Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives

By Adia Mendelson-Maoz

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781612493640

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Not like a cypress

not all at once, not all of me,

but like the grass, in thousands of cautious green exits,

…

but like the rain in many places

from many clouds, to be absorbed, to be drunk

by many mouths, to be breathed in

…

not the sharp ring that wakes up

the doctor on call

but with tapping, on many small windows

at side entrances, with many heartbeats¹

In 1971, Gershon Shaked published his major work, Gal hadash ba-siporet haivrit (New Wave in Hebrew Literature),² which contained an article titled, following Amichai’s lines, Be-harbeh ashnavim be-knisot tsdadiyot (on many small windows at side entrances). In the article in particular, and the book as a whole, Shaked intended to describe the developments that took place in Hebrew literature in the 1950s and 1960s, when new authors replaced the literature of the Palmah generation. With the phrase on many small windows at side entrances Shaked meant to outline the penetration of a group of poets into the literary center in roundabout paths—through small windows and side entrances. Ostensibly, this picture could represent some kind of literary pluralism. Retroactively, however, Shaked’s study established a well-defined literary center, and the new coroneted center was, in many ways, not new. Shaked proposed to examine the work of authors such as Aharon Megged, Pinchas Sadeh, David Shahar, Aharon Appelfeld, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, and Amalia Kahana-Carmon, all of whom indeed presented new poetic ways, yet they were all of Ashkenazi origin and belonged to the political center. Obviously many Israeli authors, among them authors of Mizrahi origin, new immigrants, and Palestinian authors, were not part of this history.

This book seeks to spot new corners in the history of Israeli literature, by applying multicultural perspectives, and analyzing the position of literature within the struggles for recognition and reception of different ethnic cultural groups, while focusing on the relations between the literary hegemony and weakened groups. In this book I explore the landscape of Israeli literature through a comparative discussion of the literatures of Palestinian citizens of Israel, of Mizrahim, of migrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and of migrants from Ethiopia. Inspired by the essence of Amichai’s lines, I replace the teleological linear-homogeneous historical narrative with a diversity of voices, a multiplicity of origins and different perspectives, in order to understand Israel’s multicultural nature within its literary context, providing an opportunity for a diachronic and synchronic mapping, for a new, alternative, in-depth examination of Israeli literature.

The history of the State of Israel and its distinctive nature engendered a highly heterogeneous social and cultural fabric. The nationalist tension between the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority, and the ethnic tension between groups of immigrants and migrants, are among the conflicts that have characterized its fabric from its inception.³ From the first years of the Zionist settlement, its ethos aspired to create a national monocultural community. If we follow David Ben-Gurion’s words we learn that the overarching goal was to take a highly diverse general public, from all points of the globe, speaking many languages, educated in foreign cultures, and divided into assorted ethnic groups and tribes in Israel,⁴ and meld them into a single mold of a reborn nation, with a single language, a single culture, a single citizenship, and a single loyalty. Thus, the term melting-pot policy (or ingathering of the exiles)—seemingly illustrating a pluralist-multicultural agenda—was a cover for a program of creating a dominant Zionist ethno-national culture, defining national standards such as the National Poet, the National Theatre, the National Museum, and the National Library. These standards were formulated in accordance with the Ashkenazi Western Jewish culture, and left no place for other national and ethnic groups.

Mainstream Hebrew literature accompanied the Zionist project from its very beginning, and migrated to the Land of Israel where it later became Israeli.⁵ It generally complied with the ideological mechanisms that sought to create cultural homogenization. The establishment encouraged this literature, through its principal central agents in the field, including publishers, periodicals, literary critics and scholars. Its authors were granted positions in the heart of the Israeli canon—the mouthpiece of the norms perceived as acceptable.

Since statehood, and with growing impetus in the 1960s and 1970s, cracks became visible in the efforts to structure a Jewish-Israeli homogenous culture. Alternative narratives and cultures were rising to the surface, shaping a multicultural picture, with different national, ethnic, and religious attributes.⁶ Among them were the cultures of Palestinians, Mizrahim, migrants from the FSU, and migrants from Ethiopia, alongside other cultural groups such as women, religious Israelis, and gay and lesbian groups. These and other groups, whose cultures were unacknowledged and positioned on the lowest rungs of the ladder or on the farthest margins, put together distinct collective identities for themselves. In return, they demanded social status, cultural recognition, and influence on society and governance.

This process is manifested in Hebrew literature and in the field of Hebrew literary criticism in the last decades, as Yaron Peleg notes: Since the conclusion of Gershon Shaked’s synoptic literary studies, which ended in the 1980s, most of the studies dedicated to the literature of the ensuing decades emphasized the dissolution and fragmentation of Israeli identity along ethnic, gender, and other lines.⁷ Yet, while studies that dealt with Israeli literature of minority groups usually addressed a specific literary group or a specific phenomenon,⁸ this research aims to outline the wider picture from contemporary and comparative perspectives.

In this book I explore different narratives that play a role in the Israeli literary arena by applying multicultural perspectives and focusing on Israeli ethnic diversity. I relate to the field of literature in Bourdieuian terms⁹ as a field of positions, of forces and struggles, through which we can examine relations between different cultural groups constantly struggling to better their positions. The actors—the authors and poets, publishers, periodicals, literary critics, and scholars—all contribute to the economics of the field, and are interest-driven. Each one is part of the discourse on Israeliness, competing for recognition, legitimacy, dominance, and prestige.

My discussion of Hebrew literature, through a multicultural perspective, aims at three main objectives: first, I map the multicultural structure in Israel, as it is expressed in literature. In historical terms, I address literature written since the establishment of the state; however, I mainly focus on the past two decades, during which the multicultural debate has intensified. I examine the relations between the literary hegemony and weakened groups with national and ethnic attributes, and assemble a panorama of Israeli literature through a comparative discussion of the literatures of Palestinian citizens of Israel, Mizrahim, migrants from the FSU, and migrants from Ethiopia. I chose to focus on these national and ethnic groups since their writing raises comparable questions, challenges the ethno-national hegemonic culture, and demonstrates a hyphenated identity that has evolved through the years in dialectic relationships between their origin (often imagined) culture and the cultures of contemporary Israel. Indeed, there are other marginal cultural groups—such as women, religious Israelis, and the gay-lesbian groups—which I will not focus on in length, however, via specific studies I will relate to some of these groups as well. For example, I will discuss the writing of Ethiopian women as instances of a double marginality.

Second, I launch a comparative discussion of questions that can streamline the definition of what Israeli literature and Israeli culture are. Writing on the literature of several national and ethnic groups demands a large spectrum of resources in different languages. There are more than a few studies addressing some of these literary groups discretely. However, the main contribution of this book is its comparative goal; thus, although it is clear that the scope of each discussion on each group is a little restricted, only this approach can present a wide picture of what may be termed Israeli literature. This picture may be drawn through discussions of questions related to the nature of cultural capital; definitions of the literary center and its margins; modes of acceptance of literary works; major literature and minor literature; the language of the texts (Hebrew or another language) and the question of translation; the literary representation of lost (imagined) culture and the question of authenticity; the dialectic relationships between diaspora and homeland; and the concepts of space, place, and deterritorialization. This set of questions not only destabilizes the hegemonic concept of the boundaries of Israeli literature, but also subverts the ethno-Zionist ideology and culture, challenging any effort to present a single and consensual Israeli culture.

Third, I propose a series of theoretical discussions that may help to construct connections between the multicultural debate and the literary arena. The book breaks new ground for theoretical bridges between multicultural thought and analysis of the literary cultural field. This contribution points to certain attributes of what one could consider as an ethnic literature that challenges the ethno-national hegemony, revealing the overt and covert ethnic tensions, and thus questions some of the basic premises made by theories of multiculturalism.

Empirically, as described above, Israel is a multicultural state,¹⁰ comprised of a variety of national, ethnic, social, and cultural groups. Many scholars have tried to describe the unique situation in Israel and suggest different ways to handle the tension between the national and institutional center, and the wide and loud margins. Several studies have used the term ethnic democracy and categories of thin and thick multiculturalism to describe this issue in the Israeli context.¹¹ Many adhere to theories that have been developed in the field of political philosophy.

In this book, I have chosen to focus on two schools of multiculturalism. Each school suggests a theoretical basis that has been developed in different contexts of states and cultural groups, yet both have implementation in Israel. The first is the communitarianism-pluralist school; the second is the postcolonial school.

The communitarianism school was crystallized by Charles Taylor,¹² Michael Walzer,¹³ and Will Kymlicka,¹⁴ among others. It is grounded on liberal thought that respects and supports the individual’s rights, but casts doubt on liberal aspirations for achieving universal justice. Liberal theories of justice (like that of John Rawls, for example) try to formulate principles of universal justice, and place the individual at the center. Communitarianist theories, on the other hand, acknowledge social and cultural contexts and the importance of belonging to a community. According to Walzer, a community possesses a culture and history that function within the nation-state; within a community, people have a sense of belonging and shared identity.¹⁵ According to Kymlicka and Taylor,¹⁶ groups should receive legal and cultural recognition of their ethno-cultural identity and distinctive customs, and receive a set of group rights.¹⁷

In Israel, the multicultural communitarianist school is embodied in pluralistic multiculturalism, and is principally represented by Nissim Calderon¹⁸ and Gadi Taub.¹⁹ Aware that Israel is a multicultural society, this school attempts to respond to the needs of cultural groups to achieve cultural recognition and to launch a dialogue, while also preserving Israel’s character as a nation-state and strengthening its basic values. As a result, it tries to create balance between acknowledging and nurturing different groups and conserving solidarity within the state.

Alongside the pluralist school, this research explores the postcolonial school that has strongly influenced multicultural thought in Israel. The postcolonial school—Franz Fanon,²⁰ Edward Said,²¹ Homi K. Bhabha,²² Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,²³ and others—seeks to subvert the division between the First and Third World by exploring the oppressive relations between the two. It is a critical school that paints a picture of a cultural struggle where the subordinated often lack any voice.

This position is represented in the Israeli context by Yossi Yonah,²⁴ Yehouda Shenhav,²⁵ Baruch Kimmerling,²⁶ Hannan Hever,²⁷ Ella Shohat,²⁸ and others.²⁹ It views the history of the Zionist project and the state of Israel in terms of oppression and colonialist exploitation that typify relations between the First and Third World, that is, between the West (Europe and the United States) and whatever is not Western. Israeli postcolonial-multiculturalism postulates that genuine multiculturalism is not possible in Israel, which is a nation-state, since centralized forces act to bolster the defined monocultural hegemony, helped by the mediation of power systems.

Both schools of multiculturalism can be implemented in the sphere of literary debate. For years, the chronicles of mainstream Hebrew literature (in fact viewed as Israeli literature) demarcated the literary generations and their interrelationships (e.g., the Palmah generation, the generation of statehood, the 1980s generation). It presented literature as a closed system, connected to the ostensibly homogeneous Zionist project, and created a canon powerfully based on the allegorical realism tradition. It was a partial picture that established a single literary narrative, disregarded the broader picture of Israeli literature, and did not recognize peripheral literatures which had been written—and are still being written—in the Israeli space. The abovementioned two schools confront this challenge and offer different views of the literary arena in general and the Israeli context in particular.

Supporters of the multicultural pluralist school propose cultural recognition and dialogue. Pluralist multiculturalism seeks to provide a place for more diverse cultural repertoires, including literary texts representing different cultures, and also to encourage the processes of narrowing the center, widening the margins, and building a flexible, changeable core. In fact, the pluralist picture provides a positivist and pragmatic interpretation of ways in which the literary field can be managed. Agents in the literary field compete for prestige and represent different types of Israeliness that find expression, for example, in acknowledging the legitimacy of other genres, in using different varieties of linguistic register, and in broadening and designing the role of authors and their relationship with the political and cultural establishments. According to the pluralistic school, publishing houses, periodicals, and academic researchers can and should provide place for different types of Israeliness. And yet, the different types of Israeli culture are nurtured by the collective core, a certain collective identity that can create solidarity.

This collective cultural core will always be a power-driven axiom for different cultural groups, since it creates disciplining and demarcates clear borders with the margins. For example, if the Israeli cultural core includes the Hebrew language, which acts here as cultural capital, groups whose mother tongue is not Hebrew are excluded. They will be forced to write in Hebrew (disciplining of language); or may choose to continue writing in the language of their culture, in which case they are doomed to remain isolated in the margins, writing only for their own minority group (for example, the literature of Palestinian-Israelis, the literatures of migrants from Arab nations, the FSU, and Ethiopia, each of which relates to the issue of language differently).

The Israeli pluralist approach is positivistic because it assumes a dialogue. It is also pragmatic because it does not ingenuously attempt to shatter the Israeli cultural core (which is probably impossible). However, even though one can adopt a pluralistic view for examining and analyzing the literary field, a certain collective cultural core stresses the fact that the multicultural literary situation contains disciplining elements.

An alternative way is to apply the postcolonial-multiculturalism position to the literary arena. Alongside the almost utopian program that stems from its ideological goal (annulling nationalism), coping with the multicultural issue is based on sharpening awareness to oppression and exclusion; exposing disciplining mechanisms and the power of central groups; and continually attempting to reveal silenced identities and narratives. These narratives include, for example, the conquered Palestinians; the Mizrahim who were forced to betray and forget their culture; migrants from the FSU who were forced to replace their language; and the migrants from Ethiopia who discovered their ethnic inferiority.

While the pluralist school proposes a positivistic option that features dialogue around the collective identity and encourages variants of Israeli culture, the postcolonial school attempts to protest and resist the mainstream and any other collective core. It can be direct or indirect resistance: it discloses the subordinated subjects, sometimes hybrid subjects. In the literary field, this school encourages and obligates critical coping with the presence of the hegemonic center, rejecting it as the focus of power.

The process of resisting any and every disciplining mechanism, as the post-colonial school proposes, can ostensibly provide the margins with relatively free expression. However, as I will show, this option is also restricting since it essentially creates another form of disciplining, albeit of a different nature. When postcolonialism becomes ideology it loses its self-criticism. It may encourage the writing of certain texts with similar agenda, and thus replace the old canon with a new one, using almost the same mechanisms of discipline. Several of the Mizrahi literature writers create such a new basis of power, suggesting an imperative that every Mizrahi writer should consent to. For example, when participating in certain literary events of Mizrahi writers, each writer should demonstrate specific political, poetic, and thematic ideas. This situation can lead authors who are seeking prestige and recognition to participate in specific ideological activities, and even adopt predefined norms of writing. Thus, when theoretical critical models function without any self-criticism,³⁰ freedom is again at risk, this time from within the margins. If Homi K. Bhabha distinguishes between the pedagogic and the performative,³¹ and argues that narratives of the margins are traditionally performative (not pedagogic), then over-theoretization and lack of self-criticism can transform the narrative of the margins into a kind of pedagogical narrative, serving a single monolithic goal.

Working with two theories and bearing their advantages and limitations in mind can lead to a new reading of Hebrew literature in the multicultural context. The challenge of multiculturalism is that it constantly seeks out the Other (in the Levinasian sense).³² The Other is always surprising and alarming, and it alone can urge us to be responsible. Only the Other—whether it is a literary stream, an unusual artist, or an innovative theoretical model—can promote a change in the literary field. It can change the forces at play in the field, in the present, the future, and even in the reflection of the past, as Bourdieu has suggested.³³ Someone with prestige will always aim to boost his legitimacy and dominance; that is, he encourages what is similar (or the same in the Levinasian sense), yet changes can only occur when the different appears. Working with one theory is like working with a single narrative—ultimately it leads us to the same. Working with several theories and using them when they are able to illuminate phenomena while also disclosing their limitations, as suggested, can provide a comprehensive and rich accounting of the issue, particularly by drawing attention to unique expressions of the other at different periods—diachronically, and in changing contexts—synchronically.

The theories presented in this study, their interrelationships, advantages, and limitations, are used in readings of the literatures of different cultural groups and guide the choice of specific works to be discussed in greater depth. As noted, I deal with cultural groups with national and ethnic attributes, but not with other excluded groups. My decision derives from the shared context of the ethnic groups that can facilitate a comparative study. Nevertheless, it is clear that each group has a different nature. The tension between forces operates differently and is manifested differently in each group, and each group is composed of individuals who do not always comply absolutely with the group’s narrative. Accordingly, the theories are applied differently in the discussions of each group.

The first discussion in the book focuses on the literature of Palestinian citizens of Israel, which was excluded and separated from Israeli literature. In the first decades of the state it was also interpreted as a genuine national threat, since there was an imagined connection between the Arabic language and the Palestinian national project, while Hebrew was strongly linked to the Zionist national project. In this chapter I explore milestones in the writing of Palestinian-Israelis, from the 1950s and 1960s until the present day, with authors such as Samih al-Qasim, Emile Habibi, Mahmoud Darwish, Zaki Darwish, Rashid Hussain, Taha Muhammad Ali, Tawfiq Ziyyad, and Siham Daoud.

In the first years following the Nakba, Palestinian-Israeli literature was isolated from Palestinian literature in the diaspora. Matters began to change in the wake of the 1967 war, when connections began to form between Palestinian-Israelis and Palestinians outside Israel in the Occupied Territories and in other countries. From that point on, the literature of the Palestinian citizens of Israel was considered part of the literature of the Palestinian diaspora, and was tied to what was termed by the Palestinians the literature of resistance.³⁴ These trends continued into the 1980s and 1990s, leading to the crystallization of a Palestinian national literature that lacked territory, which as such could serve as a point of reference for nationalist Palestinian-Israeli poets and authors. In tandem with this trend, over the years and particularly from the late 1960s on, more Palestinian-Israelis were influenced by an accelerating Israelization process, which became a source of inner criticism among Palestinian-Israelis.³⁵ Moreover, some authors chose to write bilingually in Arabic and Hebrew or even only in Hebrew (from Atallah Mansour in 1963 and Anton Shammas in 1986, through Na’im A’raidi, Salman Masalha, and up to Sayed Kashua and Ayman Sikseck in the present day). This writing was often a result of the processes of Israeli education that rendered the authors inarticulate in Arabic: in many cases, their use of Hebrew resulted from having lost their original culture.

This chapter focuses on several issues related to the place of a few Palestinian writers within the Israeli context. First, I discuss the place of language, and the phenomenon of Palestinian-Israeli authors and poets who write in Hebrew.³⁶ Language is a focus of disputes in a multicultural context. For the pluralists, Hebrew is generally thought of as part of the collective Israeli core. According to the postcolonial approach, adopting a language that is not one’s native tongue is like wearing a white mask³⁷ that adversely affects the authentic culture. Second, I investigate the ways the Israeli establishment has acknowledged Palestinian writers, for example, Emile Habibi with the Israel Prize for Literature and Mahmoud Darwish regarding the issue of literature curricula in Israeli schools. These discussions describe the wider literary array, consisting not only of the literary community (authors, publishers, periodicals, and scholars), but also of state institutions and the educational establishment alongside it. Engaging with the question of the boundaries manifest in this literature, I focus on the process through which Israeli society accepted Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Returning to Haifa through its appropriation in Sami Michael’s novel Pigeons in Trafalgar Square and its dramatized version performed at the Cameri Theatre. Finally, I analyze the metonym of the identity card that reflects the hyphenated identity in the writings of Mahmoud Darwish and Sayed Kashua—representing two antagonistic poles in relation to this issue.

Mizrahi literature and the question of authenticity stand at the core of the second discussion. The migration to Israel of Jews from Arab nations during the 1950s resulted in demographic and cultural changes in the state. Many now realize that the process of absorbing the migrants from Arab countries was tainted by patronizing attitudes from the Ashkenazi citizens and discriminatory approaches from the Israeli establishment. Scholars identified with the Mizrahi discourse, such as Yehouda Shenhav,³⁸ Sami Shalom Chetrit,³⁹ and Ella Shohat,⁴⁰ represent the process as a colonialist program for ethnic oppression.⁴¹ Others maintain that it was performed in good faith and stemmed from the perception that only a united cultural core could create solidarity in the nascent nation, compounded by the belief that all migrant Jews, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi alike, should abandon their culture of origin. In this chapter I present the Mizrahi narrative against the backdrop of Israeli culture’s central narrative, and explore the literary expressions of Mizrahi writers and the manner in which they integrated and continue to integrate into Israeli society.

Mizrahi literature, or the literature of Arab-Jews, has been written from the first decades of the twentieth century. From the 1950s, it was engendered by the twin traumas of migration and absorption, and the need to confront negative images and inferior status in terms of culture and Arab identity.⁴² I discuss some prominent representatives of Mizrahi literature in chronological order, including Shimon Ballas, Jacqueline Kahanoff, Sami Michael, Eli Amir, Dan Benaya Seri, Ronit Matalon, Sami Berdugo, Dudu Busi, Haim Sabato, Moshe Sakal, and Shimon Adaf; and Erez Biton, Ronny Someck, Sami Shalom Chetrit, Mois Benarroch, Haviva Pedaya, Almog Behar, and Mati Shemoelof in poetry.

Mizrahi literature has a unique dialogue with Palestinian-Israeli literature, and continues to do so. First, Mizrahi writers were raised on Arabic culture and literature, only to discover on arriving in Israel that both were perceived as inimical and inferior. Until the 1970s and 1980s, many were forced to abandon their mother tongue. They adopted Hebrew in its place, and realized that Hebrew literature allocated them a place on the margins. An opposite process was underway in the 1990s, with the rise of the discourse of subordination and post-colonial debate. Their attempts to be accepted by the mainstream were replaced by persistent efforts to re-create an authentic culture and reconnect with their Arabic roots. The transition from being nicknamed Mizrahim to choosing their own name, Arab-Jews, reflects the process of formulating the group’s self-definition. This current could bring about the seeds of optimism, yet, as described previously, the new power in the hands of Mizrahi literary groups, backed up by concrete theories of writing and reading, created a new system of disciplining laws that, in fact, again immobilized Mizrahi literature, though this time with different frameworks.

I describe this cultural-historical process through several separate studies: the first is a discussion of Almog Behar’s poetry and prose as a case study for confronting questions of authenticity, memory, and language; the second focuses on the representation of the Mizrahi mother in Ronit Matalon’s and Sami Berdugo’s novels. I will discuss Shimon Adaf’s work in terms of writing peripheral novels that create deterritorialization, and conclude by questioning A. B. Yehushua’s Mizrahiness.

The third discussion studies the place of the literature of former Soviet Union migrants written in the arena of Israeli literature. The two waves of immigration from the Soviet Union, in the 1970s and the 1990s, constituted one of the largest ethnic groups that ever entered the state of Israel. In the 1970s migrants from the Soviet Union arrived in Israel, preceded by protests at home and abroad and prolonged struggles by Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union and immigrate to Israel. In the 1990s immigration increased with the disintegration of the Communist regime; it differed from the preceding waves in its demographic structure, numbers, and the motives for emigration. The large number of Russian speakers created a critical mass of consumers of Russian culture. The new arrivals were warmly received in Israel, probably due to the Western character of their culture. In the literary context, the background of authors and poets of Russian origin relies on the canon of Western literature, a canon that is also accepted as a core of Israeli culture.

The question of culture within the Russian migrant community is tied to the issue of language, and can be linked to the discussions in the previous chapters. Unlike the literature of migrants from Arab countries, who were forced at an early stage to abandon their mother tongue, perceived as the enemy’s language, in the literature of migrants from the former Soviet Union, the Russian language keeps its status as a highly European language with a glorious literary tradition, while Hebrew appears as a provincial language. Thus, metaphorically, Russian still dons the costume of an aristocratic lady, while Hebrew is turned into its handmaiden.⁴³

In this chapter I present three main discussions: the first focuses on Israeli literature that is written in Russian, the Israeli Russian literary scene, and its authors and journals. I discuss the writing of Gali-Dana Singer, Nekoda Singer, Mikhail Grobman, Anna Isakova, and Gendelev Mikhail, among others. The second discussion investigates the Gesher Theater as a unique cultural option of intercultural relations between Russian and Israeli culture. Finally, I elaborate on the writings of several authors who came to Israel as children and write in Hebrew, among them Boris Zaidman, Alona Kimhi, Alex Epstein, and Sivan Baskin.

Furthermore, I discuss the formation of the Russian-Israeli literary community, and its sense of belonging to the Russian diaspora on the one hand, and to the local Israeli culture on the other. In addition I discuss the question of language, both in the purely linguistic sense—adopting the Hebrew language versus continuing to write in Russian, as well as language in the aesthetic sense—literary language, literary style, its sources and influence, and the place of Russian and Israeli literature as sources of inspiration.

The literature of Ethiopian-Israelis is the focus of the fourth discussion. This chapter is the first study to present the voice of Ethiopian authors in Israel. Jewish immigration from Ethiopia and the Beta Israel community posed a major challenge to Israeli society, testing its capacity to understand, get to know, and include a group of Jews drawn from completely different religious practices and ethnic and cultural backgrounds. First, Israeli society considered the religious background of the Beta Israel to be unclear. Although Ethiopian-Jews used some Jewish practices, only during the 1970s did Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, then Chief Sephardi Rabbi, declare that the Jews of Ethiopia were included under the aegis of the Law of Return. Second, in Ethiopia, members of Beta Israel were considered relatively light-skinned, a preferable skin color in Ethiopian culture. However, in Israel’s color hierarchy they found themselves pushed down to the very lowest levels. Moreover, the Beta Israel people came from a very different culture that had never been exposed to modernity.⁴⁴

The Ethiopian community is considered one of the smallest and most disadvantaged in Israeli culture. It is a relatively young community, as it came to Israel in the 1980s and 1990s. In literary terms, the group is represented by a very small number of texts. I present a few of the Ethiopian authors, such as Avraham Adage, Omri Tegamlak Avera, Asfu Beru, Gadi Yevarken, and Asher Elias, and offer the first methodical discussion of Ethiopian-Israeli literature. The Ethiopian-Israeli literature constituted itself as journey literature, stressing the liminal space between that of their childhood and of Israel, and between Jerusalem of their dreams and tangible Jerusalem. It is a liminal region that produces hybrid texts that mix biography and fantasy. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Beru’s work that introduces the voice of Ethiopian women.⁴⁵

Taken together, all chapters of the book and their theoretical, cultural, and aesthetic bases may provide an improved understanding and recognition of the field of Israeli literature in its ethnic multicultural context. The theoretical trajectory reflects fascinating processes in the history of various literatures, all operating within the Israeli arena, and offers a comparison and generalization of shared phenomena connected to canon shaping, the struggles between cultures, center-periphery relationships, the place of critical theories, and issues of authenticity and hyphenated identities. The picture elicited in this book, which is groundbreaking in its field, is intended to present new directions in the history of Israeli literature, as it constantly renews its boundaries and self-definition.

Notes

1. Amichai, Lo ca-brosh, translated by Channah Bloch and Stephan Mitchell.

2. Shaked, Gal hadash (New Wave).

3. On the rifts in Israeli society, see Ben-Rafael and Peres, Religion, Nationalism ; Peres and Ben-Refael, Kirva u-merivah (Closeness and Enmity); Ben-Refael, Ethnicity, Religion ; Mizrahi and Russian; Kop, Pluralism be-Israel (Pluralism in Israel); and Horovitz and Lissak, Metsukot be-utopiah (Trouble in Utopia). The term rift is in itself conflictual. I prefer to address the social reality in terms of the arena of dispute and conflict between groups, each of which has a different version of Israeliness, as they operate within a single space reciprocally influencing and being influenced by the other.

4. Ben-Gurion, Mivtsa dorenu (The Mission), in Kokhvim ve-afar (Stars and Dust).

5. Hever, Ha-sipur ve-ha-leom (The Story and the Nation), 211–38.

6. In parallel to this change, in the recent decades the concept of assimilation has been criticized harshly in the world and specifically in the American context. As Alba and Nee phrase it: assimilation has come to be viewed by social scientists as a worn-out theory which imposes ethnocentric and patronizing demands on minority people struggling to retain their cultural and ethnic integrity (Rethinking Assimilation, 827).

7. Peleg, Israeli Identity, 662.

8. For example: Hever, Ha-sipur ve-ha-leom (The Story and the Nation); El ha-hof hamekuve (The Hoped-for Shore); Brenner, The Search for Identity; Inextricably Bonded ; Shemoelof, Shem-Tov, and Baram, eds., Tehudot zehut (Echoing Identities); Berg, Exile from Exile ; Margins and Minorities; More and More Equal ; Singer and Singer, Nekudotaim (Colon); Gershenson, Bridging Theatre; Gomel, Atem vaanahnu (The Pilgrim Soul). See also the articles in Cammy and others, Arguing the Modern ; Mintz, Boom in Israeli Fiction ; Abramovich, Back to the Future .

9. Bourdieu, Distinction ; The Field.

10. Smooha, Rav-tarbutiut (Multiculturalism).

11. See Smooha, Ethnic Democracy; The Model of Ethnic; Ghanem, Rouhana, and Yiftachel, Questioning ‘Ethnic Democracy’; Amal, Beyond ‘Ethnic Democracy’; Tamir, Shnei musagim (Two Concepts); Margalit and Halberthal, Liberalizm vehazkhut (Liberalism and the Right); Mautner, Sagi, and Shamir, Hirhurim al ravtarbutiut (Thoughts on Multiculturalism).

12. Taylor, The Politics of Recognition.

13. Walzer, Comment; Sphere of Justice; What It Means .

14. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community; Multicultural Citizenship ; Kymlicka and Cohen-Almagor, Miutim adatiyim (Ethnocultural Minorities).

15. Walzer, What it Means, 92–103; Sphere of Justice.

16. See also Walzer’s response to Habermas in the book edited by Gutmann, presenting Taylor’s essay and the ensuing debate (Habermas, Struggles for Recognition). See also Spinner-Halev, Cultural Pluralism. For survey of the major philosophical ideas of this school see Dahan, Teoriot shel tsedek (Theories of Social Justice).

17. Taylor, The Politics of Recognition.

18. Calderon, Pluralistim be-al korham (Unwilling Pluralists); Min ha-ribuy (From Solidarity).

19. Taub, Ha-mered ha-shafuf (A Dispirited Rebellion).

20. Fanon, Black Skin .

21. Said, Orientalism; The World .

22. Bhabha, Nation and Narration; The Location of Culture .

23. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?; Death of a Discipline . See also Jameson, Third-World Literature.

24. Yonah, Medinat kol ezraheiha (A State of all Its Citizens); Israel As a Multicultural; Bizkhut ha-hevdel (In Virtue of Difference).

25. Shenhav, Zehut be-hevra (Identity in a Postnational); Ha-yehudim ha-aravim (The Arab-Jews); Yonah and Shenhav, Rav-tarbutiut ma’hi? (What Is Multiculturalism?).

26. Kimmerling, Ha-israelim ha-hadashim (The New Israelis); Kets shilton (End of the Rule); Mehagrim, mityashvim (Migrants, Settlers).

27. Hever, Ha-sipur ve-ha-leom (The Story and the Nation); El ha-hof ha-mekuve (The Hoped-for Shore); Hever and Shenhav, Ha-mabat ha-postcoloniali (The Postcolonial Gaze).

28. Shohat, Zikhronot asurim (Taboo Memories); Israeli Cinema ; Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism .

29. Yonah and Shenhav, in Rav-tarbutiut ma’hi? (What Is Multiculturalism?) propose six theoretical traditions of multiculturalism: the communitarianist tradition; the liberal; the postmodern; the postcolonial; the feminist; the queer tradition; and the postnational tradition. In this research I have chosen to divide the Israeli groups dealing with multiculturalism in Israel into two pivotal schools. It is worth noticing that the meaning I award to postcolonial-multiculturalism in the Israeli context is not identical to the theoretical context that Yonah and Shenhav propose. This is because in the Israeli arena, as noted, that postcolonial-multiculturalism also entails post-Zionism and postnationalism.

30. Kohavi, Lehahzik et ha-ktsavot (Holding the Ends); Barry, Culture and Equality .

31. Bhabha, Nation and Narration , 299.

32. Levinas, Reality and Its Shadow; Totally and Infinity .

33. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural, 314.

34. Ballas, Ha-sifrut ha-aravit (Arabic Literature); Elad-Bouskila, Modern Palestinian Literature .

35. Bishara, The Israeli-Arab.

36. Buchweitz, Abed-Alrahman, and Fragman, Likhtov bisfat ha-aher (Writing in the Other’s); Brenner, The Search for Identity; Inextricably Bonded ; Caspi and Weltsch, From Slumber .

37. Fanon, Black Skin .

38. Shenhav, Ha-yehudim ha-aravim (The Arab-Jews).

39. Chetrit, Ha-ma’avak ha-mizrahi (The Mizrahi Struggle).

40. Shohat, Israeli Cinema; Zikhronot asurim (Taboo Memories).

41. Aboutboul, Grinberg, and Motzafi-Haller, Kolot misrahiyim (Mizrahi Voices); Shemoelof, Shem-Tov, and Baram, eds., Tehudot zehut (Echoing Identities).

42. Berg, Exile from Exile ; Margins and Minorities; More and More Equal .

43. Singer, " Ivrit—be-shtika" (Hebrew—Silently); Singer and Singer, Nequdoteim (Colon); Gershenson, Bridging Theatre; Gomel, Atem va-anahnu (The Pilgrim Soul); Isakova, Dag ha-zahav (The Goldfish); Leshem and Lissak, Mi-Russia le-Israel (From Russia to Israel); Ronell, Some Thoughts; Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, Nir’ut bahagira (Migration and Visibility).

44. Ben-Eliezer, Becoming a Black Jew.

45. On multiculturalism and gender, see Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad .

CHAPTER 2

The Literature of Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Literature of Boundaries

The right of return is the right to narrate, and the narrative that unfolds here in the Hebrew translation gives the right to tell back to its holders. And the holders, who were driven off the map, out of the homeland, and out of history, are returning now to realize their right to speak in memory, through the very language that has expropriated their voice and erased their map.¹

Elias Sanbar, a Palestinian historian and novelist, depicts the tragedy of Palestinian-Israelis as follows:

The contemporary history of the Palestinians turns on a key date: 1948. That year, a country and its people disappeared from maps and dictionaries … The Palestinian people does not exist, said the new masters, and henceforth the Palestinians would be referred to by general, conveniently vague terms, as either refugees or, in the case of a small minority that had managed to escape the generalized expulsion, Israeli Arabs. A long absence was beginning.²

Al-Nakba (in Arabic: the catastrophe) of 1948, resulting in the establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of many Palestinians, was one of the most important events in the process of the creation and consolidation of the modern national Palestinian identity, which began roughly at the turn of the twentieth century. The Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 consider it to be the starting point of their inner struggle for identity. Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 war, but remained within what became Israel, lost their villages, houses, lands, and property to the State’s Custodian of Absentee Property. They were termed present absentees. In many ways the phrase present absentee can serve as a metaphor for the lost identity of the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.³ In Israel, the Palestinians became present absentees: since Israel is their home, but is primarily defined as a Jewish state. Hence they cannot fully identify with its symbols, be it the flag, the national anthem, or the menorah.

Sanbar claims that Palestinian citizens of Israel were, and still are, defined in vague terms, such as refugees or Israeli Arabs. The term Israeli Arabs creates a link to a certain community and history (as in American Arabs or American Jews). This term is meant to blur the nationality of the Palestinians who threaten the legitimacy of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish People (Am Israel). Contrary to the term Israeli Arabs, the hyphenated term Palestinian-Israelis, which I will use here, is problematic because it emphasizes the conflict between the two nationalities and stands almost as an oxymoron. During an interview, Haneen Zoabi, a member of the Balad political party in Israel, confessed that while she was studying at the Hebrew University and chose to define herself as a Palestinian she was criticized by her fellow Jewish students who basically said You are not a Palestinian, you are an Israeli-Arab. If you define yourself as a Palestinian, it means you are not loyal to Israel. To which she responded that Israel is not loyal to her, since it is a Jewish country, with Jewish values and symbols.⁴ In fact, since Israeli and Palestinian are both nationalities, there is a logical contradiction in defining someone as a Palestinian-Israeli. There is thus an unresolved tension between being Palestinian by nationality, and being Israeli by citizenship.

How does this split, polarized identity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel find expression in their literature? And how is that literature received in Israeli society? These are the questions explored in this chapter.

After a short review of the literature of Palestinian-Israelis, presenting several pivotal authors, the chapter focuses on a number of major issues, and historical and cultural events that shed light on the relationships between the literature of Palestinian-Israelis and the Israeli cultural and literary arena. First, I discuss the phenomenon of Palestinian-Israelis who opted to write in Hebrew. Second, I examine three stories of acceptance: the awarding of the Israel Prize to Emile Habibi; the debate over the inclusion of poems by Mahmoud Darwish in the literature curriculum of Jewish-Israeli schools; and the form of acceptance of the Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani in Israeli society, as a case study that questions the boundaries of Palestinian-Israeli literature. Finally, I present a literary analysis of the metaphor of the Identity Card, as reflected in the work of two Palestinian-Israeli authors who represent different poles in Palestinian-Israeli culture—Mahmoud Darwish and Sayed Kashua.

The Literature of Palestinian Citizens of Israel

My poetry caused me problems from the start. It led me to clash with the military government. This is how it happened: I was in the eighth grade when celebrations were held marking the tenth anniversary of Israel’s creation. Huge festivals were organized in Arab villages, as part of the anniversary, in which schoolchildren were to participate. The school principal asked me to take a part in the festival to be held in Deir al-Assad. For the first time in my life, wearing shorts, I stood before a microphone, and recited the poem Akhi al Ibri (My Jewish Brother). It was an appeal by an Arab child to a Jewish one: let’s play together under the sun that shines with the same color on an Arab village and a Jewish kibbutz. In that poem, I poured my heart out to the Jewish child, and described my suffering. I told him that I don’t have what he has. I wrote to the Jewish boy: you can play, you can build toys, you have a home. But I’m a refugee. You have holidays and celebrations, but I don’t. And why don’t we play together? The day after the festival, I was summoned to the military governor, whose office was in Majd al-Krum. Remember, I was only 14.⁵

In 1965, Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008), who would one day become the Palestinian national poet, left Haifa on a day trip to Jerusalem, despite the injunction prohibiting him doing so, to read his poems at the Hebrew University. The event culminated with his arrest. At that time, Darwish was an Israeli citizen, a central member of the Israeli Communist party. The injunction had been in place since he was 19, and as soon as he decided to breach it in order to read his poems, he was arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment. Born in al-Birwa in Western Galilee, Mahmoud Darwish fled to Lebanon in 1948 with his family when the village was destroyed. A year later, the Darwish family returned, this time to the Acre region. Darwish attended high school in Kfar Yassif village, and eventually relocated to Haifa. His first anthology of poems Asafir Bi-la ajniha (Wingless Birds) was published when he was 19. He was frequently arrested, and in 1967 was placed under house arrest because of his poems.

The case of Darwish—in which an individual is arrested and imprisoned because of his poetry—may seem to be an extreme example of the exclusion Palestinian-Israeli authors were faced with. Yet, legal sanctions have accompanied Palestinian-Israeli authors from the very first days of Israel until now. In 2010, more than four decades after Darwish’s arrest when he planned to read his famous poem Identity Card, another, less-known Palestinian author—Ala’ Hlehel—was forbidden to visit Beirut to participate in the Beirut 39 conference, where he was to be awarded a major prize. Hlehel is an author, journalist, and translator. He was born in 1975 in the village of Jesh, studied communications at Haifa University, and worked for the al-Itihad newspaper, where he founded the Culture and Society supplement. Additionally, he is a broadcaster and editor for Arab radio stations. He writes on theater and film and lectures at Sapir College and in the academic track of the College of Management. Several of Hlehel’s books have been printed by publishers in the Arab world, and translated into other languages—though the first translation of his work into Hebrew appeared only in 2012.

The Beirut 39 conference was an initiative of UNESCO and was held in Lebanon. Hlehel was invited to this conference to receive a prize acknowledging his writing. However, Israel’s Minister of the Interior turned down Hlehel’s request to travel to Lebanon, which is classed as a hostile country.⁶ When Hlehel appealed to the Prime Minister, his request was rejected again. With assistance from the Adalah organization, and equipped with a reference from Sami Michael, a Jewish-Israeli author (who was born in Iraq), Hlehel decided to petition the Supreme Court to lift the ban. The Supreme Court decided to approve the visit after noting that there was no negative information in the matter of the petitioner. Hlehel, who was then in London, was delighted with the decision and said: As an Arab Palestinian author, for myself and all my colleagues engaged in culture and art, this step strengthens our being an integral part of the general Arab cultural landscape, that is our immediate, natural environment. Beirut and Damascus are integral parts of our history, our present, and future.⁷ Sami Michael, who advocated for Hlehel, emphasized that Hlehel is a gifted author and an Israeli citizen who insists on behaving as a ‘good citizen’ should, in the legal meaning of the term; he refuses to go to Lebanon unlegally, as quite a few politicians did. He demands that Israel recognize his elementary right to be a law-abiding citizen.

Forty-five years elapsed between Mahmoud Darwish’s jail sentence and Hlehel’s struggle to visit Lebanon, receive the literary award, and meet with Palestinian authors of his generation who live elsewhere than Israel. While those forty-five years reflect a change in the way the Israeli establishment and society accept Palestinian-Israeli authors, they also illustrate that exclusion is still alive and thriving. Hlehel’s story reflects the integration of Palestinian citizens of Israel into Israeli society. By appealing to court, he made use of the political and judicial systems, as a citizen with rights, to try and rectify the wrongdoing. This incident also points towards the place of Mizrahi Israeli Jews, particularly Jewish-Arab authors and literary scholars, whose access to Arabic makes them allies with their Palestinian counterparts.

In academic and public discourse, Arab/Palestinian literature written in Arabic is separated and excluded from Jewish literature (generally written in Hebrew). This exclusion derives from the assumption that the Arabic language is part of the Palestinian national project, while Hebrew is strongly tied to the Zionist national project. Thus, as Salma Khadra Jayyusi claims, While the Israelis have related to the country as if the Palestinians did not exist, the Palestinian literary identity has never been visible to the Israelis, and could never be.⁸ The history of mainstream Hebrew literature underscores a generational transition between one literary generation and the next; as though they were part of a closed system. However, the multicultural Israeli literary context creates a constant rupture in this centralized narrative, unraveling the hermetic connection between Israeli literature and the ostensibly homogeneous Zionist project, and opens up the canon of Israeli literature to other voices. Palestinian literature is arguably the most foreign literature that has a presence in the multicultural system in Israel. Mizrahi, Russian, and Ethiopian literature are also excluded from the canon, but have never been so blatantly presented as discrete from and beyond the literary establishment.

Shimon Adaf defines two types of literary exclusion: exclusion of the different, and exclusion of the equal.⁹ Excluding the different, he holds, is an overt exclusion, in which the establishment spurns a specific literature and hinders it from flourishing. Excluding the equal is a covert exclusion that finds expression in the power relations which sustain disciplining processes and dictate to the minority group demands and a defined location in the literary hierarchy. While exclusion of equals is reflected within the literary arena and relates to most of the minority cultural groups, excluding the different relates mainly to the literature of Palestinian-Israelis, since this is the only case where there is an overt attitude with judicial sanctions.

Palestinian-Israeli literature developed within the Palestinian community in Israel. It is the literature of a minority group with a hybrid identity. In part, it is a patently Palestinian national literature, created as an opposition to Israeli national literature. Thus, it attempts to nurture itself on contemporary Arab literature. Yet, Israeli identity, culture, and literature seep into these Palestinian authors consciously or unconsciously, fashioning a unique compound that may be called a Palestinian-Israeli literature.

Palestinian nationalism, as Amal Amireh points out, has consolidated itself in defeat.¹⁰ This loss is a loss of identity and a loss of narration. Ahmad H. Sa’di claims that after the trauma of 1948, the "Palestinians have had to resort to different venues