REUVEN

by Elliot Ratzman

Israel, 1998.

Reuven opened his door before I knocked. He was, to me, a tall man, statuesque, broad-shouldered and fit, especially for someone in his late sixties. His thick black beatnik glasses on a furrowed brow and salt and pepper buzz cut echoed the fashion when he first left America. He smiled briefly then it disappeared into a half-grimace of serious talk.

Months before, Reuven was referred to me by an anarchist anti-Zionist professor at Stanford. The professor, after learning of my political affiliations, surmised that Reuven would be a suitable contact. Rueven had been a Communist activist in his native Detroit, and in the late 1940s no less! In Israel, he had been an administrator at the Overseas School and was remembered fondly. Iris, our graduate administrator looked up, delighted, when I mentioned his name – “I love that man” she said in her flawless accentless English. “We disagreed politically, of course” Iris was Mizrachi and was no- nonsense in her demeanor, hardly utopian leftist material “but he is an amazing person. Give him my best!” After acquiring his email address, sending him Iris’ greetings, and arranging a time, I traveled by endless bus ride to his Jerusalem neighborhood Kiryat Yovel near Har Herzl.

Showing me into his tidy apartment which he shared with his wife, he sat me down while I spied the overflowing shelves of books, leftist journals and workers’ newspapers. After he returned with a cup of tea, he spoke to me in rapid-fire Hebrew, forgetting I was only in level “Aleph”, but the passion of his words was strangely soothing, like the unknown meaning of prayer in another language. Realizing his mistake, he apologized, switched to English and chastised me for not knowing more Hebrew, then smiled.

He described his immersion program on a kibbutz north of Jerusalem nearly fifty years before, “I was learning a hundred Hebrew words a night, with urgency. After all, I was here to build the revolution and needed to learn the language as soon as possible.” That passion was channeled over the next four decades into a series of radical projects: a Trotskyite group, a solidarity effort with professors at the besieged Palestinian Bir Zeit University, a stint in jail after meeting with PLO representatives in Romania in the early 1990s. After his retirement as Vice-Provost, he had written a brief history of the Israeli peace movement.

As with so many leftists I have worked with, Reuven was obsessed with the Correct Description of the current political moment. It is incumbent to describe the world with the Right Words, lest one’s analysis betrays the Truth and thus, the Revolution. We talked politics and the possibilities of consciousness-raising and organizing, somehow, the American overseas students. His hands punctuated his talk with karate chops to the table. His intensity was not something to get in the way of; I found myself wanting him to find me worthy. Where would I fall in his grand scheme of Marxist analysis?

“There’s an up and coming Arab intellectual that you should take note of. He has a PhD in philosophy, a Marxist, and he’s very smart. Asmi Bishara…” He mentioned an article in Monthly Review, stopped and asked if I knew the journal.

“Oh, you mean the journal edited by, oh, what’s their names Sweezy and Magdoff?” It was an obscure publication of the graying independent Marxist left, most famous for having published an article by Albert Einstein - “Why Socialism?” - in its inaugural issue.

“Well Mr. Ratzman, you do know something!”

A few months later, Reuven joined us for lunch at Hebrew University. As usual, we talked big plans, few of which were pursued or implemented. We sat outside of one of the university cafeterias overlooking the Old City with an almost aerial view of the Dome of the Rock, and talked politics. A number of crows hopped by, picking at the overflowing trash containers, interrupting us with their loud cawing. Abruptly, Reuven cawed back. Loudly. He raised his hands as if to pounce shooing them away, a sight bringing smiles to the jaded Israeli students around us. “Beat ‘em at their own game,” he counseled.