The Ugly Duckling

I believe in the ugly duckling.

The eggs have just hatched and the ducklings have clambered out.  All but one, which hatched late, and revealed a very different looking duckling indeed.

"What an ugly duckling! Look at his hawk nose, his curly feathers..."

"He is so strange and odd, we must beat him into shape."

"I hope a cat pounces on you, you disgusting thing!"

Hans Christian Andersen did not tell you the whole story.  If I were to try to complete it, my pen and ink would not suffice.  Andersen did not say that on his way the ugly duckling met chickens that strutted like geese.  Nor did he tell us that on the way he met an insect, whose story was told by Kafka.

"Once I was a man, my name was Gregor Samsa," said the insect to the ugly duckling, "and the changes of Nirenberg transformed me into an insect..."

     The Scriptures teach us of the problem of the ugly duckling.  Rihal put it this way:

The Chaver said: [...in Yishayahu 52-53, the Jews are likened to one who] "has no beauty and no glory," "people hide their faces from him."  In other words: a person whose odd appearance and ugly visage are at the level of filthy things that a high soul avoids gazing upon and hides his face from them, "degraded and repulsive, a man of pains and illness."

The Kuzari said: And how is it possible to see this chapter as referring to the Jewish people?  For it says there, "indeed he carries our illness", while the Jews suffer for their own sins!

The Chaver said: For the Jewish people among the nations are like a heart among the other organs, which has both more illness and more health than all the others.

     The rest of the story of the ugly duckling is well known.  One evening, a flock of beautiful large birds appeared.  The ugly duckling had never seen anything so beautiful.  He discovered that he was in fact a swan.  The ugly duckling is the Jewish people.  His fate is exile.  Zionism was the realization that he is not a duck but a swan. 

My awareness that I am a swan, is Zionism.

Translated by Gila Weinberg