The Divergence of Judaism and Islam: Interdependence, Modernity, and Political Turmoil

14. Space as a Demon and the Demon in the Space: Jewish-Muslim Relations in the Israeli Space in A. B. Yehoshua’s Literary Works

14 Space as a Demon and the Demon in the Space Jewish-Muslim Relations in the Israeli Space in A. B.Yehoshua’s Literary Works Carmela Saranga and Rachel Sharaby And cold and then shade and then the sun. And rocks and then plains and then wilderness, And a river and then a sea and then the land. And drunkenness and then sobriety and then desire, And closeness and then touching and then rejoicing. And contraction and then expansion and then erasure, And parting and then union and then life. The Liberated Bride, 2004, 434 Space has a broad semantic meaning that makes it difficult to present an exhausting definition. Nonetheless, it is clear that it is a basic dimension of existence and dictates the way in which we identify and understand reality and our position within reality.1 Space receives the meaning afforded by the people who are active within it. Without people and their activities, it is impossible to discern space, and without them, it is meaningless.2 Space is shaped as part of the structuring of social power relations, in which one party causes others to act in order to achieve a desirable goal. The image of space and its symbolic essence are an essential part of each party’s material essence, and it is an object for the hegemonic group’s ideological activity.3 Foucault claims that the bureaucratic encoding of everyday spaces, according to which every person and every event has a proper place, turns space into an ethical and hierarchical indicator of events and the people who take part in these events. Practical and Jewish-Muslim Relations in the Israeli Space in Yehoshua’s Literary Works · 271 symbolic encoding of the space controls our life via routine uses of binary metaphors, such as north-south, near-far, east-west. The foundation of these metaphors is the border between the center and the periphery and between “us” and “others,” and signifies inclusion and exclusion.4 A. B. Yehoshua is a master of the threads that are melted into plots, figures , and spaces, which create a focus for interpreting his philosophical understanding of “the life of the tribe.” His plots contain a repetition of the “conceptual theme,” a repetition that is as essential as a genetic code that generates these effects. This is a repetition of the “logical fatality” that binds small social mechanisms (man, woman, nuclear family, extended family) with large social mechanisms (tribe, nation, and national history).5 In his works Yehoshua repeatedly relates the “life of the tribe” using defamiliarization, which is a literary means that alienates a theme in order to emphasize it. Defamiliarization is found not only in the presentation of grotesque, realistic, and other figures but also in the descriptions of place, space, and time. Yehoshua uses strange combinations of background materials and condenses them. This is how an experience of space that is Paradise and that includes the dark side of Hell is created in some of his stories. Space becomes demonic in these descriptions of Paradise and is characterized by a distorted and demonic carnival atmosphere. Yehoshua’s diverse works reflect social, political, and cultural issues that pertain to past and present Jewish-Muslim relations in the given space. His direct and indirect references to these issues are found in many of his works: Facing the Forests, The Lover, and “The Last Night.”6 They also appear in The Liberated Bride and Mr. Mani and indirectly in A Journey to the End of the Millennium and The Mission of the Human Resource Man.7 In these works Yehoshua refers to the question of a common destiny and the bond between the two peoples. An intimacy between the Jewish hero and the Arab hero exists in the novel Facing the Forests. In The Lover and A Journey to the End of the Millennium, Yehoshua presents the bond between the Jew and the Arab as a closeness that sometimes exceeds the bond between the Israeli and a Jew from the Diaspora. Nonetheless, in The Liberated Bride he emphasizes the need for separation between the two peoples, which stems, in his opinion, from the demonic situation of being possessed. In this situation each party is pulled to the other side and sometimes pays with its life. 272 · Carmela Saranga and Rachel Sharaby Yehoshua is a political writer, and his worldview crystallizes in his books into a clear and concrete...