"Pain is a terrible thing to waste." Writer Annie Dillard is

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"Pain is a terrible thing to waste." Writer Annie Dillard is

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Joe Hine

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:00 am

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A few days or a week later we were in action trying to take the village of Tantura. This is maybe thirty kilometres south of Haifa, close to the sea. After some fierce fighting, we managed to take control of the town. There were rumours that some men from the village were killed in revenge for the massacre at Kefar Sava. I never saw any killing, but even the rumour had an effect on me. I wanted to fight for the right to live in this land. I was more than ready to fight against the armies of Egypt, Jordan and other countries. I was prepared to give my life to secure the existence of the State of Israel. But I was frightened to think that cruel hatred and bloodthirsty revenge could so easily take hold of men’s hearts.

Of course, there was not time to think too deeply about such things. At the time, I only thought how I wanted to do more. In my unit was a young man name Schmuel Getter. He belonged to a group of young people preparing to start a kibbutz and he wanted to re-join the rest of this group who were all part of the Palmach, a more elite group in the army. For my part, I thought I would see more action with the Palmach. So we left our unit together and found the unit where his friends served. I didn’t want to tell them that my name was Josef Nacht, because then they would find out that I actually belonged to a different unit, so I said my name is Josef Ben-Eliezer. Ben-Eliezer means the son of Eliezer, which was true. I did this on the spur of the moment and I have had that name ever since.

Joe Hine

Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:00 am

Guest

Sometimes I have felt guilty: maybe David would have lived if I had not taken his place. On the other hand, I am thankful for the miracle that I am still alive after deliberately putting myself in danger so many times. Because I was mostly in the explosives unit, I never actually killed anyone close up, but I was plagued with flashbacks of my comrades dying in battle. Pangs of guilt for my mother’s death and my father’s unknown fate haunted me still. I could not overcome this inner turmoil and the malaria only made things worse.

My sister Judith and others of my family really went out of their way to support me again during this very difficult time. I went to an army psychologist a few times and left the army in January 1949. Of course, most of the fighting was over by then and Israel was negotiating an armistice with the Arab countries.

Very soon after that I started to think about all we had done. We came to Israel and just wanted to live like anyone else - why shouldn’t we have that right? But because we wanted to live, it meant that we directly or indirectly caused other people to be uprooted and to live in misery. I came more and more to the conclusion that I could never again cause harm to other people, no matter how noble the cause.

Joe Hine

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

14. The Paris Group

My main contact in Paris was my cousin Berta who had moved there from Israel a year earlier. Through Berta, I met Jakob Halperin, whom she later married. Jakob was a gifted speaker and he headed up a committed group of Leninists in Paris. Looking back, I can see now that Berta and some of her friends in Tel Aviv had spotted me long before as a possible recruit for their Leninist group. Before she left, we had talked about the things that concerned me and about my idea of leaving Israel. But at the time, I didn’t have any idea that she was involved in such things. I assumed she was being nice to me just because she was my cousin and we shared some similar ideas. But by the time I arrived in Paris, I was much more open to their communist ideals.

Jakob could win over almost anyone. He knew Russian, Polish, Arabic, Hebrew, German and other languages perfectly. He was well read and had an in-depth knowledge of classical literature. Lenin was his model. He criticized Trotsky, Stalin and other communist leaders for betraying Lenin’s vision. He was a convinced idealist and dedicated his whole life for the communist revolution. In fact, he was prepared to use almost any means to achieve his goal of a just society.

Joe Hine

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:00 am

Guest

I was involved for about three months in this paradoxical community. We had lots of comradeship, ate together, and basically shared everything. But the circle was quite guarded. We met for secret discussion groups, but we didn’t tell each other our names or anything about our backgrounds. They produced some leaflets to further the cause of ‘true communism’, but these were directed more against Stalin than against the capitalists. They said ‘Yes, we are a small group, but in Russia they were also only a few people and that movement grew. We have to be ahead of the masses and then they will follow.’

After about three months, I moved on to live with my brother and sister in Frankfurt. I would have stayed longer with the group in Paris, but I couldn’t get permission to remain in France. During this time, my sister Judith managed to come from Israel for her first visit, so we four siblings finally met again after our scattered odyssey through Europe and Asia. I must have been in Germany for six months or so, but I didn’t find work there and I still longed to return to my comrades in Paris.

Joe Hine

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:10 pm

Guest

Early in 1954, my friends help me slip back into France. By devious means I first crossed the border into Belgium and then got into France. Everything worked out well, but ironically my troubles started after I reached Paris. No one met me at the station as planned, and I didn’t have anywhere to go for the night. I didn’t want to arouse questions or suspicions by hanging around the station, so I wandered to a part of Paris which had plenty of nightlife. By then, it was quite late, so I settled onto a bench to wait for morning.

After a time, a man came along and struck up a conversation. This man was also a foreigner and told stories of how he had been mistreated. My sympathy grew into utter stupidity. I told him that I was there illegally. He asked me if I had enough money to get by on and I assured him that I did, even showing him my purse. Shortly afterwards, he wished me all the best and wandered off. Later, I went to buy a cup of coffee and found that all my money had been stolen.

Joe Hine

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

But there were also some questions where I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer within that group. I didn’t want to see the developments in Russia repeat themselves. How could I be sure that future revolutions would not lead to the same tyranny and injustice I had seen in the Soviet Union?

Even in the French Revolution, the cry had been ‘fraternity, liberty and equality’, but those who seized power went on to commit terrible atrocities. The ideas were good, but was violent revolution really the way to realize those ideas?

I was also unhappy that hatred was represented as a necessity by the group. I could understand that a revolutionary has to identify with the masses and be willing to fight for them, but that was not the same to me as hatred against people. I discussed this issue many times with Berta, but she always asked, ‘What about Hitler?’ She had just managed to escape the Nazis as a 16-year old and she had tremendous hatred of Hitler and his government. I could only answer that I would be ready to kill tyrants and ready to fight for the revolution, but that it is wrong to hate anyone - even Hitler. Hatred is beneath human dignity; it degrades a human being into an animal. She would only respond, ‘Josef, you are just like a Christian, a petit bourgeois.’

Joe Hine

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:10 pm

Guest

15. Breakthrough

Among the courses I took in Munich to fill my time was a course to learn Esperanto. I read various Esperanto newspapers and found out about various groups concerned about peace and justice. In one of the Esperanto newspapers, I read an advert from a man wanting to correspond with anyone interested in living a life based on giving what you can and receiving what you need. I responded and got in touch with a man in England named Derrick Faux. He told me about the Bruderhof communities and told me there was a Bruderhof in Germany, so I decided to visit in July 1958.

I was still grappling constantly with the question why people cannot live in community and solidarity. Why does it go wrong even when people want to live in community? I was sceptical. The religious side of the Bruderhof put me off. I was also not interested in an island of brotherhood in a sea of injustice and hate where people try to find some kind of personal peace and fulfilment. I wanted an answer for all mankind. At the same time I was in great personal need, because I hadn’t found what I was seeking after years and years. So I thought, maybe I can learn something from a group of people trying to live together. Maybe I can understand why the ideals of justice and equality have not been realized in the various revolutions.

I was already apprehensive, thinking of the religious and Christian side of it, but I wanted to see them as human beings. I said to myself, ‘Please, don’t be prejudiced, and don’t straight away judge people. Be open when you come.’

Joe Hine

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 7:00 am

Guest

My resolve was put to the test from the first encounter. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon and the first person I met was a man walking up and down in front of the house balancing a stick on his head. I asked if this was the Bruderhof, and he confirmed it was without once taking his eyes off the stick. He just kept walking up and down, up and down. It seemed like there were some strange people here, or maybe they were not quite right in the head. But he did call someone over to take me in for a cup of tea.

Afterwards, there was a circus for the children. The man outside had been practicing his routine. That explained his unusual behaviour, but the whole episode was still quite strange. I was concerned about the destiny of mankind, and here no one seemed concerned about anything more serious than a children’s circus.

After the circus, people approached me and asked what I was looking for, why I had come. In the end, I stayed for a couple of weeks. On the last day of my visit, they asked me to tell at a mealtime what the visit had meant to me. I said again what I always said, ‘I am seeking brotherhood. I am seeking an answer to the need of mankind. I long for this, I am ready to give my life for it.’ I couldn’t agree with these people’s ideas, but they took an interest in what I was seeking and they were obviously seeking something themselves.

Joe Hine

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

I went back to Munich, but I was eager to go back to the Bruderhof - still trying to find out what it is that prevents people living together in peace. In my letter requesting to come back, I wrote: ‘I long to once experience in my life, in my heart, the answer to the deepest need of mankind. Even if I can experience the answer for only one minute, that will be enough for me.’ I never want to forget that sentence, because that was my longing at the time and I have since experienced so much more than that.

I came for a second visit in September 1958. The members of the community welcomed me warmly into their circle. We lived very simply: there was practically no heating and food was scarce. For breakfast we had a tiny piece of cheese and some bread to divide among ourselves. The man responsible for buying food even asked me if I could lend them some money. I gave him everything I had.

Joe Hine

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:00 am

Guest

I came to love those people and I wanted to stay longer. But I was very outspoken about what I felt. I respected that they were Christians and had their beliefs - I could never have made light of other people’s beliefs - but I wondered why we couldn’t live for justice without having a faith in God. I also felt that it would be mockery or hypocrisy if I joined in any religious activity. Whenever they sang a song with religious meaning, I simply remained quiet. This was not always easy for me, because they sang often - especially as Christmas approached - but I was principled. I also refused to take part in the Christmas play for the same reason. But if a song was non-religious, I joined in with gusto. I am actually surprised that they let me stay. We were a small group with many guests and it must have taxed everyone’s patience that I was constantly questioning the religious basis of the community.

And indeed, shortly after New Year, someone came to me and said, ‘Josef, why do you have to argue so much about the different aspects of our community life, ideology, and belief? Are you looking for brotherhood? If so, come and live it out with us. Don’t just talk about it.’ They wanted me to take an active part instead of just standing by as an observer and critic. This made sense to me and I said I would do it. I could experiment by living it out myself. But what I then experienced came as quite a shock.

Joe Hine

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

This was the complete opposite of the caricature of Christianity that I had seen in the pogroms of Poland, the frenzied masses in Rome, the self-satisfied Christians in so many places who seek only their own salvation and who persecuted my people. It was not a sweet, personal religious experience; I had found the answer to the deep, burning need of mankind - the key to the true peace and justice that all people long for. Until that moment, my inexorable logic had excluded any such spiritual dimension. But from that point on, I have had no doubt. I found what I had been seeking. This is the only answer to mankind’s need, to open themselves to the spirit of God who wants to gather a people to live out his will.

I love the game of chess. In chess, it often takes a long time before you make a move. You look at all the possibilities and then you decide on your move. It looks completely logical since everything is all thought through. But sometimes your opponent makes a move that you hadn’t thought of at all; it goes against your whole logic. You realize that your whole approach was built on a false premise. You have to start from scratch, as if it were a completely new game.

‘I long to once experience in my life, in my heart, the answer to the deepest need of mankind. Even if I can experience the answer for only one minute, that will be enough for me.’ Yes, I have experienced that it is possible for men, women, and children, for Jews, Arabs, Germans, Africans, Americans, and Asians to live together in peace and brotherhood. It is possible to overcome the forces of evil that tear people apart. I still want to give my life for this longing and for its fulfilment.

Joe Hine

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 7:00 am

Guest

Postscript

“O people of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord.” (Is. 2:5) Let us follow the divine light with all our strength, in trembling, but resolutely. Perhaps in so doing we will be an example, a sign for others, an escape from darkness towards the light. Let us reject the empty boasting to ourselves and others of being the chosen people. Let us show our chosenness through the deeds of daily life, putting into practice what our heavenly Father has called us to be; an example and a splendour to all the nations, to all people.
Natan Hofshi

As a member of the Bruderhof, Josef threw himself into this new life, to put into practice the answers that he found. But news of the continuing conflict in Israel continued to trouble him, along with the painful memories of his own role in the earlier years of that conflict. He could still see in his mind’s eye the faces of the people of Lod whom his unit drove from their homes, and further back his own memories of being driven from his home in Poland.

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