The Unhomely In/Of Hebrew Literature

Abstract

A symposium dedicated to research and teaching of Modern Hebrew literature within the framework of a wide, interdisciplinary literary context, provides us with a precious opportunity to reflect upon our work in the field. For me, one course such reflection may take is a renewed consideration of literature’s embedded tendency to dismantle predominant narratives, among them monolithic national narratives which literature in general, and Modern Hebrew literature in particular, is often assumed to support and fortify. This is particularly relevant to my present research and teaching; My readings of the literature of some of the prominent authors of Hebrew literature of the past 100 years focus on their attempts at transgressing confined borders, by way of constantly searching for “decentered-ness” and exposing a fundamental yearning for otherness. These readings indeed expose literature’s embedded resistance to the canonization of a national narrative, founded on prescribed conventions of identity, place and time. I believe an emphasis on these subversive aspects of Modern Hebrew literature provides a ground for studying and teaching it in the context of such recently flourishing interdisciplinary discourses as Diasporic Studies, Exile Studies, Migration and Immigration Studies, Minority Studies, Trauma Studies and Post-Colonial studies in general.1 An outstanding example of a consistent resistance to a national narrative is the oeuvre of a unique and highly appreciated woman author of Hebrew prose, Yehudit Hendel. Hendel, a 2003 Israel Prize laureate, was a rather prolific writer until her death in 2014. Born in Warsaw in 1921 to “Bundist” parents who opposed Zionist ideology and refused to join their Hassidic family that had immigrated to Palestine, but later changed their mind, she arrived in Haifa at the age of 9.2 She began publishing short stories at a very young age, and in 1949, after a