Smitten by the beautiful but embittered Atalia, Shmuel tries to discover the truth of what happened to the two dead men. Abravanel, it emerges, had a vision of Jews and Arabs living side by side. For advocating this “authentic” Zionism, he was seen as a traitor, excluded from the leadership and died as an outcast. His daughter, true to his legacy, sees Israel as based on injustice.
It is here that the figure of Judas Iscariot becomes central to the story. Shmuel is convinced that Judas was the real founder of Christianity, the most loyal of all the disciples and the only one who really believed that Jesus was the Son of God. His suicide was the result of disillusionment when Jesus died on the cross. The Christian view of Judas becomes enmeshed with the Jewish view of Jesus: both are seen as traitors. For Shmuel “the kiss of Judas, the most famous kiss in history, was surely not a traitor’s kiss.” Shmuel is thus led to consider the nature of betrayal itself. “Anyone willing to change will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are scared to death of change and don’t understand it and loath change,” he says. “Abravanel had a beautiful dream, and because of his dream some people called him a traitor.” His heirs, the Peace Now activists led by Amos Oz, are seen by many Israelis as having betrayed the Zionist cause.
Amos Oz, a veteran of two of Israel’s wars, has long been an advocate of a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders. He is reviled for seeking reconciliation even with Palestinian terrorists. So Judas is, among other things, his fictional apologia pro vita sua, his reply to his accusers. Yet its conclusion is ambiguous: Wald was never persuaded by Abravanel and Shmuel is not necessarily a convert either. Nor are the Palestinians idealised; in so far as they appear, it is as cruel killers.
Oz is no naive peacenik. I recall listening to him once, after a dinner chez George Weidenfeld, defending the Israeli nuclear deterrent against an angry Harold Pinter. Brilliantly translated by Nicholas de Lange in close collaboration with the author, Judas is perhaps his finest work. Whether or not it is his swansong, it should win Amos Oz the ultimate accolade. But by far the most likely reason why he has not won the Nobel Prize already is the fact that he is an Israeli.
It is here that the figure of Judas Iscariot becomes central to the story. Shmuel is convinced that Judas was the real founder of Christianity, the most loyal of all the disciples and the only one who really believed that Jesus was the Son of God. His suicide was the result of disillusionment when Jesus died on the cross. The Christian view of Judas becomes enmeshed with the Jewish view of Jesus: both are seen as traitors. For Shmuel “the kiss of Judas, the most famous kiss in history, was surely not a traitor’s kiss.” Shmuel is thus led to consider the nature of betrayal itself. “Anyone willing to change will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are scared to death of change and don’t understand it and loath change,” he says. “Abravanel had a beautiful dream, and because of his dream some people called him a traitor.” His heirs, the Peace Now activists led by Amos Oz, are seen by many Israelis as having betrayed the Zionist cause.
Amos Oz, a veteran of two of Israel’s wars, has long been an advocate of a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders. He is reviled for seeking reconciliation even with Palestinian terrorists. So Judas is, among other things, his fictional apologia pro vita sua, his reply to his accusers. Yet its conclusion is ambiguous: Wald was never persuaded by Abravanel and Shmuel is not necessarily a convert either. Nor are the Palestinians idealised; in so far as they appear, it is as cruel killers.
Oz is no naive peacenik. I recall listening to him once, after a dinner chez George Weidenfeld, defending the Israeli nuclear deterrent against an angry Harold Pinter. Brilliantly translated by Nicholas de Lange in close collaboration with the author, Judas is perhaps his finest work. Whether or not it is his swansong, it should win Amos Oz the ultimate accolade. But by far the most likely reason why he has not won the Nobel Prize already is the fact that he is an Israeli.
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