From Destruction to Redemption: Israeli Literature and Cinema 1960-1990

Israeli Literature and Cinema FROM DESTRUCTION TO REDEMPTION: ISRAELI LITERATURE AND CINEMA 1960-1990 by Nurith Gertz Professor Nurith Gertz teaches Hebrew literature, film, and culture at the Open University in Israel. Among her books: Amos Oz (Monography), Literature and Ideology in Eretz Israel in the 193Os, and Motion Fiction; Israeli Fiction in Film. 55 Outwardly it appeared. that the Yom Kippur War (1973) rocked the Israeli consciousness and quashed the feelings of strength, confidence, and invincibility that the "new Israeli" had acquired after the country's swift victory in the Six Day War. In reality this feeling of confidence had been fragile and unstable even before then, as can be perceived in a number of central literary works written before the two wars and in the short period of time between them. These writings attempted to examine what lay beneath the national confidence: a sense of isolation, fears of devastation, and painful hopes for redemption. These were expressions of one of the most dominant narrativesl in Israeli culture during the 1980s, one which treated Jewish history as a 'An analysis of different le:XlS wriuen in one and the same culture reveals that despite their different forms and styles they are constructed on the basis of identical plots which appear and reappear in different variations. Such plots might be called master narratives in the sense )ean-Fran.;:ois Lyotard has given 10 this term: all-encompassing models by which people are asked 10 think, live. and die (see Lyotard, The Dijj'erend [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983J). They might just as well be called ideological narratives, for they transmit ideological messages, which although not formulated directly may be discerned in the subtexts. Such narratives articulate the common and shared world view of a given society,. provide legitimacy 10 its social order, foster integration between its members, and lead them 10 action. On the Hebrew literature during this period see, mainly, Gershon Shaked, Gailladash ba-Sijrut ha-'[lJrit (Merhavia, Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1971), and also Nurith Gertz, Hirbet Hiza'a Veha-boker SheLeMohorat (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz I-Iameuhad and the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1983). 56 SHOFAR Fall 1994 Vol. 13, No. 1 metaphysical progression leading the Chosen People from Destruction to Redemption and drove an irreparable wedge between Israel and the rest of the world. This narrative was especially prevailing in the political Right, where it was embellished with such ostensibly contradictory concepts as dramatic victories, Greater Israel, faith in military might, and the omnipotent strength of a powerful leader. It spread into mainstream Israeli society especially strongly after the Six Day War (1967) when the Right began to make deep inroads in both political and public affairs. After the Right ascended to power in 1977 it became even more dominant and was overtly expressed in leaders' speeches, newspapers articles, election advertisements , etc. The central literature of the 1960s and 1970s and the cinema of the 1980s dealt with this narrative critically and parodically. They described their Israeli protagonists' fear of destruction and annihilation, they fleshed out their feelings of isolation in an inimical world, and they emphasized the anxious anticipation that carried the protagonists to hopes of redemption. Thus they dealt with the destruction-to-redemption perception oftime during the years when the "Rightist" narrative was not central, criticizing the way in which the old Jewish fears of the world "that is all against us" were turned into national aggressiveness and also the way in which Israeli society turned war and destruction into the means of achieving exaltation and national redemption. Yitzhak Ben-Ner's story Alter the Rain2 is a description of Tel Aviv after it has been destroyed. It is a lawless city where roaming street gangs rule, while solitary frightened people wander through the streets because they fear to stay at home, for there, too, danger lurks. All hope for a sudden miracle-the discovery of oil in the desert, a diplomatic breakthrough with China-anything to end the nightmare and to "bathe them in a light of happiness. " In Amos Kenan's Holocaust II,3 written in part before but completed after the Yom Kippur War, the survivors of a...