From Madness on to Sanity: A. B. Yehoshua's Shifting Perspective on the Diaspora

50 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 FROM MADNESS ON TO SANI1Y: A. B. YEHOSHUA'S SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE ON THE DIASPORA by Gilead Morahg Gilead Morahg is Professor of Hebrew at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he serves as Chairman of the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. A. B. Yehoshua is one of Israel's foremost literary artists. He is also a political activist and the author of many essays on social and ideological issues. In both his fiction and his essays Yehoshua has long been concerned with what he regards as the unhealthy and potentially destructive effect of the Jewish Diaspora on the emergent society and culture of the Jewish homeland. The conventions ofcontemporarycriticism have discouraged systematic examinations of the manner in which Yehoshua's social and political ideas are embedded and explored within the structures ofhis literary works. This is unfortunate, since for Yehoshua, as for many other writers, social perceptions and ideological convictions are integral components of the sensibility that generates his art. The intent of this essay is to determine how Yehoshua's stated ideological concern with the tensions between Zion and the Diaspora is transmuted into the narrative dynamics and signifying structures of two of his recent novels: A Late Divorce (1982) and Molkho (1987).1 Both of these books appeared in the aftermath of Between Right and Right (1980), Yehoshua's first collection of essays on Zionist questions. A brief summary of the views on the relationship between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora that are expressed in these essays 'An English translation of Molkho, titled Five Seasons (Doubleday), was published in 1989. The English translation of A Late Divorce (Doubleday) was published in 1984. Yehoshua's Shifting Perspective on the Diaspora 51 will provide a necessary context for the discussion of the novels that followed them. In Between Right and Right, Yehoshua writes that "the Diaspora is at the very heart of the. practical problems that the State ofIsrael is struggling with today. Understanding the phenomenon of the Diaspora is the key to understanding the Jewish nation and it, more than anything else, can help provide us with a reliable diagnosis of the cruel conflicts that are still plaguing this nation. »2 Yehoshua believes that the Jewish people continue to maintain a love-hate relationship with the Diaspora. He recognizes that the Zionist convictions which sustain the State of Israel and attempt to fashion its culture are still tenuous and far less inherent in the Jewish psyche than the view that regards the Diaspora "as a permanent, almost natural feature of the Jewish people.» In this view "theJews are a Diaspora people and that is their existential strength.... This view intuitively grasps the depths of the Jewish people's need for the Golah [Diaspora], how organically it is intertwined with the Jewish essence and Jewish spiritual creativity and therefore tries to regard the Golah as legitimate and normal. »3 Much ofYehoshua's publicistic effort is devoted to arguing that there is nothing legitimate or normal about the Jewish impulse towards Diaspora. He regards this impulse as a pathological manifestation of a deeply rooted Jewish fear ofreturning to the land ofIsrael and establishing an independent national commonwealth there. Because of this, he writes, a paradoxical, almost pathological, situation is created. The nation is drawn towards the Golab as a possibility inherent in its being, it abhors it, it does all it can to endure within in, but by·its steadily improving ability to live in the Golab it constantly pushes the return to its land further into the future.~ Yehoshua regards Zionism as the primary means of self-liberation from the Jewish fear of independence. But, very much like Brenner, who is one of 2A. B. Yehoshua, Bizekhut harlOnnaliut [A Plea for Nonnaley] (Tel Aviv, 1980), pp. 27-28. All subsequent page references to this book will be followed by an italicized reference to its English translation: Betweerl Right arid Right (New York, 1981), pp. 22-24. Although this book is more successfully translated than all of Yehoshua's other works, I often found it necessary to provide my own translations in order to...