Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

One Last Letter to Good People: Farewell, Amos Kenan

The news of Amos Kenan’s death in Tel Aviv August 4 came as a surprising, almost physical shock. A bohemian artist and journalist from Israel’s founding generation, Kenan has been on my mind a lot in the past few weeks. I met him only a couple of times, probably 40 years ago, when I was a teenager and he came to talk with our Habonim group in New York. He made an enormous impression that’s still vivid.

He’s been on my mind because of something he wrote back then, an article in Yediot Ahronot titled “A Letter to All Good People.” (If you can’t download a PDF, find the html version here.) It described in starkly emotional terms the sense of abandonment, isolation and even loneliness among left-wing Zionists in those months after the Six-Day War when the general left turned against Israel. Kenan described it from the point of view of a habitué of the cafes along the Left Bank in Paris who was suddenly cut off from his social, cultural milieu. Young Jews in America felt it in the sudden hostility coming from the New Left, from the antiwar and civil rights movements that had been our home and reference point throughout our formative decade. Cut off by former friends and comrades, alienated from the values of the conservative establishment that now embraced Israel, a generation raised to identify home with political solidarity found itself homeless.

Kenan’s “Letter” was translated into English and handed out in leaflet form by the tens of thousands on American and Canadian campuses. It became a rallying point for a new Jewish counterculture that was emerging. Kenan’s “Letter” was part of our birthright. Re-reading it, there’s a line or two that sounds dated, but it’s as powerful today as it was then. Maybe more so.

Meeting Kenan was an electrifying experience. For someone raised in a Zionist home, coming of age in the New Left and youth culture of the 1960s, here was someone who had been living that life and those values since the 1940s — in Tel Aviv, noch. It was a revelation. Personally he was charming, witty, a wonderful story-teller. He talked about Sartre, espresso, French wines, about fighting in the War of Independence, about his comrades-in-arms in the pre-state Stern Gang or Lehi (about a third of Lehi was socialist, he said). He confided that as left-wing as he was, most of his best friends were on the right, because “they’re more fun, less serious.” Once he brought along the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish to talk with us. That was a life-changing experience. Kenan himself was a life-changing experience.

I’ve been thinking about Kenan lately because these times so closely resemble those times — the savagery of the Left’s hatred of Israel, the attacks on the Jewish left by the Jewish establishment, the machers’ rightward turn, the horrible sense of isolation. I had heard that Kenan was ill with Alzheimer’s, but I thought it might be possible to go see him one more time. Now I guess that won’t happen.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.