The Will to Live On: This Is Our Heritage

by Herman Wouk

Overview

Herman Wouk has ranged in his novels from the mighty narrative of The Caine Mutiny and the warm, intimate humor of Marjorie Morningstar to the global panorama of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. All these powers merge in this major new work of nonfiction, The Will to Live On, an illuminating account of the worldwide revolution that has been sweeping over Jewry, set against a swiftly reviewed background of history, tradition, and sacred literature.

Forty years ago, in his modern classic This Is My God, Herman Wouk stated the case for his religious beliefs and conduct. His aim in that work and in The Will to Live On has been to break through the crust of prejudice, to reawaken clearheaded thought about the magnificent Jewish patrimony, and to convey a message of hope for Jewish survival.

Although the Torah and the Talmud are timeless, the twentieth century has brought earthquake shocks to the Jews: the apocalyptic experience of the Holocaust, the reborn Jewish state, the precarious American diaspora, and deepening religious schisms. After a lifetime of study, Herman Wouk examines the changes affecting the Jewish world, especially the troubled wonder of Israel, and the remarkable, though dwindling, American Jewry. The book is peppered with wonderful stories of the author's encounters with such luminaries as Ben Gurion, Isidor Rabi, Yitzhak Rabin, Saul Bellow, and Richard Feynan.

Learned in general culture, warmly tolerant of other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own faith with a passion that gives the book its fire and does so in the clear, engaging style that--as in all Wouk's fiction--makes the reader want to know what the next page will bring.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062036926
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	324
Sales rank:	1,031,204
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Herman Wouk began his career as a gag writer for radio comedians in New York City in 1934. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for the classic The Caine Mutiny. Other bestsellers include Marjorie Morningstar, The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, The Hope, and The Glory. He lives in California and Georgetown.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Rebbe and the Historian

In Palm Springs where I live nowadays, I go to a Hasidic synagogue. I am not at all a Hasid, but it is a reasonably short Sabbath walk. Later in my book I writea lot about this mystic pietist movement, which arose in eastern Europe around 1700, and still flourishes worldwide. Our likable young American-born rabbi--lean, tall, long brown beard--settled here years ago. In this desert town of golfing and sun his intensive Orthodoxy has proven a hard sell, and his family is large and growing, so he perforce doubles as a prison chaplain. Now and then after a taxing week, he asks me to give the Sabbath sermon. I try to fill in with a few plain words about the week's Torah portion, and that once led to a bizarre incident which can serve as a topic sentence for this book.

In the summer, the little congregation can shrivel below the ten men needed for a minyan, a prayer quorum, but come winter the place is packed with black-clad fur-hatted Hasidim of varied allegiance, known like their Rebbes by the ghost names of their destroyed shtetls--"little towns"--Lubavitchers, Satmarers, Belzers, Gerers, Bobovers, and so on. One Rebbe, who comes himself with his followers to warm up, is the Munkatcher, a grizzled imposing personage in his Shabbat garb of white stockings, dark knee breeches, and black or gold-embroidered long coat. As I was holding forth one Shabbat on a verse in Exodus, the Munkatcher Rebbe suddenly rose to his feet and stalked out into, the sunshine, considerably disconcerting me. I had been citing a comment, by Ibn Ezra, the twelfth-century exegete who strongly influenced Spinoza, and had I madereference to Spinoza I might have understood the Munkatcher's walkout. But I had not, and Ibn Ezra is a classic authority accepted by all.

The comment I was quoting was on the laws of the Hebrew bondman, the eved ivri. This, passage in Exodus precedes the law on murder. Ibn Ezra observes that the sequence is proper, because freedom is more to be prized than life itself. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, once said something like that to me, and I was mentioning this when the MunkatcherRebbe, upon hearing the name "Ben-Gurion," got up and left the synagogue.

There is more to the story, but let me first explain what it was that Ben-Gurion said.

"What took you so long?" Ben-Gurion asked me when we first met, during the intermission of a performance in Hebrew of my Caine Mutiny Court Martial, at the Habimah Theatre in Tel Aviv. It was a gala evening, laid on in honor of the playwright, a newcomer to Israel, so even the informal Israelis were somewhat dressed up; but the squat paunchy Zionist leader, instantly recognizable by the floating wings of white hair on his tanned balding head, wore a khaki open-neck shirt and pants. My wife and I had been out at sea with the fledgling Jewish navy, had docked late in Haifa, and had been rocketed to Tel Aviv in a military car, barely, in time for the second act. So his inquiry might have been a gentle twitting about that, but it was not what he meant, and I understood him.

"I'm not here yet," I replied, adopting his allusive style.

He grinned and invited Sarah and me to his home in the Negev desert. Next day we came to the Sde Boker (Fields of Morning) kibbutz in a command car escorted by a jeep with a mounted machine gun, for back in 1955 the raw little country was being bloodily harassed in broad daylight byfedayeen, terrorists from Egypt and Gaza. Ben-Gurion was out of office and working on his memoirs, so he discoursed in long Churchillian style on history, politics, philosophy, and literature until the sun was low. His wife Paula, seeing that he was enjoying himself, invited us to stay for dinner.

"No, no, they're kosher," said Ben-Gurion.

"So I'll make them hard-boiled eggs and salad. "

"Paula, they have to get back to Tel Aviv before dark."

When we were leaving he came out with his straight Zionist line, no more hints. "You must return here to live," he said. "This is the only place for Jews like you. Here you will be free."

"Free?" I ventured to reply. "Free? With enemy armies ringing you, with their leaders publicly threatening to wipe out ‘the Zionist entity,' "With your roads impassable after sundown-free?"

"I did not say safe," the old man retorted, "I said free.

That was how I happened, nearly forty years later, to mention him and outrage the Munkatcher Rebbe.

Table of Contents

	Prologue	1
Part I	Searching the Wreckage
1	The Rebbe and the Historian	13
2	Running on Empty	31
3	The First Destruction	49
4	The Second Destruction	64
5	The Third Destruction: I	80
6	The Third Destruction: II	104
7	Retrospect	121
Part II	The Heritage, or The Power of a Dream
8	Zaideh and the Humanist	127
9	The Sacred Story	147
10	The Fathers	168
11	The Law	184
12	Nakh: The Prophets and the Writings	200
13	The Talmud and I	216
14	Kabbalah	237
15	Yiddish and Yiddishkeit	262
16	Ivrit and Zionism	285
17	Yossi	310
Part III	The Jewish Resurgence
18	The Miracle	319
19	America: The Whispering Ember	341
20	The Breath of the Children	359
	Afterword	379
	Notes	385
	Glossary	420
	Biographical Names	430
	Acknowledgments	439

Editorial Reviews

?Herman Wouk's optimistic and eloquent work leaves one with a feeling of hope for the future, and the belief that this Pulitzer Prize-winning author is still a master of the written word.? -- "The Jerusalem Post?A lively blend of personal reflections, thumbnail history, and anecdotes?a heritage worth cherishing.? -- "Los Angeles Times?Mr. Wouk's witty and erudite book is as much memoir as it is homiletic.? -- "The Washington Times"This fine volume deserves to become a classic alongside its predecessor ["The Is My God]."-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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