1THE lone voice of the cantor is often more haunting than the chorus. So it is with Ari Shavit in this spell binding book. Rather than set out Israel's storyin a densely scored chronicle, he presents it in solos. The resulting song cycle in 17 episodic chapters leaps through time and space, from the arrival in Palestine in 1897 of Mr Shavit's great-grandfather, a Victorian gentleman from London, to the hedonistic bustle of Tel Aviv's water front today.
领唱者的独音常常比合唱的声音更能令人魂牵梦绕。这也是阿里·沙维特在这本引人入胜的作品中带给人们的那种感觉。他在讲述以色列的故事时，并没有按照时间的顺序，将大量事件堆砌在一起，而是使用了“独唱”这种形式，将
17
个可以独立成章的故事串联成一首赞美诗，回荡时空之中——从沙维特的曾祖父（一位来自伦敦的维多利亚时代的绅士）于
1897
年来到巴勒斯坦开始，直至当今喧嚣的特拉维夫海滩。
2Mr Shavit subtly builds his stories with a mix of individual portraits,historical detail and personal memoir. He tells of Jascha Heifetz playing his violin in 1926 to some early kibbutzniks in Ein Harod. He describes the citrus growers in the 1930s whose sweet Jaffa oranges found their way to Buckingham Palace. He writes about the tough Jewish pioneers who took up arms to protect themselves and later drove out their Arab neighbours; and the Zionists whoassembled Israel's nuclear arsenal in the Negev desert. He recalls the guileand bravado that went into building an early settlement in a deserted Jordanian military base.
沙维特用参杂着个人肖像、历史细节以及个人回忆的方式精心地构建了他的故事。他讲述了亚莎·海菲兹于
1926
年在
Ein Harod
为早期基布兹社员拉小提琴的故事；他描述了在上世纪
30
年代设法让雅法蜜桔进入白金汉宫的柑橘种植者；他写到了坚强不屈的以色列建国先驱和锡安主义者，叙述了他们拿起武器保卫自己，而后又将阿拉伯邻居赶走，并且最终在内盖夫沙漠中建起核武库的故事；他追忆了人们在一个废弃的约旦军事基地上建立早期定居点时的多疑和冒险。
3The music of this book is laced with mournful notes. There are stories of damaged Jews who fled a pitiless Europe yet never emerged from the shadow of the Holocaust. Then there are the Sephardic Jews who came from north Africa andthe Middle East only to learn that they were second-class citizens next to the Ashkenazi Europeans, who came first. And there are the put-upon Israeli Arabs who discern ruins and loss where their Jewish compatriots see only a desert that blooms.
沙维特用一段段伤感的曲调组成了整部书的旋律。这其中既有欧洲犹太人的故事——当时，他们虽然已经逃离了那个毫无怜悯之心的大陆，却已经受到了深深的伤害，再也没能从大屠杀的阴影中走出来；也有塞法迪犹太人的故事——当他们从北非和中东在来到这里后才发现，阿什肯纳兹犹太人已经先于他们抵达这块土地，他们只能做这个国家中的二等公民；还有那些被人利用的以色列阿拉伯人的故事——他们分辨出了废墟，却迷失在只见证了犹太人同胞繁荣的沙漠中。
4As Israel hurtles onwards through the 21st century, Mr Shavit finds Jewsburning up their weekends partying in an old Tel Aviv cinema. For all theirvibrancy, today's young Israelis have forgotten the common purpose of thepioneers, he writes. So, too, have the entrepreneurs who have made fortunes building businesses out of ice-cream and electronics. Israel, he writes, hasbecome “disorientated”.
沙维特发现，就在以色列急速向前穿越
21
世纪之时，犹太人却聚在特拉维夫的一家老电影院中虚掷周末。他写道，尽管当今的以色列年轻人富有活力，但他们已经把开国先驱们的共同目标抛在了脑后。不仅如此，就连那些靠冰激凌和电子产品发家的企业也已经把他们的责任忘得一干二净。他说，当今的以色列已经变得“无所适从”。
5Mr Shavit is that rare person who can listen as intensely as he can think.Although he is a columnist for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz, hetranscends tribal politics. Sympathetic but unflinching, he finds things tochastise—and admire—on every side. In a place with too much history and toomuch certainty, a “lonely rock in a stormy ocean”, he manages to reach conclusions without lapsing into narrow judgments, and finds truth without asserting thatit is the only truth.
沙维特是那种既能认真倾听又能独立思考的难得之人。尽管他为之撰写专栏文章的以色列《国土报》是一家左倾的日报，但是他超越了党派政治。他既富有同情心又立场坚定。无论是哪一方，只要被他揪住，他就会穷最猛打；只要得到他的认可，他就会大加赞扬。在这个历史如此丰富的国家，在这个确定性如此之多地方，在这块“汪洋中的孤岛”，他总是设法找到结论，而不是流于狭隘的判断；他总是去发现真理，而不是简单地断言，那就是唯一的真理。
6Inevitably, perhaps, his vision clouds slightly as he draws near to the presentday. Mr Shavit writes too little of the Hasidim and too much of Iran. Partialto nothing more than the odd whisky, his account of young Israelis' uninhibited appetite for drugs and sex comes from the wrong side of the generation gap. Butthese flaws are small. In this divided, fought-over shard of land splintered from the Middle East barely 70 years ago, Mr Shavit's prophetic voice carries lessons that all sides need to hear.
