An original ahead of his time - Amos Kenan

"You [young journalists] are all so boring," says Amnon Dankner. "Everyone is so cautious and tight-assed and dull." In contrast, writer and artist Amos Kenan, who died on Tuesday, "was an original," says Dankner.

"Today there's a great lack of originality in both behavior and personal style, not just in writing," adds Dankner. "There aren't any more people around with style.

"I was lucky to know some of these figures well, and to write about them, and despite the criticism that may be made about them, they were still people with whom it was fascinating to talk, amazing to see and to listen to."

Prof. Zohar Shavit, a personal friend of Kenan and his wife, Nurith Gertz, also mentions Kenan's originality, that he was ahead of his time: "He was interdisciplinary before the concept became a value in Israeli culture. A journalist, playwright, sculptor, painter, songwriter, poet and thinker; he worked in all these areas, and had his own unique signature in each. You see one of his sculptures and identify it as his handiwork immediately. It was the same with his writing."

Shavit speaks of Kenan's contradictions. "He was a complex person," she says. "On the one hand, a true lover of the Land of Israel, whose flora and fauna he knew inside out. It was very special to hike with him, to experience the land and nature with him. In some ways he was a fanatic about the land and the language. Amos was essentially a man of the Greater Land of Israel [a right-wing movement]. On the other hand, he was one of the first who not only thought about but also worked for an agreement for two states for two peoples. He was a unique combination of being a lover of Israel and Greater Israel, while also belonging to what we call the political left."

Uri Avnery, once the editor of the defunct Haolam Hazeh (This World) weekly, describes the political route they shared. "After the Sinai Campaign [of 1956], Amos took part in the Semitic Action group, as a protest against the war. It was the first organization to explicitly propose that a Palestinian state exist side-by-side with the state of Israel. Immediately after the Six-Day War [in 1967], he helped found a movement for an Israeli-Palestinian federation. Later, he was a founder of the Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. This is a struggle that lasted dozens of years, and he was always present at every attempt to create an Israeli-Palestinian alliance."

Part of the Tel Aviv-born Kenan's biography appears, in sharp and clear outline, in the book "Unrepentant: four chapters in the life of Amos Kenan" by his wife, writer and scholar Nurith Gertz (in Hebrew, Am Oved 2008). Gertz depicts Kenan's tortured childhood, the period when he belonged to the prestate underground militia Lehi and his violent struggle for the Israel he so desired. Kenan was a violent, disappointed suitor of Israel.

"Kenan, like other intriguing and passionate characters, was a tragic figure," Dankner says. "He was agitated because his past haunted him, as is shown so well in Gertz's book: his family history and his Lehi past, according to what he said. It weighed on him in many senses. On his general behavior, and perhaps on his ability to create the way he wanted to. He really wanted to be an author, but it didn't turn out as well as he would have liked."

Avnery also talks about Kenan's having missed out. "He was one of the greatest artists in the new Hebrew culture, and it's a pity that his work didn't reach the heights they deserved. I always hoped he would write the great Hebrew novel, but he didn't. Some of the pieces he wrote, first for Haaretz and then for Haolam Hazeh, are permanent cultural assets. I think everyone who lived here at that time will never forget them."

Dankner talks about Kenan as a part of the period of "national resurrection." "He belongs to those people in that generation who had great hopes for the state. They fought and put themselves at risk for it, and the state let them down. It wasn't what they dreamed it would be, and they turned bitter; then most of them became bourgeois. Amos, too, was a little bourgeois, but it took him longer and that may be one secret of his charm."

Shavit speaks of Kenan as avant-garde, as "always a trailblazer."

"He was anti-establishment, hardly received any prizes, and I say that sadly," adds Shavit. "And he paid the price many times over."

According to Dankner, Kenan was one of the most influential journalists of his time. "He was one of the great columnists. There weren't many like him; in fact, there were just him and Dahn Ben-Amotz. They were sharp and amusing and occupied many levels of our lives. They were many-sided people rooted in this place, with the desire to burrow down and wallow in it and become one with it. To some extent they succeeded."

Kenan invented a new journalistic language, "Israeli and authentic," Shavit says. "His writing was lean. He couldn't bear disingenuousness, and mocked fakers and hypocrites. He always said what he thought, and in a very loud voice."

Dov Yudkovsky, former editor-in-chief of the daily Yedioth Aharonoth, tells about calling Kenan during a stay in Paris and asking him to write for the paper. "It was 1958. "De Gaulle had just been elected president, and I asked [Kenan] if he would write for us regularly. He was a brilliant writer with a style all of his own, a thinking person."

Yudkovsky says it wasn't always easy working with Kenan. "Sometimes you had to argue with him, but I loved to work with him because he was one of a kind, with a sharp mind, knowledgeable and filled with culture. There aren't many journalists like him."

"His greatness was satire," says Dankner, "where he was a genuine trailblazer. Especially in his column, 'Uzi & Co.' in Haaretz, a masterpiece. To this day I'm impressed by his accomplishments as a satirist, and by his Hebrew."

"He was an artist of the new Hebrew," Avnery adds. "Kenan was perhaps the first to write in the spoken Hebrew of the sabra. This was also what made his plays so special; they were written in simple, good, correct and absolutely wonderful Hebrew. Maybe this is his main contribution to Hebrew culture, as one of the main figures in a culture that arose before the War of Independence War - a culture which, if you ask me, died in the first 10 years of the state's existence."

There was also Kenan the hedonist, who loved to drink, to cook and eat, the one who wrote the "Book of Delights." Dankner says: "In the 1950s and '60s we were all blind to what this area had to offer from a culinary point of view. I remember when we started to read what Kenan wrote about herbs. People didn't know what sage was, thyme, or rosemary, or about the possibility of raising and using them. Those were the years when fishermen would throw non-kosher shellfish back into the sea. It was a different Israel.

"Kenan redeemed the sensuality of food and architecture, too. He wanted to be local; place was important to him, and also human integration into this place, expressed in local architecture, in food, in plants, in types of earth, everything all together. He wrote a lot about how our neo-Polish architecture spoiled what we should have built here, and wondered why we didn't learn from the Arabs. He valued regionalism highly, in food and building construction. In essence, he was one of the inventors of Israeli Mediterraneanism. He invented our need to be Mediterranean, and not Polish, to throw the carp out of the bathtub and toss red bream or snapper into our frying pans."

Shavit recalls dinners he cooked and wandering Paris with him. "He did not take us to the Paris that everyone knows. He always knew how to make discoveries and legitimize them, but these were not wild or loud or showy, rather just tasty food, a beautiful view or a good exhibit. It was a pleasure to go out with him. He was a hedonist with good taste. "The Book of Delights" said aloud what no one else would, that it was fine to enjoy food and worthwhile to do so.

"His cooking was a veritable feast. I remember his meals to this day."

She says he combined sensuality with enjoyment and great interest. A few years ago, this complex, sharp and passionate man fell ill with Alzheimer's. Shavit says he received a measure of compassion and love that few enjoy. "Nurith took care of him with exceptional courage and strength. She stood the test as few might. He was at home until the end. Her book, too, pays homage to Amos. She has done him a great kindness with her wonderful book."