Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives

by Adia Mendelson-Maoz

Overview

By analyzing its position within the struggles for recognition and reception of different national and ethnic cultural groups, this book offers a bold new picture of Israeli literature. Through comparative discussion of the literatures of Palestinian citizens of Israel, of Mizrahim, of migrants from the former Soviet Union, and of Ethiopian-Israelis, the author demonstrates an unexpected richness and diversity in the Israeli literary scene, a reality very different from the monocultural image that Zionism aspired to create.

Drawing on a wide body of social and literary theory, Mendelson-Maoz compares and contrasts the literatures of the four communities she profiles. In her discussion of the literature of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, she presents the question of language and translation, and she provides three case studies of particular authors and their reception. Her study of Mizrahi literature adopts a chronological approach, starting in the 1950s and proceeding toward contemporary Mizrahi writing, while discussing questions of authenticity and self-determination. The discussion of Israeli literature written by immigrants from the former Soviet Union focuses both on authors who write Israeli literature in Russian and of Russian immigrants writing in Hebrew. The final section of the book provides a valuable new discussion of the work of Ethiopian-Israeli writers, a group whose contributions have seldom been previously acknowledged.

The picture that emerges from this groundbreaking book replaces the traditional, homogeneous historical narrative of Israeli literature with a diversity of voices, a multiplicity of origins, and a wide range of different perspectives. In doing so, it will provoke researchers in a wide range of cultural fields to look at the rich traditions that underlie it in new and fresh ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557536808
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2014
Series:	Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Adia Mendelson-Maoz is a senior faculty member in literature and culture, head of the Hebrew Literature Section in the Department of Literature, Language, and Arts, and a faculty member in the MA program in cultural studies at the Open University of Israel. Her research deals with Hebrew literature as it intersects ethics, politics, and culture. She has taught in, served as academic supervisor of, and developed a number of undergraduate-and graduate-level courses on Hebrew literature of the twentieth century and on multiculturalism in Israel. Mendelson-Maoz has published numerous articles in books and journals, among them Social Jewish Studies, the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Shofar, and Israel Studies Review. She is the author of Literature as a Moral Laboratory: Readings in Selected Twentieth-Century Hebrew Prose, published in Hebrew in 2009 by Bar-Ilan University Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1 Introduction 1

2 The Literature of Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Literature of Boundaries 15

The Literature of Palestinian Citizens of Israel 16

Palestinian-Israeli Authors Writing in Hebrew 24

The Second Generation of Writers in Hebrew 28

The Third Generation of Writers in Hebrew 31

Three Stories of Acceptance 34

Habibi and the Israel Prize for Literature 36

Mahmoud Darwish in Israeli Schools 42

Ghassan Kanafani-Returning to Haifa in Israeli Eyes 46

The Metonym of "Identity Card" in Mahmoud Darwish and Sayed Kashua 53

3 "Ana min al-yahud": Mizrahi Literature and the Question of Space and Authenticity 67

Does Mizrahi Literature in Israel Have a Face? A Historical and Poetical Survey 70

The Mizrahi Literature of the 1950s and 1960s 76

The 1970s-First Signs of Mizrahi Poetics: Sami Michael, Erez Biton, Ronny Someck, and Jacqueline Kahanoff 80

The 1980s and 1990s-Different Voices in Mizrahi Writing: Dan Benaya Seri, Eli Amir, Amira Hess, and Ronit Matalon 91

Towards the 2000s and Beyond-the Second and Third Generations Reconstruct Mizrahi Identity 102

New Spaces in Contemporary Mizrahi Writings 112

On Language and Memory-Almog Behar 112

The Great Mother-Ronit Matalon's The Sound of Our Steps and Sami Berdugo's That Is to Say 120

Shimon Adaf and the Peripheral Novel 135

Conclusion, or: Is A. B. Yehoshua a Mizrahi Author? 145

4 The Aristocrat and her Handmaid: Russian-Israeli Literature and the Question of Language 159

Introduction 160

Dual Colonialism, or: Who's in Charge of the Cultural Ghetto? 162

Israel and the Russian Diaspora 166

Israeli Literature Written in Russian 168

A Sip of the Russian-Israeli Cocktail 182

On the Journey between Diaspora and the Holy Land- Efrem Bauch and David Markish 183

The Liminality of Spaces and Times-Anna Isakova 186

Poetry that Bites-Igor Guberman 188

Returning to Holy Jerusalem, Returning to "Blood" and "Love"-Mikhail Gendelev 190

On War and God-Mikhail Grobman 193

Between the Narrator and the Immigrant-Dina Rubina 195

The Multicultural Dining Room-Gali-Dana Singer 197

Between the Languages-the Gesher Theater 199

Russian Immigrants Writing in Hebrew 205

In Search of Lost Memories 207

Alona Kimhi-Hybridity Materializes 217

Victor and Masha 223

Sivan Baskin's Poetic Alternative 227

The Nomadic World of Alex Epstein 235

5 The Road to Jerusalem, the Search for Zion: The Literature of Ethiopian-Israelis 249

Introduction 250

From Ethiopia to Jerusalem-The Story of the Odyssey 258

Blood and Water 271

Blood 272

Water 274

Searching for Zion 280

Minorities of Minorities-Black Jewish Women 290

Epilogue 297

6 Conclusion 305

Bibliography 313

Index 349