https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-civilized-world-seems-tired-of-its-civilization
“Israel is pressed, it is a suffering country,” a sympathetic visitor says with a sigh. International organizations, the intellectual Left, and much of Europe are arrayed against it. American support is shaky. The Israelis are fighting for their existence, perhaps for liberal democracy itself, but “at this uneasy hour,” our pilgrim laments, “the civilized world seems tired of its civilization, and tired also of the Jews. It wants to hear no more about survival.”
The traveler was Saul Bellow, the year 1975. A few months later, Bellow published a diary of his visit, To Jerusalem and Back (1976), his only full-dress performance of nonfiction. He took a stand for civilization in that book and elsewhere, and his claim to lasting literary fame has suffered for it. But the link between Israel and civilization is real, and Bellow’s account of his journey to the Holy Land resonates today.
In this book, as in Bellow’s novels, what strikes you first are the character sketches. On the flight east, Bellow sits next to “a young Hasid” (“his neck is thin, his blue eyes goggle, his underlip extrudes”) who offers to pay him $15 a week, for life, to eat kosher. Bellow befriends a masseur, “both priestlike and boyish,” whose hands “have the strength that purity of purpose can give.” He marvels at how a scholar whom he knows, “a vegetarian, a pacifist, a Quaker—most odd, most unhappy, a quirky charmer,” could “fall in love with militant Islam.” Though Bellow’s run-ins with the likes of Yitzhak Rabin and Henry Kissinger may be of some historical interest, his portraits of humbler men are where his talent shines.
To Jerusalem and Back is structured—if that’s the word—around walks and conversations, drop-ins and dinners, stray thoughts and sense impressions. The book is unruly and disjointed. A review in the New York Times called it “spotty” as a travelogue: “a sharp if patched-together picture of contemporary Israel.” Sometimes, Bellow the tourist is a sedate creature: “The Valley of Jehoshaphat, with its tombs. A narrow road, and on the slopes acres and acres of stone.” Sometimes he almost seems to suffer from the syndrome for which his destination is famous: “The light of Jerusalem has purifying powers . . . I don’t forbid myself the reflection that light may be the outer garment of God.” In all events, the sights and sounds are just a backdrop. Bellow’s attention returns to politics—to the existential dread of an Israel unsettled by the Yom Kippur War.
