Israeli novel recalls idealistic pioneers

JERUSALEM Israel's best-selling novel, a nostalgic voyage into thegood old days when idealistic pioneers settled the Jewish homeland,has won success here because it offers welcome relief from Mideasttensions.

Meir Shalev's A Russian Romance celebrates the socialist valuesof Russian emigrants who settled pre-state Israel in the early 1900sand followed a simple set of rules: Work was divided equally, thecity was bad and there was no fooling around.

More books on similar topics have surfaced as Israel reachesmiddle age. Historians and writers are re-examining the country'searly roots, said Moshe Lissak, a sociologist at Hebrew University inJerusalem.

Another best seller, Amos Keinan's Waheb in Suphah, describes aman who goes home one day in 1982 and finds himself transported backto the early days of the state. It is 1954, he has a code name andbelongs to an underground political group whose violent activitiesare carried over into the future. The title is derived from anobscure biblical phrase.

"Many of these writers believe the course of Israel's historyhas gone wayward, deviating from the idealistic route mapped out inthe 1920s and 1930s," Lissak said. "Some of these artists are, in away, settling accounts with that earlier period."

In A Russian Romance, the Arab-Israeli conflict is noticeablyabsent and the line between good guys and bad guys is clearly drawn.All the protagonists are idealists - to an extreme degree.

Even the village mule, Zitzer, reads the socialist newspaper ashe drinks an occasional beer. A central committee sets down all therules for the community, even deciding who should marry whom.

Most critics agree, however, that the novel has stayed at thetop of Israel's best-seller list because it is a beautifully written,compelling book.

It tells the story of Tzirkin, Mirkin and Liberson, members ofthe "Work Committee Named After Feiga," a virtuous pioneer woman theyall love - platonically, of course.

The committee decrees that Tzirkin must marry Feiga, and hecomplies, although he secretly longs for a beautiful Ukrainian tarthe left behind in the old country.

Feiga dutifully produces three children, then dies of a brokenheart.

Woven throughout the saga are zany tales that breathe life intohistory while also poking fun at the pioneers.

"The pioneers are more revered in Israel than the AmericanMayflower in the United States. They have been transformed intoalmost demigods," said the 40-year-old Shalev. "On the other hand,people are sick and tired of hearing about all the swamps they driedto reclaim the land.

Even though today's generation resents the pioneers who "didit all," the author said, they long for a simpler time when people"predicted the direction of the wind by the color of the moon anddetermined the amount of nitrogen in the soil just by tasting anonion."

Shalev, a newspaper columnist, drew much of the material for ARussian Romance from his childhood on Nahalal, the first collectivefarm in Israel's Jezreel Valley.

His grandfather believed in few luxuries, hitched his trousersup with rope like one of the characters in the book and never let hisgrandmother buy a couch, Shalev said.

At the end of the novel, Tzirkin's grandson makes a fortune bycharging elderly Jews in Florida who have never set foot in Israel$10,000 to be buried in the pioneers' cemetery.

"The pioneers had the quality of character to sacrifice theirlives for an ideal, something few of us are willing to do today,"Shalev said.