Shulamith Hareven Quotes

The charismatic leader says, "I know what is best for the people" (or "we know what is best for the people") and reaps applause. The authoritative teacher says, "There is a book; in it is written what is best for the people; you will follow me and go by that book, even against your will, so that things will be best for the people." The role model says, "Do as I do, because I have the knowledge and personal experience to know what is best for the people." But the facilitator says, "I have come to the conclusion that this is what is best for the people; let's sit down and discuss it, and I will try to convince you." Since this leader says "come let's sit down" and not "run after me," he has no chance of garnering rhythmic applause in the town square. It is difficult to ask people to sit down and think a minute. It is thought to be practically unleaderly. As if a leader, like a gym instructor, must always make people run...The facilitator demands that we be independent, think autonomously, be critical, have an open mind. In other words, he demands that we be not subjects in a more or less enlightened regime, but citizens; this is sometimes a painful process, because knowing the difference between good and evil also means expulsion from the Eden of childhood. But if we do not leave this Garden of Eden, we will never be able to mend or change anything about our reality

I have always felt that if the feminist movement had done its job well, it would not have tried to force women into large, hierarchical frameworks that do not suit them; rather, it would have done its utmost to change society from a largely vertical construct, with authority descending from the top down, as it is today, to a horizontal construct, with autonomous networks and cooperating groups.

In charismatic relationships there is no responsibility, only guilt; in more developed relationships, responsibility is present. With charisma there is no "other"; everyone is part of one familial porridge, a publis pabulum. Anyone outside of it is an enemy.

Let us recall the precise role myth plays in society: it inhibits change. Perhaps that is its raison d'être.

Wherever a great promise is not and cannot be fulfilled, the resultant empty space is filled in by fantasy. Such is the case with leaders and followers, with parents and children, and between spouses; who knows better than psychologists or writers how difficult it is, then, to confront that fantasy with reality.

An extreme always appears more pure than a compromise.

The fall of the leader is a terrible disappointment, because a charismatic leader's public is always consumed with longing for purity, faith, soul, absolute justice, the whole truth-and it thinks its leader is delivering or has promised to deliver all these things. Charisma is at base a promise never fulfilled.

The first things that get lost in charismatic leadership are facts.

The greatest leaders the world has known were never charismatic or dependent on their public's falling in love with them.

Charisma is catastrophic. It is a relationship-a sick one, and to a great extent symbiotic-between a man who is very, very much in need of applause and constant reinforcement, and a public that seeks a hero to whom it may attribute all sorts of mythological virtues. Once it has found such a hero, this public disclaims all responsibility, as long as the leader endlessly excites and entertains it. A charismatic leader forges an unholy alliance with his public; he becomes a kind of national drug pusher, a provider of constant thrills in return for the vocal adoration he craves. He cannot manage without his public, and his public cannot manage without him: there is a kind of unchecked, mutual, constant high. A leader of this type does not have a normal public; he has groupies. It is difficult to understand what this kind of relationship has to do with leadership, since a leader's role is to define real problems and solve them. Throughout history charismatic types have led people to disaster. Once they have vanished-and they vanish in the blink of an eye-a mere decade or fifteen years later, no one can understand wherein lay their power. In retrospect they usually look ridiculous, their speech and movements laughable, like those of bad actors. There is nothing less comprehensible than the frenzied excitation of yesterday.

These two societies do not need any more probing of their pasts; they do not need to be shown what "really" happened, nor do they need a painstaking examination of protocols and documents. They need only one thing: healing. Anyone who does not bring them succor, or balm, who does not help them bind their wounds and find common ground, would do best to keep his silence.

Statistics are often the last refuge of the antihumanist.

The best encounter is not between Jews and Jews, or between Arabs and Arabs. The best encounter-and such things have happened-is between Jews and Arabs who know one another personally, intimately, and who can tell each other honestly what their anxieties and fear were, what they and their families felt when things happened as they did. The shock of such encounters is great. People learn things they did not know or had repressed, or that their leaders or teachers did not tell them because they did not dare break the silence-not necessarily because they had evil intentions. A different truth is revealed, and not through documents: documents do not talk; a person talks, a family talks. Then something happens: people who have recognized each others' anguish are people who are capable of making peace. People who know the anguish of one side remain stuck in the past, which becomes less and less relevant as the years pass.

The question remains: aside from a great writer, or a writer-historian of Barbara Tuchman's stature, who can draw an accurate picture of the situation and not enrage those who were there? Who can highlight the distress of both sides, without betraying either one?

More than anything, we must understand that this was not a battle of strength against strength, but of weakness against weakness; throughout the whole Arab-Israeli conflict, each side has felt itself to be far weaker than its opponent, and acted accordingly. We must understand that there was no "Jewish justice," as Golda Meir said in one of her less sterling moments, nor was there "Arab justice," a claim that also has proponents; rather, there were two deep traumas, on which a completely new life, a different world, new hope must be built.