מפא"י ופולמוס 'דור האספרסו'

The summer of 1960 was a brief interval of innocence and grace in public life, bracketed by the capture of Adolf Eichmann and his delivery to Israel on May 23,and the eruption of the Lavon affair in September. For one short moment, it seemed as though the country had finally attained its promised permanent respite,the normality that it had been coveting since the days of Pinsker and Herzl. The multifaceted and elusive profile of Israel’s “espresso generation” is derived,to no small extent, from the nature of the man who coined the term, Arthur Koestler. This article focuses on the way Israel’s cultural reality in the early 1960swas reflected in the Mapai political constellation.The discussion in the Mapai Central Committee on June 30, 1960, began with a lecture by the chair of the party’s committee for youth affairs, Member of Knesset Yizhar Smilansky. On the other side, Ben-Gurion expected the young to continue, perpetually,to shoulder the “tasks of the generation” – heading to the Negev and the Galilee, for example, and assuming all the other roles that would take a cruel toll on their personal comfort. And if the young remained unconvinced, unenthusiastic, and dispassionate, it would be necessary to impassion them and infect them with the same great pathos.