Et in Zion ego

Et in Arcadia ego is a Latin phrase meaning "Even in Arcadia I exist," with the "I" in question being death personified. Arcadia was an ancient Greek idyll, a pagan Eden home to nymphs and swains. The message of the phrase is that death lurks in paradise too.

"Sadness in Palestine?!" is what Franz Kafka wrote in a letter to Max Brod about early Zionist Yosef Haim Brenner's novel Breakdown and Bereavement. Palestine was an ancient Hebrew idyll, a Biblical Arcadia home to farmers and warriors. The message of the phrase is that sadness lurks in paradise too.

There is sadness and death in any earthly Zion precisely because it is earthly. Some orthodox Jews believe that with the coming of the Messiah, all Jewish corpses outside of Israel will burrow through the earth and be resurrected in the Holy Land. I'll make my aliyah then.

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