Ha'aretz has a long chat with Aharon Appelfeld.
"Look, there was an aggressive element in Zionism. It fought against Yiddish and it fought against the Diaspora and it fought against Jewish riches. I understand that this was necessary. For a time, it was necessary. But in the final analysis, we are paying a terrible price for it. We are paying for it in the form of the diminishment of the Jewish soul. I am not an ideologue. I am not a polemicist. I am trying to apprehend the full complexity of the Jewish story. I am trying to understand the modern Jewish soul in all its transformations. I feel close to Yiddishkeit and to Zionism as well; to the communists and to the assimilators, too. Because I saw them there. I saw them all being killed in the same pit. Therefore I feel sympathy for them. And I have this basic understanding that both Agudat Israel and Hashomer Hatza'ir are part of the Jewish fate. Both Kafka and Rosa Luxemburg and Ariel Sharon, too, are different modern responses to the Jewish fate. All are part of the same Jewish story."
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