Ari Lashner has left us. There will never take place that meeting in Eretz Yisrael to which I looked forward so greatly. He went away many times before-to distant cities for the movement, to war as a marine, to Europe and to Eretz Yisrael, bringing in thousands on his Hagana ship. But always before, there was his smiling, good-humored greeting again, the pleasurable interludes of gentle conversation, of 'music, of strolling about the city, of drives into the country. With him went a whole period in the youth of those who grew up with him, an inexhaustible source of reminiscence and humor, and a springtime era of the movement.
For he was a central figure, someone on whom we all leaned. A cohesive group that grew up in the movement and had planted firm roots in Eretz Yisrael feels shattered. We feel more alone in a darker world. He went through life so unassumingly, but left such deep impressions on all whom he met. From all parts of the world, diverse individuals have felt impelled to communicate with others who knew him, to express their sense of loss.
The ignorant Arab sniper's bullet that cut short his life at Kfar Blum on March 16th caused far more than a personal loss. For Ari exemplifled the best that the combination of Judaism, America, and the movement produced, and he was destined to contribute in important measure to the Jewish State in the future. Everyone who knew him would agree to this, for just as he was a leader of the most complete modesty and honesty-just because of these qualities-he inspired in others a sincere and warm recognition of his own capabiltes. You would never have guessed from Ari's quiet work-day, unchanged, and unself-conscious manner during his last weeks in America that he was recruiting the crew and arranging the sailing of the first Hagana ship from America, a ship that ran the blockade and then returned to Europe for a second load. His wife and chld had gone to Eretz Yisrael before him. He had not known when or how he would see them again and he wanted to be with them desperately.
He died in war. Ghandi could not have abhorred violence more than Ari Lashner, who hated even the raised voice. He was never heard by anyone to shout in anger, to gossip in malice, or to descend to the vulgar or unseemly in any way. Not that he was a "gentleman," unless "gentleman" is redefined to be what he was. He had strong passions, anger, and impatience. And there was frequent cause for anger and impatience in those years. But he longed for the day of peace when be could realize himself in some way in the Jewish Land. He did not enjoy the conscious role of "organizer" or even of halutz.
If a keynote is to be sought in his pervasive influence, which all who experienced him felt, it is his insistence that the individual search for his own truth and act in consequence. In this connection, he gave full credence to the role of the irrational in life, attaching at least as much weight to his feelings as to his reason, and respecting feeling in others. What he could not tolerate in himself and others was covering up the problem, tempering the feelings, excusing oneself, or seeking a way out by processes of rationalization, by the development of universal theories which solved all problems, yet not your own. But he never drove others. He assumed you were wrestling honestly with your problems as he was with his.
Principles divorced from circumstances and action did not exist for him except as scholastic exercises with which he was -very impatient. Thus he could not consider the fate of the Jewish people without including himself in the solution. For a time, this realistic tendency intervened even in his enjoyment of abstract beauty in painting and poetry (never in music, for which he was too naturally gifted). But in recent years, there was a definite mellowing in him, and under the pressure of very wide experience, tolerant and receptive by nature, the enjoyment of beautiful things in many forms became a welcome release for him.
He loved honesty and simplicity. While he understood and admired a Vronsky and an Anna Karenina, his favorite was Levin. He enjoyed greatly the scene of the i(visit to the uncle" in War and Peace. He felt humble and inferior to the point of discomfort before anyone with special talent, whether in art or in farming, but without the slightest trace of the envy that stems from vanity and leads to pretenses and false emulation. He once told of hearing a musical work on the radio while working on something. The piece went on interminably. He muttered to himself: "What on earth is this endless hodge-podge?" It was announced as the Kreutzer Sonata. The man with a "reputation" as a music lover doesn't tell such stories about himself with detached enjoyment.
Any account of Ari would be incomplete without mentioning his love for America. He knew it well to California. His greatest pleasure was to drive through its countryside. He loved to stop at roadside inns, observe people, walk in cities, visit galleries, parks, concert balls, stores. From the earliest days when, after our Young Poale Zion Alliance meetings, we went driving out on Long Island until dawn, until almost the last full day together, when we drove into New England, I associate him with trips into the green countryside and 1 recall his avid appreciation of it.
He saw the evils of America, too, but he weighed things relatively and he knew the enormous importance of the measure of basic civil liberties enjoyed here. He was a Socialist, but he would take any capitalism over a Socialism that gave a whit less of individual liberty. The very casting of whole societies, of people, and of complex ways of life, into formal molds with neat tags was foreign to his mind.
The 1930's were a difficult test for radical youth. In the rarefied atmosphere of college, Socialists and Communists drove the black and white stereotypes of doctrinaire radicalism to absolute extremes, and it was difficult to perceive at what stage this process actually became a form of reduction ad absurdum. Impossible, actually, without some trustworthy reference point in reality. Ari Lashner's reference point was his emotional Jewishness and Labor Zionism to which he attached significant weight. It was the Frederick B. Robinson era at City College, and every week saw demonstrations, expulsions, and counterdemonstrations. We Labor Zionists participated in all radical activities but as a collateral thing. Ari admired the courage and the intellectual acumen of the radical leaders and even admitted that their panaceas might be right. But they were a little above him. Their solutions for the whole world still left him uncomfortable as an individual.
He saw the Jewish people again singled out for persecution and he felt that concrete' special efforts by Jews themselves were demanded.
He dropped his teacher-training course when it gradually became apparent to him that his future lay with the Jewish people and Eretz Yisrael. Here, another essential characteristic is illustrated. There never were any dramatic announcements or obvious soul struggle. He seemed to be, and thought uneasily himself that he was, just drifting. He felt like a victim of himself. He was unaware of the courage it took to drift with the tide of one's being. He spoke nostalgically about the interesting careers others were following. He was always ready to admit that the paths others were following were right. These have been called his "doubts" and his "conflict." But he spoke about the other things that were nice to do with a certain detachment. The concept of doubt in the sense of debating one's path by purely mental processes cannot rightly be used for him. His life was the result of an evolutionary process. What it was and what had gone into it was flowing irrevocably in a certain direction and be would have thought it absurd that some sudden idea should be able to change it. So he followed the path of the halutz, sometimes looking wistfully back at the green fields of America.
A great deal more will be written by those who worked with him of Ari's influence in the formation and development of Habonim and in the Labor Zionist movement generally. Labor Eretz Yisrael and the ideals of halutziut proudly became the central educational idea of the movement. Camp Kvutza, the expanded hachshara farms, increased aliya, emphasis on Hebrew, all these have come about through the vision, courage, and energy of the small group of which Ari was a central figure. There is a whole generation of young people who remember how Ari led them in song and dance, how he spoke at camps and conferences-vital and human, one of us, but the epitome of us, by virtue of his great truth to himself.
It is futile to try to recreate by words the vital essence of a complicated personality like Ari. It is probably reserved only to those who knew him to feel the true loss. No hero picture, in the conventional sense, no analogy with anyone else, is true. And so for every one of those who are dying in Eretz Yisrael, there are those to whom the loss is a terrible reality. Every one of those good Hebrew names we read is only a symbol of a face smiling to someone, of thoughts, desires, and acts known and beloved somewhere. Ari would not want to be singled out or separated from his comrades. But the Yishuv has always commemorated its dead lovingly. Every soul is precious, as every individual was in life. I am rendering a faint duty inadequately because I knew Ari. It is not possible to believe and, for my part, I do not think of Ari as having died. I merely consider that he has crossed another boundary before us as he did so often before. And he did it as usual-well, nobly, faithfully, working.
Harry Levtow
Furrows, April, 1948