[Xmca-l] Re: About Vygotsky and Bar-Kokhba [Бар-Кохба (בר כוכבא‎)]. Bella or somebody can instruct me?

[Bella Kotik-Friedgut]

Achiles shalom
Sorry for a delay, but we were on the way from 3rd Estoril Vygotsky
conference. These conferences (every 2 years) became traditional and the
dates of the N4 in June 2016 are already fixed- 12-14/06. I wonder what
could be a good reason (motivation, incentive) for  xmca members to take
part in 4th EVC of the next time? Estoril is a beautiful resort on the
Athlantic shore and Quintino Aires the organizer is a very generous host.
As about Bar Kochba I asked my husband Ted Friedgut, who knows Jewish
history better to answer you and here what he say:

 Bar Kochba has been a controversial character since the time of his life
and remains so to this day.  By no means all the Rabbis of his time
regarded him as a Messianic figure, but the great authority of Rabbi Akiva
who supported Bar Kochba whole heartedly was sufficient to outweigh his
detractors.  Even as recently as 1982, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a Hebrew
University professor of International Relations wrote a book with the title
“The Bar Kochba Syndrome: Fantasy and Realism in International Relations”
pointing to the disastrous outcome of the Bar Kochba revolt against
Rome—580,000 war dead and uncounted thousands more who perished of disease
and famine during the three year war; fifty towns and 597 villages razed to
the ground by the vengeful Roman armies, a total destruction of Jewish
public and religious life in Palestine.  All this is attributed to the
unrealistic fanaticism that drove Bar Kochba’s war against the Roman Empire.

            In 1882, Avraham Goldfaden wrote an operetta on the life and
deeds of Bar Kochba, seeking to encourage jewish morale and resistance to
the pogrom wave that swept Russia following the assassination of Alexander
II.  It is most likely this presentation of Bar Kochba that Lev Vygotsky
saw and about which he wrote in his role as theater critic for the Gomel’
local newspaper in April 1923.  His praise of Bar Kochba as a revolutionary
representative of the younger generation in defiance of the older, more
cautious religious-political establishment can certainly be viewed as
autobiographical, for Vygotsky too, was acting against the older Jewish
establishment in adopting Marxist socialism as the best way to build a new,
universal and just society.

Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut


On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Achilles Delari Junior <achilles@delari.net
> wrote:

> Please, dear professors,
>
>
> In front Vygotsky's publications about poetry, theatre and arts in
> general, from Gomel's 1921/1922 period, I turn motivated to know something
> about the relation of Vygotsky as man (tchelovek), citizen and young
> thinker, with different kinds of insurgent social process, struggling for
> freedom. For instance there are, at least, 3 different situations of this
> kind touched by him in those newspaper publications : (1) Bar-Kohba; (2)
> The Dekabrists; and (3) October Revolution. But what more deeply touch me
> is just the first one, because I really do not know nothing about, and
> seems to be very very important in Jewish long history for Land and
> Freedom. And, believe me or not, this is important for many people here in
> my country, not necessarily Jews. If you pleased, could you help me to find
> more reliable sources about the historical process in which was envolved
> Bar-Kohba? If the answer would be excessively obvious - sorry for spend
> your time with me. I will search better by myself. Thank you, a lot.
>
>
> Achilles, from Brazil.
>
>