Like a cold darkness, love stretches me upon its rack.
Your shadow drinks my breath.
My bones remember your touch.
Within me, centuries collapse without you.
Like spilled gold, my sorrow flows.
Your eyes — two abysses above my soil.
My heart bears the shackles of your silence.
My skin is a book of your wounds.
I have written you in my own blood.
I have carried you through my own ashes.
Into your voice, I placed my final peace.
And when I sink, your shadow will remain in me.
And when I fall silent, I will still long for you.
Milana Momčilović was born on April 4, 1999 in Vrbas. She currently lives in Srbobran, a place near Novi Sad in the Republic of Serbia.
She published the collection of poetry TALISMAN.
She doesn’t like to talk about herself, so in the end she can describe herself through the verses of Sergei Yesenin: “What am I?” Who am I? I’m just a dreamer, whose sight fades in the fog and mist, I lived along the way, who can dream, like many other people on that earth.”
Student of Denov Institute of Entrepreneurship and Pedagogy
Xudoyberdiyeva Mohiniso
Annotation
The Kara-Khanid State, which emerged in Central Asia between the 9th and 12th centuries, was one of the earliest Muslim Turkic states and played a significant role in political and cultural life. During their rule, Islam spread widely, mosques and madrasahs were constructed, and trade and crafts flourished. The works of Yusuf Khass Hajib, Qutadghu Bilig, and Mahmud al-Kashgari, Divanu Lughat al-Turk, belong to this period. Although the Kara-Khanids eventually weakened, they strengthened Islamic values in the region and greatly contributed to the cultural development of Turkic peoples.
Keywords: Qutadghu Bilig, Transoxiana, Central Asia, Muslim Turkic state, Islam, culture.
Introduction
Research in this field focuses on examining the role of Turkic states in the history of Central Asia, and the Kara-Khanid Khanate occupies an important place in this process. According to scholarly studies, during the period of the Uyghur Khaganate, the Karluks—composed of three major tribes—were among its subjects. In 756–757 they grew in strength and sought to seize the throne. The internal struggle that began in 789 prevented their success, causing them to separate from the Uyghurs and migrate toward the region of Jetisu, where they later established a new khaganate.
Sources published in Chinese and Uyghur languages describe in detail the historical and ethnic situation in Central Asia before the formation of the Kara-Khanid Khanate. According to these works, the political map of the region underwent repeated changes over several centuries: internal conflicts, wars, and invasions led some states to decline while others flourished.
Main Part
Historical Context and Migrations
Chinese scholars report that after the fall of the Turkic Khaganate, large migration processes took place in Central Asia for nearly two centuries. This intensified after the Uyghur Khaganate, founded in 744 in present-day Mongolia, collapsed in 840. Several factors contributed to the downfall of the Uyghur state: internal power struggles, widespread drought, disease, and harsh winters that devastated livestock. Discontented officials allied with the Kyrgyz, attacked the royal palace, and killed the khagan. Consequently, the Uyghur Khaganate disintegrated, and its population dispersed.
A large group of Uyghurs abandoned their homeland and moved westward, eventually settling in the pastures of Jetisu. When internal unrest broke out within the Uyghur Khaganate, the Karluks were among the first to withdraw from the confederation and migrate to Jetisu—present-day southeastern Kazakhstan. According to Chinese researchers, the Karluks belonged to the “Toqquz Oghuz” (Nine Oghuz) tribal union and constituted a significant portion of the population of the Uyghur state.
By the 9th century, the Karluks had gained considerable political influence and consisted of three principal tribes: Bulak (Muyolo), Sabak (Chjisi), and Mashli (Tashli. Some scholars, including Vey Liangtao, refer to them as one of the “eleven Uyghur” groups.
Islamization and Cultural Development
By the time the Kara-Khanid State was established and began consolidating political authority, most of the population of Transoxiana and surrounding territories had embraced Islam. During this period, Islam reached a high level of development and gradually became a distinct cultural system.
This religious transformation also influenced the Turkic tribes within the Kara-Khanid realm. Due to their close interactions with the settled population of Movarounnahr, the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples gradually adopted Islam. In Transoxiana and Khwarazm, pastoral tribes living near urban settlements accepted Islam nearly simultaneously with the settled population. Nomadic groups living along the Syr Darya and further north also converted between the 9th and 10th centuries.
According to historical sources, in 960 alone, approximately 200,000 Turkic households embraced Islam.
The rulers of the Kara-Khanid State recognized the significance of Islam and actively supported the development of Islamic culture. Satuk Kara Khan was the first Turkic ruler to convert to Islam, adopting the Muslim name Abd al-Karim Satuk Kara Khan. During his reign, numerous Turkic tribes—Karluk, Chigil, Yaghma, Khalaj, and others—converted to Islam. This process played a major role in unifying the state and shaping its political stability.
Conclusion
The Kara-Khanid State successfully united various Turkic tribes and established a strong central authority. They strengthened trade routes, enhanced economic stability, and paid great attention to cultural and scholarly development. Madrasahs, mosques, and cultural centers were built in cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara.
The Kara-Khanids actively promoted Islam, ensuring both religious and political unity within their territories. Therefore, this state represents an important stage in the consolidation of governance and the cultural advancement of Central Asia.
References
1. Irpan To‘xtaev. Kara-Khanid Silver Coins Minted in the First Quarter of the 11th Century. Tashkent, 2015.
2. Vey Liangtao. Kalaxan Wangchao Shigao, p. 72.
3. Ibid., pp. 66–73.
4. Khojaev K.A. On the Terms “Jyushing Ugu”, “Jyushing Tele” and “Jyushing Xueyhe” in Chinese Sources. Oriental Studies, Tashkent, 2004, pp. 223–228.
5. Khojaev A. Data from Ancient Chinese Sources on the Ethnic History of Central Asia. Tashkent, 2017, pp. 239–252, 356.
6. Wikipedia.
7. Ablat Khodjaev, Dilrabo Turdieva. The History of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in the Research of Scholars of the People’s Republic of China. Tashkent, 2021.
Xudoyberdiyeva Mohiniso was born on May 22, 2006, in Denov district, Surxondaryo region. She is currently a second-year student at the Faculty of History, Denov Institute of Entrepreneurship and Pedagogy.
EFFECTIVE METHODS FOR STRENGTHENING IMMUNITY AMONG YOUTH
Annotation
This article provides a scientific analysis of the factors contributing to weakened immunity among young people and explores effective methods for strengthening the immune system. It highlights the biological functions of the immune system, the impact of a healthy lifestyle, the relationship between psychological well-being and immunity, the role of nutritional habits, and the significance of physical activity. Research results indicate that healthy nutrition, regular physical exercise, quality sleep, stress management, and avoidance of harmful habits significantly enhance immune strength.
Youth represent the foundation of a healthy society. Their physical and mental well-being directly affects national development, social stability, and the advancement of future generations. In the context of modern globalization, increased information flow, poor nutritional habits, unhealthy lifestyle choices, and environmental challenges have negative effects on the immunity of young people. According to experts, weakened immunity leads to various infectious diseases, chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, and reduced gastrointestinal function.
Therefore, studying scientifically proven methods of strengthening immunity among youth, applying them in practice, and enhancing preventive measures remain among the most urgent tasks today.
Main Part
1. Immunity and Its Biological Importance
Immunity is the body’s ability to resist various harmful factors. It consists of innate (natural) and acquired (adaptive) immune systems. Innate immunity serves as the body’s natural defense mechanism, whereas acquired immunity forms after exposure to a disease or vaccine. During youth, the immune system actively develops; however, poor lifestyle choices and psychological stress can weaken its functioning.
2. The Impact of Nutritional Habits on Immunity
Since nearly 70% of immune functions are linked to gut activity, nutrition directly influences the state of immunity. Vitamins A, C, D, E, B-complex vitamins, as well as minerals such as iron, zinc, and selenium play a leading role in strengthening the immune system.
Widespread consumption of fast food, sugary drinks, sweets, and foods rich in preservatives among youth weakens immunity. Therefore, a healthy diet should include vegetables, fruits, buckwheat, fish, nuts, natural dairy products, and whole grains.
3. The Importance of Physical Activity and Sports
Regular physical activity improves blood circulation, activates metabolism, and strengthens the immune system. According to scientific research, at least 30 minutes of moderate daily exercise increases immune function by 25–30%. Promoting sports among young people not only encourages a healthy lifestyle but also reduces stress and improves sleep quality.
Running, swimming, cycling, yoga, and Pilates are among the most effective activities for boosting immunity.
4. Sleep Quality and Its Impact on Immunity
Sleep is the period during which the immune system restores itself. Young people who do not get sufficient sleep experience reduced lymphocyte levels, which weakens the body’s resistance to diseases.
Experts recommend 7–9 hours of quality sleep per day for youth. Excessive use of electronic devices and spending long hours online at night slow down the production of melatonin — the sleep hormone.
5. The Influence of Stress and Psychological Factors on Immunity
Young people often experience stress due to academic pressure, social media influence, interpersonal conflicts, and personal challenges. The stress hormone — cortisol — suppresses immune cell activity.
Practices such as meditation, breathing exercises, reading literature, spending time in nature, and engaging in creative activities effectively reduce stress and help strengthen immunity.
6. Consequences of Harmful Habits
Tobacco products, energy drinks, and alcohol significantly weaken the immune system. The frequent consumption of energy drinks, in particular, negatively affects cardiovascular health and increases immune dysfunction.
Promoting a healthy lifestyle among young people is crucial for preventing harmful habits.
7. The Role of Prevention and Medical Check-ups
Weakened immunity is often detected late. Therefore, young people should undergo general medical examinations at least twice a year. Vaccination, especially seasonal influenza immunization, helps support immune function and prevent infectious diseases.
Conclusion
Strengthening immunity plays a vital role in improving youth health. A strong immune system not only prevents diseases but also enhances intellectual activity, productivity, emotional stability, and social engagement. Scientific analyses show that healthy nutrition, regular physical activity, quality sleep, stress management, and avoiding harmful habits constitute the key components of strong immunity. Promoting a healthy lifestyle among young people, increasing preventive measures, and ensuring regular medical check-ups will contribute significantly to the creation of a healthy future society.
References
1. Karimova N. Youth Health and the Immune System. Tashkent, 2020.
2. Kholmatov A., Rasulov U. Foundations of Immunology. Tashkent Medical Publishing House, 2018.
3. World Health Organization (WHO). Youth Health Reports (2019–2023).
4. Ministry of Health of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Healthy Lifestyle Program. 2021.
5. Smith J., Brown L. Nutrition and Immune Function in Youth. New York: Springer, 2022.
Avazbekova Rayyonakhon was born on March 12, 2008, in Andijan city, Andijan region of the Republic of Uzbekistan, into an intellectual family. She is a first-year student of the Andijan Branch of Kokand University, Faculty of Medical Treatment, group 25-11.
Lemmy’s hotel bed: an altar, a stage, a throne. Lemmy Kilmister, high priest of the Church of Motörhead, placed me there as if I were a supplicant, a guest, a fellow conspirator in the endless liturgy of rock ’n’ roll. He pressed cigarettes on me—his communion wafers—and the gesture was both casual and ceremonial.
Later, I told Hollywood scenester and Lemmy associate Tequila Mockingbird about it. She hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the way Lemmy’s eyes carried both mischief and gravity, hadn’t felt the weight of his charisma pressing down like a bass riff. From the outside, she misjudged it, calling it seduction. But that was her projection, not the truth of the moment.
Because Lemmy’s seduction was not necessarily sexual. It was existential. It was about drawing you into his orbit, making you part of the mythos. He seduced everyone—men, women, journalists, fans—into the gravity well of Motörhead. To sit on that bed was to be baptized into his world, where the sacred texts were written in nicotine stains and the gospel was screamed through Marshall stacks.
At the time, I was Alex S. Johnson, rock journalist. I wasn’t out as transfemme yet. My identity was still a private constellation, a truth I carried but hadn’t named aloud. Lemmy didn’t know that part of me, and yet—looking back—I see how his gesture resonates differently through the lens of who I am now, as Kandy Fontaine.
Classic Lemmy: collapsing the distance between journalist and confidant, between interview and communion. He didn’t care about categories—man, woman, transfemme goddess, fan, or critic. He cared about whether you could hang, whether you could accept the offering, whether you could step into the myth without flinching.
The cigarettes were not just smokes. They were a bond, a way of saying: You’re one of us now. The bed was not an invitation to romance but to belonging. And in that moment, I understood the difference between being misjudged from the outside and being initiated from within.
Now, as Kandy Fontaine, transfemme goddess, I revisit that memory with new eyes. I see not just the ritual of inclusion but the radical acceptance embedded in it. Even though I wasn’t out, Lemmy’s gesture carried no judgment, no hesitation. He didn’t need me to explain myself. He simply welcomed me into the communion of rock ’n’ roll, and in retrospect, that welcome feels even more profound.
FROM FIRST TO LAST: THE CASE OF THE TURKISH TURNCOAT
The 20th century was born, psychologically speaking, with the 1900 publication of Sigmund Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Out of this book, psychoanalysis quickly matured into a bold, contentious philosophy, ready and able to challenge the basic tenets of many disciplines. Freud and most of his early followers were Jews, but their precepts and even their mood were so radically different from those of rival schools of thought that the ultimate antecedents of psychoanalysis remain a mystery despite various attempts to trace its genealogy.
Some four decades after “The Interpretation of Dreams” appeared, Immanuel Velikovsky, one of Freud’s professional colleagues, published a comprehensive reinterpretation of the origins of psychoanalysis. “The Dreams Freud Dreamed” appeared in “Psychoanalytic Review” 28 (Oct. 1941). In Velikovsky’s analysis Freud’s own dreams — the foundation of all that came later — dealt with “his inner struggle for unhampered advancement: In order to get ahead he would have to conclude a Faust-pact: he would have to sell his soul to the Church.”
Velikovsky employed Freud’s own psychoanalytic methods to uncover Freud’s hidden motives. He examined 16 of Freud’s dreams, 10 of them in great detail; in his understanding, all of them contained evidence of the same internal conflict. But one of the dreams included an important element which Velekovsky admitted he could not readily fit into his general scheme, though he should have been able to do so.
Velikovsky called the episode the “Dream About the Woman in the Kitchen and the Stranger.” In Freud’s account the dream ended this way:
“I want to put on an overcoat; but the first I try on is too long. I take it off, and am somewhat astonished to find that it is trimmed with fur. A second coat has a long strip of cloth with a Turkish design sewn into it. A stranger with a long face and short, pointed beard comes up and prevents me from putting it on, declaring that it belongs to him. I now show him that it is covered all over with Turkish embroideries. He asks: ‘How do the Turkish (drawings, strips of cloth…) concern you?’ But we soon become quite friendly.” [tr. A. A. Brill]
Velikovsky interpreted that section of the dream as follows:
“We know that a stranger in a dream is usually the father…. Likewise the overcoat which is too large (Jews wear long overcoats) is that of the father. He is surprised in the dream ‘that the coat is trimmed with fur’. Eight pages earlier the story of the father’s fur cap which was thrown into the mud by a Christian is told…. He tries on a Jewish coat (trimmed with fur, father’s religion) and afterwards a foreign (Turkish) one. Why ‘Turkish’ was chosen for foreign I can not say definitely without the assitance of the necessary associations. But Viennese history considers the Turk especially as the foreigner.”
Even as Velikovsky was completing the article, Freud was dying, so his own associations with “Turkish” are lost to us forever. In the article itself Velikovsky specifically warned against analysts making arbitrary associations on behalf of analysands. However, an interdisciplinary approach may succeed where a more specialized one lacks sufficiant information to make a proper evaluation.
A year before Velikovsky was examining Freud’s psychic pattern, Gershom G. Scholem, the first professor of Jewish mysticism and the Kabbala at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, (and, incidentally, the husband of a distant relative of Freud) had come to the startling conclusion that the 19th-century process of Jewish enlightenment and assimilation to European society owed its impetus to a 17th-century heresy named after Sabbatai Zevi (1625-1676). A member of the Sephardic community in Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey), at an early age he became imbued with the Kabbalistic teachings of Isaac Luria, a prominent mystic of the previous century. However, he transformed Luria’s arcane teachings into a radical popular movement. As Scholem wrote,
“Sabbatianism represents the first serious revolt in Judaism since the Middle Ages; it was the first case of mystical ideas leading directly to the disintegration of the orthodox Judaism of ‘the believers’. Its heretical mysticism produced an outburst of more or less veiled nihilistic tendencies among some of its followers. Finally it encouraged a mood of religious anarchism on a mystical basis which, where it coincided with favorable external circumstances, played a highly important part in creating a moral and intellectual atmosphere favorable to the reform movement of the nineteenth century.”
As early as 1648 Zevi publicly uttered God’s mystical full name, an act which many devotees interpreted as revealing himself as the long-awaited Messiah. Driven from Smyrna by the horrified rabbis, he spent several years abroad before he returned home in 1665 to proclaim that the next year would signal the beginning of Jewish redemption. From Smyrna he proceeded to Constantinople in order to “depose” the Osmanli sultan. Mehmed IV’s initial response was to remove a nuisance by imprisoning Zevi at Abydos. However, the prison became transformed into a place of pilgrimage. To head off possible unrest the sultan threatened to execute the Messiah unless he publicly converted to Islam. Thus, as “Mehmet Effendi,” Zevi accepted a sinecure at the Turkish court before being banished to Albania, where he died in obscurity.
Humiliated and degraded by Zevi’s apostasy, his followers sought some sort of rationalization for the act. It thus came to symbolize a radical paradox, a mystical form of redemption. They were supported in their interpretation by the experience of the Maranos, Jews who had “converted” to Christianity in the 15th century as an alternative to expulsion from Spain but who continued to practice their ancient rites in secret.
The movement was revived in an especially radical form a century later by Jakub Frank (c.1726-1791), a rabbi’s son who claimed to be a reincarnation of both Zevi and the patriarch Jacob. The Jewish authorities in Poland expelled him due to his heretical doctrines including the deification of himself as a part of a trinity and his denial of the traditional opposition between good and evil. He incorporated sexual practices into his teachings and advocated “purification through transgression,” regarding participation in all forms of behavior as a means of liberation. The Sabbatians informed the bishop of Kamenetz-Podolsk that they rejected the Talmud and recognized only the Zohar, the sacred book of Kabbalah, which did not contradict the Christian doctrine of the trinity. Then Frank claimed that he had recieved a heavenly revelation calling on his adherents to adopt the “religion of Edom” (Christianity) as a transition to the true religion (which he called das, “knowledge’) to be revealed later. In 1759 the Frankists were baptized in Lwów, with members of the Polish szlachta (nobility) acting as godparents; the neophytes adopted their surnames and joined their ranks, and king Augustus III served as Frank’s own godfather. By 1790, 26,000 Jews in Poland converted. (Isaac Bashevis Singer vividly presented a picture of the movement in Poland in his first novel, “Satan in Goray.”) Nevertheless, Frank was arrested for heresy in 1760 and imprisoned in the monastery of Częstochowa, though his influence continued to grow. After the first partition of Poland he was released by the Russian military in 1803 and frequently traveled to Vienna, where empress Maria Theresa regarded him as a disseminator of Christianity among the Jews. Ultimately, Frank and his retinue moved to Germany, where he adopted the title “Baron von Frank” of Offenbach.
The Frankist leader in Prague, Jonas Wehle (1752-1823), intellectually linked Luria and Zevi with Moses Mendessohn and Immanuel Kant; Aaron Chorin (1766-1844), the founder of Reform Judaism in Hungary, a former member of a Sabbatian group in Prague, ordained his protege Leopold Loew (1811-1875), who the first to deliver his sermons in Magyar; Loew specifically attributed a large role in rationalist propaganda and encouragement to the Sabbatians.
The defenders of rabbinical orthodoxy did everything they could to ridicule, destroy, and belittle the importance of the heresy, though Scholem pointed out that “various moderate forms” existed “in which orthodox piety and Sabbatian belief existed side by side, and the number of more or less outstanding rabbis who were secret adherents of the new sectarian mysticism was far larger than orthodox apologists have ever been willing to admit.” The belief became particularly influential among traders and manufacturers, who helped promote a mood that led to a basic reorientation of Jewish culture. In this respect, at least, the Sabbatians were like some Christian sectarians, such as the Quakers and Anabaptists, who, according to Scholem, “created an atmosphere in which the rationalist movement, in spite of its very different origins, was enabled to grow and develop, so that in the end both worked in the same direction.”
Scholem also sketched some of the links he saw between Sabbatiansism and more modern aspects of Jewish culture, in particular its relation to the origins of the Jewish Enlightenment and Hasidism (while at the same time denouncing the view that Hasidism was the impetus for emancipation as a “romantic misconception”). The founder of the Hasidist movement, Israel Ben Eliezer Ba’al Shem Tov (“Besht,” c. 1700-1760) may have been a participant in the disputations between Frank and the Christians, and many of his early followers were probably Sabbatians; he derived much of his own mytical inspiration from moderate Sabbatians such as Joshua Heshel Zoref (1633-1700).
In “The Slayers of Moses,” Susan A Handelman of the University of Maryland noted that Scholem investigated “what had been consigned to what Scholem calls the ‘cellar’ of Jewish history…. But a cellar is also the foundation of the house….” University of Missouri psychology professor David Bakan had already added a new wing to the house that Scholem built. In “Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition,” he claimed that “Freud, consciously or unconsciously, secularized Jewish mysticism; and psychoanalysis can intelligently be viwed as such a secularization… By separating the supernatural elements in mysticism from its other content, Freud succeeded in making a major contribution to science.”
In a general sense, according to Bakan, Jewish mystical thought was “in the air” throughout Eastern Europe, even to the extent of being embodied in “the common oral expressions” of the Jews. But Freud’s biography specifically links him to some expressions of the mystical thought endemic to the middle of the 19th century. He was born in Moravia, one of the Western strongholds of Sabbatianism. (After his imprisonment, Frank had lived in the Moravian town of Brno until 1786.) The other branch of his family had migrated to Romania, another Sabbtian hotbed, but maintained close communication with Freud’s family; in 1886 one of his sisters married one of her Romanian relatives. Both of Freud’s parents came from areas that were strongly Hasidic; his father was born in Tysmenite, an early asimilationist community which openly espoused the cause of Polish nationalism, and his mother’s family was from Brody, which had been famous as a great anti-Frankist center in the late 18th century before becoming a Hasidic community and a prime area of diffusion in the areas affected by the Berlin Enlightenment.
Freud’s wife also had an interesting background. At the urging of her brother, who was already married to Freud’s sister, she broke tradition by breaking her engagement to another man she did not love. Her grandfather had been a well-known Hamburg rabbi who was vociferously opposed to the Reformers’ repudiation of messianic beliefs (and had been the object of a polemic written by Noah Mannheim, a Reformist rabbi who had performed the wedding ceremony for Freud’s parents); the grandfather was described by Meyer Waxman as “a queer and eccentric personality and his philosophy of Judaism was full of mystic vagaries, some of which were contrary and foreign to the true Jewish spirit.” One of his sons, Freud’s wife’s uncle, had converted to Christianity and obtained an important position at the court of Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Given these circumstances, Freud must have grown up and matured in a milieu of Hasidistic and perhaps even crypto-Sabbatianist mysticism. As an adult he exhibited many traits that are associated with Frankist beliefs. He was fiercely proud of his Jewish heritage (for instance in his praise for Hannibal of Carthage as a Semitic hero), even though he completely rejected its religious beliefs and even though he sometimes dissembled about some of his Jewish connections in order to protect his ideas from racially motivated criticism. Like the Sabbatians, he opposed the orthodox creed while elaborating his own rival set of myths; he may have thus regarded himself as a sort of secular messianic figure. He was indefatigable in his search for intimate knowledge of the forbidden areas of behavior, especially those concerning sex, and in his belief that reality may be apprehended by the intellect.
In a particularly interesting passage, Bakan made an extended comparison of Freud’s presentation of the “dream of Irma’s injection” with the techniques used in the “Zohar.” He also relied heavily on a 1933 Velikovsky article, which traced the seeds of psychoanalytic dream interpretation to very early Jewish texts.
One of the major planks in Bakan’s construction was his interpretation of Freud’s final book, “Moses and Monotheism.” In Velikovsky’s words its theses were “that Moses was an Egyptian prince, a pupil of Akhnaton; that Akhnaton was the founder of montheistic idealism; that when Akhnaton ceased to rule and his schism fell into disfavor, Moses preserved his teachings by bringing them to the slaves, with whom he left Egypt.” Thus its entire purpose was to deprive Jews of Judaism itself. According to Bakan, it was a Kabbalistic work, fearfully written with deliberate obscurity as a book with a double content. “It is, by any of the usual criteria used to evaluate books, incredibly bad. Some of the followers of Freud have tended to dismiss it; and, by some, it is regarded as the product of senility…. If this book had not come from the hand of Sigmund Freud, one would seriously doubt whether it would ever have seen the light of day.” Nevertheless, the book “expresses some of his deepest impulses, impulses which were operative throughout his life. The book is the only one written by Freud which directs itself avowedly to the problem of Judaism and the meaning of being Jewish.”
In an anonymous article, “The Moses of Michelangelo,” written many years earlier, Freud had symbolically transformed the prophet into a gentile by being the subject of a papal funerary statue. This urge was carried to its ultimate expression a quarter century later, in what would in effect be his last will and testament. In Bakan’s analysis, both Zevi and Frank became gentiles; thus, the “ultimate fulfillment of the theme of Sabbatianism is to have Moses, the most profound Messianic figure of Judaism and the image of all other Messiahs, already be Gentile…. By converting Moses into a Gentile, Freud committed his psychological act of apostasy.”
Bakan shrank from stating baldly that Freud was a secret adept of some esoteric sect. “An image of him poring over Kabbalistic books in the dead of night is not supported by the facts; although to have done this would not have been inconsistent with the patterns of the Jewish mystical leaders.” But Bakan’s contention that Freud may have been motivated by some deep-seated knowledge of Kabbalistic lore, even if that knowledge were second-hand, leads us back to Velikovsky’s efforts to unravel Freud’s psyche.
Many years after “The Dreams Freud Dreamed,” Velikovsky recalled that the catalyst for his own reinterpretation of Jewish (and other) texts as accounts of planetary cataclysmic disruption was in fact “Moses and Monotheism”:
“I disagreed with Freud and saw in the octogenarian a still-unresolved conflict with respect to his Jewish origin and his own father. I turned to his dreams to know more about him than his books could tell. I found that his own dreams … spoke a language that was very clear but had meaning which Freud did not comprehend — or did not reveal to his readers. All the dreams dealt with the problem of his Jewish origin, the tragic fate of his people, his deliberations on leaving the ranks of the persecuted for the sake of unhampered advancement — or at least in order to free his children from the fate of under-privileged Jews in Christian and anti-Semitic Vienna.”
Although the dream symbolism may have had a Catholic origin because of the local social pressure to convert to that particular faith, the essential struggle was whether or not to become a gentile. The most famous, or infamous, example of becoming a gentile for opportunistic reasons was, of course, Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion, a drama that was of immense importance to Jewish culture. Zevi was widely condemned as a sort of bogey man. (For example, Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, was often called “a new Sabbatai Levi” by his anti-Zionist opponents.) Zevi, of course, achieved his unsavory reputation by publicly donning the coat that “was covered all over with Turkish enbroideries.”
Furthermore, on the basis of the manifest content of the dream, the conflict that Velikovsky described may have been a recurring, familial, one. After all, the father would have grown up in a Hasidistic town at the very time the Jewish Enlightenment was gaining ground. The stranger in the dream (the father, in Velikovsky’s analysis) at first insists that the Turkish coat belongs to him and then rather belligerently wants to know how the Turkish designs concern the dream-Freud. Perhaps it was those very same heretical beliefs that allowed the two, father and son, to become “quite friendly.”
If, as Bakan believed, “Moses and Monotheism” was an essentially Kabbalistic book, some of the volumes that Velikovsky himself wrote may also be re-illuminated. Velikovsky admitted that he began researching the unfinished “Freud and His Heroes” in response to the “Moses” book; out of that research grew, inadvertantly, all of Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” and “Ages in Chaos” concepts of recurring gloabal catastrophes.
Velikovsky left his medical practice in Palestine to coduct research that would refute the central thesis of Freud’s final production. In his imaginative, painstaking reconstruction of ancient history, Velikovsky fixed the creed of Moses hundreds of years before Akhnaton’s religious innovations rather than some few years afterwards.
But in addition to being an important negative catalyst, “Moses and Monotheism” also proved to be a powerful positive influence on Velikovsky, who applied many of Freud’s conclusions and methods to his own reconstruction. A few examples may suggest the strength of Freud’s work on Velikovsky’s:
1) Imaginative use of philology. Freud made much of his identification of Aten (in Egyptian) with Adonis (in Syrian) and Adonai (in Hebrew). Velikovsky’s uses of phonetic similarity were legion; two instances will suffice: He compared the Maruts (“the terrible ones”) in the Vedas with the terrible one (“Ariz”) in the books of Joel and Isaiah and then proceeded to associate these words with the Romans’ Mars and the Greeks’ Ares; he also made an elaborate comparison between the legendary Chinese god/king Yahou, the Biblical deity Yahweh, the Mexican war god Yao, and the Roman sky god Jove, further linking the sounds of their names with various religious chants around the world.
2) Explanation of the origin of anti-Semitism. Freud suggested that other people were jealous of the Jews’ claim to be “the first-born, favourite child of God the Father;” Velikovsky went somewhat further, insisting that it was not mere jealousy — it was fear and resentment that “the great catastrophe of tribulations, destructions and paroxysms of nature … was caused for the benefit of the sons of Israel.”
3) Existence, cause, and effects of phylogenetic memory. After a period of initial resistance, the Jews eventually accepted monotheism. This is how Freud explained the phenomenon:
“Early trauma — defence — latency — outbreak of neurotic illness — partial return of the repressed. Such is the formula which we have laid down for the development of a neurosis. The reader is now invited to take the step of supposing that something occurred in the life of the human species similar to what occurs in the life of individuals: of supposing, that is, that here too events occurred … which left behind them permanent consequences but were for the most part fended off and forgotten, and which after a long latency came into effect and created phenomena similar to symptoms on their structure and purpose.” Freud thus insisted that certain experiences are transmitted to one’s descendants. Velikovsky did not emphasize the sexual nature of those experiences but held that repeated, universal catastrophes left their memory traces, particularly in how we interpret the evidence of those catastrophes.
4) Myth as history. Freud synchronized the Homeric epics with the time in which “the return of the religion of Moses was in preparation among the Hebrews” and proposed that the early Greeks had experienced a period of prehistoric “cultural effloresence which had perished in a historical catastrophe and of which an obscure tradition survived.” Apparently he had in mind some sort of local catastrophe, perhaps of a social or economic nature. Velikovsky of course postulated a series of global destructions and correlated Ikhnaton with Oedipus.
5) Universality of historical accounts. Freud predicted that scientists would eventually be able to verify the same factors underlying the national epics of the Germans, the Finns, and other ancient peoples. He also claimed that the cause of these epics had disappeared before the arrival of Alexander the Great, who lamented that he had no Homer to immortalize his deeds. Velikovsky used historical and legendary accounts, as well as mythological motifs and other sources, to reorder the course of world history from the Exodus onwards but accepted that post-Alexandrine chronolgies were correct.
On the face of it, Velikovsky was probably even less likely than Freud to have been a “closet mystic.” However, Velikovsky’s father had been an early Russian Zionist-assimilationist. Velikovsky was apparently rather indifferent about his religious heritage but was extremely interested in and proud of his people’s cultural traditions and history. He had been the author of a very suggestive article on the Talmudists’ use of word play in dream interpretation, and he developed a very sophisticated technique for using word play in his own psychiatric practice. However, it is not my intent to suggest that he was a Kabbalist, only that he, like Freud, may have been influenced by Kabbalist thought more than he was perhaps aware.
