On a summer Sabbath in 1913, in the Polish town of Brisk (otherwise known as Brest-Litovsk, in Yiddish, as Brisk) a son was born to Ze’ev Dov and Chasia Begin. It was four days after Tisha B’Av, the annual fast day mourning the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and the exiles that followed them, on the Sabbath known as Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Comfort.
So the Begins named their son Menachem, “The Comforter.” 1
Though those words are the opening of my biography of Begin, today we hear from the author of another Begin biography, Professor Avi Shilon. Shilon’s Menachem Begin: A Life, is a superb biography, and I heartily recommend it.
OUR PREVIOUS CONVERSATION WITH AVI SHILON
Avi Shilon was our guest on Israel from the Inside not long ago when he spoke about how both sides of our conflict ironically imitate each other in how they conduct war:
Israel and the Palestinians are locked in vicious war. So why are they consciously imitating each other in how they conduct the conflict?
Professor Avi Shilon, a widely respected Israeli academic, author and journalist, made headlines in New York during the campus uprisings at Columbia, when his class was interrupted by Columbia students protesting “Israel’s genocide.”
Today, Avi Shilon joins us to discuss Menachem Begin. Since we’re not going to post on Erev Tisha B’av or Tisha B’av, this is our final Wednesday before Begin’s Hebrew birth date, so we’re posting Avi’s conversation today.
Avi Shilon is a lecturer at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. His course, History of Modern Israel, is regularly exceptionally well received.
He has been the Visiting Scholar and Israel Institute Fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University, as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and at Tsinghua University, China.
He is the author of The Decline of the Left-Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (2020), Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016), and Menachem Begin: A Life (2012). His articles have appeared in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal, and he is a contributor to Yedioth Ahronoth (YNet).
Dr. Shilon earned his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, in 2015.
The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.
For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.
For Hebrew speakers, a panel about an article I just wrote for HaShiloach, on the intellectual roots of American Jewish anti-Zionism. Panel includes Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, Dr. Masua Sagiv (previously on our podcast) and Dr. Sagi Barmak, Editor in Chief of HaShiloach. July 21 at 630 pm in Jerusalem.
For tickets: https://hashiloach.org.il/american-jewry/
Many Israelis could not travel for months this past year, because the skies were closed, or if they were open because it was not clear that they would stay open so it felt risky to leave, or because we didn’t wish to leave our children and grandchildren when war could break out again.
So with things quiet(er) for the moment, many Israelis are traveling more than usual this summer.
We, too, will be away the weeks of July 5th and July 12th. Podcasts will continue on schedule, as always, for our paid subscribers. But other posts will come at a slower rate during that period.
