Abstract
The cultural origins of political speech are usually analyzed over decades or a few centuries. This chapter—through examples of Zionist/Israeli political speech—illustrates how the cradle of a nation’s culture source, the Hebrew Bible (Torah), can still be highly influential after thousands of years, i.e., Deep Culture. The two main elements constituting Judaic culture generally, and Jewish political culture specifically, are: (1) Collective “historical memory”: e.g., weekly reading of the Bible; holidays commemorating persecution, e.g., Hanukkah, Purim, 9th of Av; family Passover Haggadah reading/retelling of the escape from Egyptian slavery. (2) Victimization: “The world is against us,” e.g., Amalek’s attack in the desert; centuries of almost incessant foreign attacks and warfare—later morphing into a defensive “Galut” (Diaspora) mentality. A wide range of quotes over the last 120 years, from leading early Zionist and contemporary Israeli politicians, are presented and analyzed. These political oratory quotations show how Israeli political speech continues to be influenced by the “deep culture” of the Jews’ most revered religio-national source many eons ago.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Of course, this doesn’t deny the very large influence of the diaspora countries/empires where Jews lived over this huge historical span. Nevertheless, Judaism and the Jews in general had great facility (and experience) in adapting certain Gentile norms and behavioral patterns to Jewish culture. Many such examples are well known, e.g., the Passover eve “seder” is basically an adapted Greek Symposium with all the trappings: drinking cups of wine; reclining while eating; the give and take of storytelling and discussion, etc.
- 2.
There are two main bases of culture, as Risager (2006, p. 5) notes: “linguistically formed culture and non-linguistically formed culture.”
- 3.
I have translated into English all the Hebrew texts quoted in this article.
- 4.
Three exceptions will be offered below, but in these cases one can argue that from these Israeli leaders’ standpoint, the Israeli home front was their real target audience: PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N.; President Ezer Weizman’s Bundestag speech; PM Ehud Olmert’s address to the U.S. Congress.
- 5.
Many Israeli politicians intersperse their speech with occasional Arabic words such as inshallah (“God willing”), similar to the absorption of English (British Mandate and contemporary American influence), and also the occasional Russian word (one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union). This could be considered linguistic “cultural influence”, but at this point it is still a very minor phenomenon. Nevertheless, just as foreign words have infiltrated Hebrew through the ages (e.g., from Persian, Aramaic, and especially German-Yiddish), so too one can expect linguistic Arabic influence to increase slowly but gradually in the future, given that Arabs constitute 20% of Israel’s population, and also that a sizable proportion of Israeli Jewish families immigrated from Arab or Moslem countries in the 1940s and 1950s, their mother tongue being Arabic.
- 6.
Socialism was (perhaps heavily) influenced by biblical injunctions against worker exploitation. Indeed, despite his father’s conversion to Christianity, Karl Marx was descended from a long line of major rabbis on both his parents’ side. Moreover, it is hardly a coincidence that so many early and later Socialists were Jewish: Moses Hess, Rosa Luxembourg, Eduard Bernstein, Léon Blum, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Bruno Kreisky, and so on.
- 7.
Here too one can discern distinct Jewish antecedents of both streams of thought: the former a function of the Jewish People’s pacifist ethos due to their political weakness in Diaspora over many centuries; the latter (Zionism), harking back to the biblical period of national independence and sovereignty.
- 8.
This does have one source in the Bible: the sixth century BCE Babylonian exile and later return to the Land of Israel. Centuries later, the Jews wandered from country to country through the long Diaspora era, but other than initiatives by individuals there was no systematic, collective attempt to return to the homeland—until modern Zionism.
- 9.
For instance, Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin turned to the Israeli Army’s Head of Education to write his speech upon receiving an honorary, Hebrew University PhD after the Six-Day War. Rabin gave him explicit instructions to emphasize the moral aspects of the campaign. The speech was then vetted by several of Rabin’s General Headquarters’ staff (Shapira, 2008, p. 115). A somewhat different approach was taken by President Ezer Weizman for his speech at the German Bundestag (the first Israeli official to do so since the Holocaust and Israel’s founding): he asked the highly respected Israeli author Meir Shalev to write the text, sitting with Shalev several times before the speechwriting, with instructions as to the main themes (Shapira, 2008, p. 235).
- 10.
One could argue that in the Israeli case—given existential threats through most of its existence— the “normal” state of affairs is one of perpetual “crisis.” Jewish historical memory (pogroms, expulsions, the Holocaust etc.) reinforces this general feeling. In any case, “crisis” vs. “normality” is not a dichotomy that this study will compare. For an analysis of Israeli political rhetoric in times of crisis, see Tsur (2004).
- 11.
Two holidays remind Jews of what hyper-factionalism can cause: 1- The Fast of Gedaliah, commemorating the assassination by Jews of a Jewish governor in the sixth century BCE; 2- According to Jewish tradition, the Second Temple was destroyed on the Ninth of Av (by the Romans) because mutual hatred among Jews of the various religious sects fatally weakened them internally.
- 12.
Even the title of his book uses biblical terminology: “Seek peace and pursue peace” (Psalms 34:15). His book title is taken from Rabbi Hillel’s dictum in the Talmud, as noted in PM Olmert’s Knesset speech below.
- 13.
This was not monolithic. For Israel’s perceptual and ideological changing relationship to the Holocaust, see: Lustick (2017).
- 14.
Parenthetically, Israel’s level of internal, physical political violence is low compared to verbal violence (Sheleg, 2014), the latter expressed in Knesset debates and the media—an echo of the biblical Prophets who used extremely strong language in criticizing the powers-that-be.
- 15.
Deuteronomy, 30:4–5—“Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it.”
References
Aronoff, M. J. (1989). Israeli visions and divisions: Cultural change and political conflict. Routledge.
Bartov, H. (1978). Dado: 48 years and 20 days (Vols. 1–2). Sifriat Maariv (in Hebrew).
Ben-Gurion, D. (1958). An ideal nation: Goal and means (1954 speech). In Vision and path, volume five (pp. 78–81). Am Oved (in Hebrew).
Freeley, A. J., & Steinberg, D. L. (2009). Argumentation and debate: Critical thinking for reasoned decision making (12th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Gervasi, F. (1979). The life and times of Menachem Begin. G.P. Putnam & Sons.
Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). An introduction to situational leadership. Training and Development Journal, 23, 26–34.
Herzl, T. (1997). The Jewish issue. Vol. 1: 1895–1898. The Zionist Council in Israel (in Hebrew).
Hofstede, G. (1997). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. McGraw-Hill.
Kellerman, B. (1984). Leadership as a political act. In B. Kellerman (Ed.), Leadership: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 63–89). Prentice Hall.
Knesset Record. (1949, December 5–7). https://fs.knesset.gov.il/1/Plenum/1_ptm_250119.pdf (in Hebrew).
Knesset Record. (1953, February 16). https://fs.knesset.gov.il/2/Plenum/2_ptm_250702.pdf (in Hebrew).
Knesset Record. (1969, January 27). https://fs.knesset.gov.il/6/Plenum/6_ptm_252793.pdf (in Hebrew).
Knesset Record (1992, October 26). https://main.knesset.gov.il/Activity/plenum/Pages/SessionItem.aspx?itemID=437236 (in Hebrew).
Krebs, R. R., & Jackson, P. T. (2007). Twisting tongues and twisting arms: The power of political rhetoric. European Journal of International Relations, 13(1), 35–66.
Landau, R. (1988). The rhetoric of parliamentary speeches in Israel. Eked (in Hebrew).
Lustick, I. (2017). The Holocaust in Israeli political culture: Four constructions and their consequences. Contemporary Jewry, 37, 125–170.
Olmert, E. (2007, October 24). Speech text of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. https://www.knesset.gov.il/rabin/heb/speech/olmert2007.htm (in Hebrew).
Pilkington, D. (2013, October 6). Netanyahu quotes scripture 5 times in major UN speech. The way. https://www.theway.co.uk/news/netanyahu-quotes-scripture-5-times-in-major-un-speech.
Pratkanis, A. R., & Aronson, E. (1992). Age of propaganda: The everyday use and abuse of persuasion. W.H. Freeman.
Rabin, Y. (1995). Seek peace: The peace speeches of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Zmora Bitan (in Hebrew).
Risager, K. (2006). Language and culture: Global flows and local complexity. Multilingual Matters.
Risager, K. (2019). Linguaculture. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), Encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0709.pub2.
Seaburg, A. (1972, October 15). Ben‐Gurion looks at the bible. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/15/archives/bengurion-looks-at-the-bible-by-david-bengurion-translated-by.html.
Semyonov, M., & Gorodzeisky, A. (2012). Israel: An immigrant society. In J. Frideres & J. Biles (Eds.), International perspectives: Integration and inclusion (pp. 1–18). McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Shalom, Z. (1995). David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab world, 1949–1956. The Institute for Ben-Gurion Studies (in Hebrew).
Shamir, Y. (1994). Summing up the matter. Idanim, Yediot Ahronot (in Hebrew).
Shapira, A. (1997). Ben-Gurion and the bible: The forging of an historical narrative? Middle Eastern Studies, 33(4), 645–674.
Shapira, A. (2008). We recognize this: 60 selected speeches in Israeli history. Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir (in Hebrew).
Sharett, M. (1978). Personal diary (Vol. 1–8). Maariv (in Hebrew).
Sheleg, Y. (2014). Brother, you are a Nazi: The paradox of violent rhetoric in Israel’s political discourse. In Y. Stern & B. Porat (Eds.), A view of brotherhood (pp. 318–335). Israeli Institute for Democracy (in Hebrew).
Shavit, A. (2001, July 22). Telling it like it is. Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/1.5339857.
Shipler, D. (1981, June 10). Prime Minister Begin defends raid on Iraqi nuclear reactor; pledges to thwart a new ‘Holocaust’. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/10/world/prime-minister-begin-defends-raid-iraqi-nuclear-reactor-pledges-thwart-new.html.
Tsakhor, Z. (1996). Ben-Gurion as myth creator. In D. Ohana & R. S. Westreich (Eds.), Myth and memory (pp. 136–156). Hakibbutz Hameuchad (in Hebrew).
Tsur, N. (2004). The rhetoric of Israeli leaders in stress situations. Hakibbutz Hameuchad (in Hebrew).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lehman-Wilzig, S. (2021). Deep Culture: The Hebrew Bible and Israeli Political Speech. In: Feldman, O. (eds) When Politicians Talk. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3579-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3579-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-3578-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-3579-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)