Via Dolorosa And Where Shall We Live (Paperback)

As an agnostic and an American I was overcome by the honest critique offered by Hare. Here is someone who has wrestled with the moral and ethical dillemas and subsequently infused them into his work. I excuse his humor, because, sometimes things are so horrible all we can do is laugh, and if we cannot, then it is truly a sad thing. Stones or ideas? When shall we live? So what if you don't like all his answers, at least he's raising the right questions.

I do not expect, nor do I particularily want Hare to moderate a Palestinian/Isreali debate. What I do want is for him to dig out and contextualize the emotional elements that ground this tragic situation. As a Westerner, I understand how this passion can captivate someone from a culture in desperate need of something to live for besides material wealth. Hare accomplished exactly what he set out to do, and we are in his debt for it.

This is not "a book". It has two totally different parts. The first, "Via Dolorosa", Hare calls a "play". It seems to be merely a monologue, a description of the author's short, recent first visit to Israel and Palestine. Rather than presenting a broad picture presenting major challenges and problems in the area, the author relies mainly on his personal experiences in rather extreme, nonrepresentative situations. E.g., in Israel: he devotes space to a difference of opinion of settlers as to whether the sabbath began at 4:15 or at 4:16 PM, and then states that no one could tell him why males are "allowed an extra 18-minute window to go on doing irreligious things.... No one can tell me why". One wonders what are these "irreligious things", but no answer is given. Hare misinforms the reader with another meaningless description: "We cannot sample [a delicious-looking stew] because today they are eating meat and we have been eating dairy. If we were German, we might be able to, because Germans need only three hours to switch from one to another." "Germans" aside, Hare has his eye of the needle trying to slip through an elephant; his facts are the opposite of reality [meat and milk]. His British Jewish neighbours could have corrected this error. Near his conclusion, he states that "an unnamed Israeli military commander" told him that 20,000 Jews were killed "in the cause of setting up the state. 'Not that every death isn't a tragedy...but...20,000 to set up a whole country; that's not so bad, you know. Not bad, for a whole state.'" - If the point of Hare's "play" is to inform, to educate his readers, his subject matter throughout is scanty; often quite peripheral matters are presented, and even these are on occasion mistakenly described. - The second half of the book is his Eric Symes Abbot Memorial Lecture delivered in Westminster Abbey on 9 May 1996. I was much taken by his opening comments that he, "an obvious heathen", was invited to speak in memory of a man who was "marked out...by the power of his Christian faith and example". Hare states lucidly his positions, many in opposition to those of his hosts, such as "Is there anything firm about Christian teaching, which cannot be reasonably countered by someone anxious to swing the myth round to suit their own prejudices?" He explains the title of his lecture as the words of Seneca: "When shall we live, if not now?" - So, 2 stars for "Via Dolorosa", 5 stars for "When Shall we Live?" - and 2 stars overall, the sad "Via Dolorosa" being the determiner of rating.