Rhetoric and Nation: The Formation of Hebrew National Culture, 1880-1990

6. History and Mourning

229 6 History and Mourning The Reception of Moshe Shamir’s He Walked through the Fields “i a m opposed to jew ish history,” states Yudke, the protagonist of the 1942 short story “ha-Drasha” (The Sermon) by Hayyim Hazaz (1898–1973).1 Struggling to explain himself, he continues : “We really don’t have history at all . . . we never made our own history. Because we didn’t make our own history, the Gentiles always made it for us. Just as they turned the lights on for us and lit the stove for us and milked the cow for us on the Sabbath they made history the way they wanted and we took it whether we liked it or not. But it wasn’t ours, it wasn’t ours at all! Because we didn’t make it—because we would have made it differently—because we never wanted it to be the way it was. Others wanted it, and they forced it down our throats” (Hazaz 2005, 236). Yudke’s words were instrumental in shaping and forming the vision of history that was soon to be identified with Canaanism.2 Founded in the late 1930s by the 1. “The Sermon” is among the best-known short stories of the Hebrew canon and, as such, attracted much critical attention. For the reception of the story, see Dan Laor 1993. See also, among others, Michali 1968, 81–94; Miron 1959, 11–26; Parush and Dalmatzky-Fischler 2006; Wozner 2008. In English see, for instance, Bargad 1982, 82–86. 2. See also Laor 2001. On the Canaanite Movement in general and their conception of history in particular see, for instance, Diamond 1986; Gertz and Weissbrod 1987; Kuzar 2001, 197–277; Ohana 2012, 73–100; Shavit 1987. 230 ✦ Rhetoric and Nation poet Yonathan Ratosh (pen name of Uriel Halperin, who also adopted the name Uriel Shelah ˙ , 1908–81), Canaanism reached its apex in the 1940s. It exerted considerable influence over Jewish youth in Mandatory Palestine and the young State of Israel and, indeed, over Hebrew culture in general during that time, even though it never numbered more than a handful of active members. Whereas the Palestinianborn , non-religious Jewish youth forms a true Hebrew nation—so did Canaanites contend—exiled Jews do not form a national entity, for they lack a common territory and a common language. Indeed, the perception of a continuity or even a linkage between exiled Jews and Palestinian Hebrews was in their view completely misguided and even dangerous to the wellbeing of the Hebrew youth. Along these lines, Yudke contends that Jews have lost possession of their own history under the burden of exiled existence—characterized , so he insists, by “Oppression, defamation, persecution, and martyrdom. And again, oppression, defamation, persecution, and martyrdom. And again and again and again, without end” (237)— Jews have become passive subjects of a history determined by their hostile Others. With “no glory or action, no heroes and conquerors , no rulers and masters of their fate, just a collection of wounded, hunted, groaning, and wailing wretches, always begging for mercy” (237), Jewish history has no relevance for the nationalist project and should, therefore, be discarded. Hazaz’s Yudke manifests an embarrassed alienation from Jewish history, alienation commonly deemed the dominant mode of the Hebrew discourse of the nation of the time.3 As we have seen in chapters 4 and 5, the anxiety in the face of history was rearticulated in a wide range of texts central to that discourse. From the earliest stages 3. Following the establishment of the state of Israel, this embarrassing alienation was manifested in the attitude toward the survivors of the Holocaust. It changed dramatically after the Eichmann trial in 1961–62. For responses to the Holocaust in Israel and the change in the public perception of the European “exiled” experience see, for instance, Don Yehiya 1991; Keren 1998; Segev 1993; Shapira 1997a, 86–103; Yablonka 1999, 2004; Zimmerman 2002; Zertal 2005. History and Mourning ✦ 231 of the establishment of nationalist communities in pre-State Palestine, however, this anxiety was accompanied by an opposite one: an anxiety lest the nationalist native youth in Palestine be ignorant of and even antagonistic toward the European Jewish experience and traditions. Such ignorance and antagonism were considered a lack of historical consciousness.4 A case in point is the cultural criticism of David Kenaani (1912– 82), a major literary figure from the...