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6 Fragments of Life: From the Diaries of Two Young Women - - - Deborah S. Bernstein and Musia Lipman Introduction A search in the archives turned up two diaries, fragments of the lives of two young women. Both are, at one and the same time, unique individuals, anonymous young women, and typical figures of their time. Anya arrived in Palestine in 1912 and left less than two years later, in 1914. We know little of her before and after her period in Palestine, though her main whereabouts during this period can be charted1 (Tsur, 1984:30-43). Anya came from Berdichev , a well-known center of Jewish religious life in the Pale .of Settlement, to Palestine towards the end of 1912. She went directly to MigdaF and moved on from there to Jerusalem, to Ben Shemen,3 to Kinneret.• She left the country on the eve of the First World War. We do not know if she returned to Russia or moved westward. The world was entering a period of vast turmoil and we have no later information concerning her. R. has less of a clear identity. We don't even know her full first name. We don't know exactly where she came from, though we do know that she came from Russia and actively experienced the Russian Revolution. R.'s writing is somewhat less fragmented than Anya's. Though she does not write regularly , her writing does extend over a much longer period of time (from 1925 to the last entry in 1937), giving us some sense of continuity and somewhat greater insight into the ways she tried to resolve the dilemmas she confronted. Anya and R. were both women pioneers, halutzot. They were both searching for a sense of self, and acutely aware of their search. For both the private and the public were indivisible-love, work, self, the collective to which they belonged, the movement in which they participated, the land to which they came, were all part 145 146 Deborah S. Bernstein and Musia Lipman of their aching search for meaning, for integration of self, for sense of self. None of these components was simple, the integration of all, so deeply sought for, was the constant theme of their fragmentary writing, never really achieved by either. Anya and R. come across, from between the lines of their diaries , as very different young women. Different in temperament, in style of writing, in their ways of dealing with their similar dilemmas . In temperament they strike the reader as being of an almost opposite nature. Anya, possibly younger than R.,5 appears to be tossed about by her inner torment and search for sense of self. She appears deeply depressed, often at loose ends, crying out for a sense of control over her life, for support, for an outstretched hand .. . R. also conveys a deep sense of loneliness but appears very selfcontained and in control. She seems, above all, to be hard on herself rather than to cry out to others. She is far more steadfast, disciplined and decisive. No open questions, as for Anya, but instead crystal clear goals and priorities. Their writing, the very style and language used, seems to reveal and reflect these differences. Anya's diary is fairly typical of the diary "genre." It is often fragmented, confused, or written in private code, which makes it almost inaccessible to the reader. It was clearly meant to be private, very personal in nature. It was written in Russian, her mother tongue. R.'s writing has a very different quality. In her style, as in her story, the borderline between the private and the public becomes blurred. Her writing touches upon very intimate matters, and is written as a diary. Nevertheless , it was sent by the writer to be published.BIt is impossible to know at what point in the writing of the diary it was meant, by R., to be seen and read by a more general public. The diary was written in the awkward Hebrew of a non-native speaker. The style is often epigramatic, loaded with ideological pathos, strewn with capitalized words and stock pieties, generalizations about human nature and expressions of single-minded devotion to a well defined, unchallenged, ideological framework. Such linguistic style is in no way unique to R. but was highly typical of the pioneering activists. This is how they spoke, how they wrote, probably how they thought. The public took over the private, even in the diary. The strategies adopted...

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