Self as Nation

Contemporary Hebrew Autobiography

Tamar S. Hess

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781611688801, 9781611688795
• eBook ISBN: 9781611689662
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Theorists of autobiography tend to emphasize the centrality of the individual against the community. By contrast, in her reading of Hebrew autobiography, Tamar Hess identifies the textual presence and function of the collective and its interplay with the Israeli self. What characterizes the ten writers she examines is the idea of a national self, an individual whose life story takes on meaning from his or her relation to the collective history and ethos of the nation. Her second and related argument is that this self—individually and collectively—must be understood in the context of waves of immigration to Israel's shores. Hess convincingly shows that autobiography is a transnational genre deeply influenced by the nation's literary as well as cultural history. This book makes an additional contribution to the history of autobiography and contemporary autobiography theory by analyzing the strategies of fragmentation that many of the writers Hess studies have adopted as ways of dealing with the conflicts between the self and the nation, between who they feel they are and what they are expected to be. Hess contrasts the predominantly masculine tradition of Hebrew autobiography with writings by women, and offers a fresh understanding of the Israeli soul and the Hebrew literary canon. A systematic review of contemporary Hebrew autobiography, this study raises fundamental questions essential to the debates about identity at the heart of Israeli culture today. It will interest scholars and students of contemporary Israeli culture, as well as those intrigued by the literary genre of autobiography.

INDEX

Abramovitch, Shalom Ya‘akov. See Sforim, Mendele Mocher

Abu-Much, Huda, 164

Aciman, André, 153

“Adon Olam” (hymn), 53–54

Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, 82, 96, 186n37, 286n37; Sipur pashut (A Simple Story), 5

Alterman, Nathan, 57

Amichai, Yehuda, 49

Am Oved publishers, 77

Anderson, Benedict, 1

anecdote as narrative unit, 39–40, 71, 74, 188n56

Angel, Sarah, Malakh o satan (Angel or Devil; 1993), 173n47

Appelfeld, Aharon, 89–102; Ballas compared, 75–77, 79, 81–82, 89, 100–102; on biographical writing, 76–77; body and identity in works of, 95–96; cafés in narratives of, 90–91, 98; “Edut” (Testimony; 1979), 190n27; embodied subjectivity of, 95–96, 192n9; Mikhvat ha-or (1980), 94; national identity and immigration to Israel, 11, 36, 57, 75–76, 91, 92–96, 99–102; Od ha-yom gadol (A Table for One; 2001), 75, 90–91, 92, 93, 94–96, 98–99, 100–101, 102; place in Israeli literature, 76, 92–93; reconstruction of past in present, 96–98; Shoah and, 75, 89, 93, 98, 99; on Sinai War, 191n38; Sipur Haim (1998; The Story of a Life, 2004), 79, 89–102; on Six Day War, 100–101; Zionist movement criticized by, 76

Appelfeld, Meir (painter and son of Aharon), 90, 99

Arab and Middle Eastern Jewish immigrants to Israel, terminology for, 77–78, 189n7

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 2, 47, 89, 168n5

autobiography, Hebrew. See Hebrew autobiography

Azaryahu, Sarah, 169n14

Bach, Johann Sebastian, “Little” Fugue, 27–28, 179n50

Bakhtin, Mikhail, 169–70n21

Ballas, Abud (brother of Shimon), 83

Ballas, Shimon, 76–88; Appelfeld compared, 75–77, 79, 81–82, 89, 100–102; Ash‘ab me-Baghdad (Ashab from Baghdad; 1970), 88; Ba-ir ha-tahtit (The Lower City), 75, 84; Be-guf rishon (First Person Singular; 2009), 78–88, 101–2; on biographical writing, 76, 77–78; birth, parentage, and childhood, 80–81, 84–86; “The Childhood of the Imagination,” 84–86; communism and, 78, 79, 82–84, 86, 87, 91, 100,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Hebrew Autobiography — Nation, Relation, and Narration
• One: “To Be a Jew among Jews”: The Reluctant Israeli Native in Yoram Kaniuk
• Two: “I Have a Pain in My Mother”: Natan Zach and Haim Be’er
• Three: Languages of Immigration: Shimon Ballas and Aharon Appelfeld
• Four: Gendered Margins: Narrative Strategies, Embodied Selves, and Subversion in Women’s Autobiography
• Conclusion: Prophets and Hedgehogs
• Notes
• Credits
• Index