sharon begrudgingly, but ardently, because in forgiving him we forgive ourselves, too. All of us -- almost each and every one -- have followed him down a path paved with the sins of arrogance, nearsightedness, forcefulness, and stupidity. Only a few of us say what should have been spoken long ago -- that were Sharon a truly wise politician, and had he understood years ago what he only recently grasped, much blood, life, pain, and anguish would have been saved. Money would have been channeled elsewhere.
It's interesting: This forgiveness is reminiscent of the amnesty the Jewish people extended to King David many years ago. Despite his carefully detailed sins, we forgave him. The forgiveness was aided in part by historical alteration -- Chronicles omits the sins and affairs of Samuel and Kings -- and in part by the rabbinical sages' softening of his sins. But beneath that lies a more outrageous truth: We like to forgive these characters. We admire their dark charms, their cruelty, their forcefulness, their passion for life, their ability to walk a fine line, their trampling foot, and their knowing hands, which can slap or stroke. Some call it charisma, but it is a unique brand of that commodity. Now, as the doctors wake Sharon from his coma, I recall a Talmudic tale about King David, lying in a cave and waiting for us to come and pour the life-giving waters over his palms so that he can rise and deliver salvation to his people.
What now? We, compassionate souls that we are, wish Mr. Sharon a swift return to health, to his job and his responsibilities, but we understand that he will never again be prime minister. His heirs are Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud, Ehud Olmert of Kadima, and Amir Peretz of Labor. Behind them wait former prime minister Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, a rising star in Sharon's party, and, perhaps eternally, Shimon Peres. Not one of them has the aptitude and the natural authority that enabled Sharon to disengage from Gaza. None of them have Ariel Sharon's political sex appeal. Shimon Peres, as usual, is popular only in the supporting role. Amir Peretz is likeable but attracts derision and ridicule. Ehud Barak oozes aloofness. Olmert and Netanyahu are talented, yet both are perceived in Israel as men of verbiage and pomposity rather than of action. Tzipi Livni, smarter and more mature than the other contenders, could inherit Sharon's throne with grace. Her only problem is that she lives in Israel -- a conservative, masculine state.
But something good can come of the fact that Israel will be given a charisma-free leader, an administrator and not a war hero or a celebrity. In my mind's eye I see an old fat grocer, a pencil tucked behind his ear and a pad of paper stuffed in his shirt pocket. But Israel doesn't want grocers; it wants father figures, like Abraham, Moses, King David, and Ben Gurion. Israel wants doctors to pour the life-giving waters over the outstretched palms of Ariel Sharon.
Meir Shalev is the author of The Blue Mountain, Esau, The Loves of Judith, and the forthcoming A Pigeon and a Boy. His books are translated into more than twenty languages.
Translated from Hebrew to English by Mitch Ginsburg.