Volume 33, Number 16 · October 23, 1986
The Birth of a Tragedy
By Avishai Margalit
The Tragedy of Zionism
by Bernard Avishai
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 389 pp., $19.95
Conflicts and Contradictions
by Meron Benvenisti
Villard Books, 210 pp., $15.95
In my youth I read a story about an old newspaper proofreader, trained in the classics, who could not stand the trivializing use by young reporters of the sublime word tragedy. Eventually he died in a road accident, and, sure enough, the morning paper announced his death as a tragedy. Bernard Avishai calls his book The Tragedy of Zionism—and immediately one's attention is drawn to the question of fit between title and book. Is it a sloppy or trivial use of the notion of tragedy, or is the story of Zionism indeed a story of a fall, whose fatal inevitability and whose weighty heroes justify it?
Review, 5281 words
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