Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel “Indecent Proposal," today a classic for literature and film. His “Days of the Bitter End" is cited as the greatest work about the 1960s, comparable to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. His latest book, “Writings," offers a collection of his varied and widely popular columns. From John W. Cassel: “Jack Engelhard is a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all." Website: JackEngelhard.com
“Remember what he did to you along the way."
Amalek. The Torah goes on to say that we must never forget…at the same time, blot him out.
Wish I could go on with this, but I lack the strength. Am all written out. Didn’t I cover this once, even twice before?
We were better then. We had the moxie. Did I make a difference? I know this. I warned against Sharon.
Oct 7, 2023 the chickens came home to roost.
A date which will live in infamy.
The trick about writing is to start with a few words and wait for it to catch fire, and before you know it, you have written War and Peace.
Or Indecent Proposal
Or The Days of the Bitter End
Best Sellers which I wrote when the writing was easy. Yesterday when I was young.
You do not die when you have taken your last breath. You die when you have quit dreaming.
Bummed-out, stressed-out, burned-out, F. Scott Fitzgerald had it as his Crack-Up.
Bukowski had it as being Frozen, a frozen man, a frozen writer.
So this year’s Nobel Prize for Peace goes to an antisemite.
As is to be expected…in this Age of Amalek.
.
Some lady in Canada just won the Nobel for Literature. Is she an antisemite? I mean, is that what it takes to qualify? Is this a requirement?
I will have to look her up. Chances are…99 percent…that she is a leftist, and chants with them for Free Palestine.
So it goes in the Age of Amalek.
I do believe the day will come when I shall win the Nobel for Literature…that will happen in the Age of Moshiach.
Not funny. I am serious. My books qualify. Attention must be paid.
Item in the news…a movie is coming out titled “November 1963," all about the JFK assassination…and that is MY territory.
I am the spokesman, the chronicler of the 1960s…the eye witness.
Must get the word out on The Days of the Bitter End. Like this…The Days of the Bitter End…Read it…Savor it…The 1960s…JFK and the years of living dangerously.
Room for improvement on THAT. Will do until someone comes up with something better. Copy that sells. Copy that SINGS.
If only I had strength to write one more book, for which I already have the title…The Madness of Hemingway.
One true sentence. He could not find it, and that is what shattered him, to the end of his days.
Too bad, because here it is…Here O Israel The Lord is our God the Lord is One
Hemingway’s macho admiration of bullfighters and bullfighting is where he loses me. That is cruelty to animals, man.
The bull wants no part of this sport. He has to be poked to make him angry.
Isaak Babel was among the first upon the notion that leaving out is better than leaving in, and that short sentences and simple words are the road to the power of less.
Less is more, and this from Babel, “No steel can pierce the human heart so chillingly as a period at the right moment."
The power of less, Torah, Talmud, Psalms, Koheles, Rashi.
My favorite writers? James M Cain, Tolstoy, Wouk, Salinger, Dostoyefsky, James Jones, Bukowski, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Michel de Montaigne, Kafka….
My favorite book, Deuteronomy…like this… "It shall be that when Hashem, your God, brings you to the Land, that Hashem swore to your forefathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you…great and good cities that you did not build, houses filled with every good thing, that you did not fill, hewn-out cisterns that you did not hew, orchards and olive trees that you did not plant…and you shall eat and be satisfied."
No pushover was he, Moses. Precisely why God chose him…as we remember the part where God was so fed up with us there in the wilderness.
We qvetched about everything, as we still do today, the food, the heat…no air conditioning on our way to the Promised Land.
God threatened to destroy us all…except Moses. Of Moses He was going to start a new nation. Was Moses thrilled?
Here is where Moses emerges as our leader and as God’s beloved. Says Moses, if you destroy them, destroy me too….and God smiled. I picked the right Man.
Was Eisenhower the right man, to be Supreme Allied Commander for the D-Day Invasion?
He was picked over hundreds seemingly more qualified. But George Marshall was his choice above all the rest.
There is no accounting for luck and charm. Even now, in the Age of Amalek.
Story goes that someone was recommended to serve as a commander for Lincoln’s army. “But tell me this," said Lincoln. “Is he lucky."
Eisenhower was lucky. Are you as stunned as I am to learn that Ike never served in combat? He rose to the top, one step at a time, by means of luck and charm.
Arthur Miller makes a big deal about being, "well-liked." For a salesman (as in “Death of a Salesman,"), the man has got to sell himself “with a smile and a shine."
But overall, he’s got to be well-liked.
He also has to be lucky…that’s what separates the winners from the losers.
Ike was a winner through charm and luck. Remember, he was no hero in the field of battle. He was never in the fight. Never shot, never got shot.
Yet he orchestrated D-Day. Great warriors like Patton bowed to him.
When Truman faced the moment of truth, whether or not to recognize the Jewish State, yes or no hung in the balance.
Truman’s business partner, the Jewish Eddie Jacobson made the difference when he urged Truman to do the right thing. He did.
Thus, the United States became the first country to recognize Israel’s independence.
A time to dance and rejoice.
Other factors too, but Eddie Jacobson was the right man at the right moment. Who knows about this?
Which brings us to King David…for another time.
Someday I will tell the story of what it was like when I was one of the boys on the bus. That is what journalists were called when they travelled together to cover a story.
I should write a book about this, to get it out of my system.
Mark Twain did, writing “The Innocents Abroad," about setting out to the Middle East for a taste of the Bible, the Holy Land.
Twain was disappointed. He found no holiness. Only centuries of rubble and neglect Too bad he wasn’t around to watch Israel bring it back to life.
Save something for tomorrow.