Forests,” describes the dissolution of the Zionist enterprise by an Arab and a Jew who collaborate in the act of destruction. The Jewish forest ranger whose mission is to watch over the symbolic forest sets fire to it, in collaboration with an old Arab who has found refuge in the forest. Thus, the old Arab avenges the destruction of his village during the war of independence and the obliteration of its site by the planting a forest on its ruins. The young Israeli joins him out of a desire to rebel against his parents, who have subjugated his life to a cause sacred to their heart—the guarding of the forest (the State) that they have created. (For a detailed analysis of Yehoshua’s story, see Gila Ramraz-Rauch, 128–40).
Yehoshua’s story is more extreme than any of Liebrecht’s, both in its violent tone and in its political implications. It not only gives vent to the guilt feelings of the younger generation in Israel, but also warns against a destructive eruption that threatens the entire Zionist enterprise because it has ignored the needs of the Arab minority. Liebrecht, on the other hand, is interested mostly in expressing the malaise of conscientious Jews, escaping to an unrealizable, momentary fantasy about resuming a harmonious relationship between Jews and Arabs. The dream of forming an alliance, of creating a brotherhood between Jews and Arabs, expresses the profound need to overcome the power struggle and the animosity that exist between the two peoples.
18. This is in contrast to the presentation of the Arab as the epitome of sexual attraction in Amos Oz’s “My Michael,” where he remains voiceless. Liebrecht grants the Arab in her story a more humane and complex presence.
19. The fierce tension between the Sephardic culture and the dominant Ashkenazic culture in Israel is described in Ella Shohat’s Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (115–78).
20. The mourning customs of the various ethnic groups in Israel are described in Phyllis Palgi’s book Death, Mourning, and Bereavement in Israel.
21. Sisterly bonding that transcends the deep chasms between orthodox and secular Jews in Israeli society is the theme of Liebrecht’s story “Purple Meadows” (published in the collection “What Am I Speaking, Chinese?” She Said to Him). The friendship that develops between two women whose lifestyles and world views are so different is motivated by a wish to rehabilitate the shattered life of a little girl. The girl’s life fell apart when her mother was raped and consequently became pregnant. The rabbis instructed her to abort the fetus, divorce her husband, and sever all ties with her daughter. This woman is, in fact, a victim of a double rape: the physical rape perpetrated on her body by a strange man, and the more horrendous spiritual rape perpetrated by members of her congregation under the instructions of the patriarchal religious establishment. Here, the affinity between the women is based on another element—on the bond created by female vulnerability. (The traits and practices of the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community are described by Menachem [130–33].)
22. Risa Domb discusses the patriarchal structure of Arab society in The Arab in Hebrew Prose, 1911–1948 (29).
23. This is how Gunew and Spivak define the (in their opinion) reprehensible attempt to represent marginal groups through “token figures” (416).
24. The status of women in the kibbutz is succinctly described by Calvin Goldscheider (162–63) and by Judith Buber-Agassi (395–421).
WORKS CITED
Agnon, S.Y. “Metamorphosis.” In Twenty-One Stories. New York: Schocken, 1970.
Ashkenazi, Nehama. Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary Tradition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.
Azmon, Yael and Dafna N. Izraeli., eds. Women in Israel: Studies of Israeli Society. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995.
Buber-Agassi. Judith. “Theories of Gender Equality: Lessons from the Israeli Kibbutz.” In Azmon, Yael and Dafna N. Izraeli., eds. Women in Israel: Studies of Israeli Society. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995,395–421.
Domb, Risa. The Arab in Hebrew Prose, 1911–1948. London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1982.
Friedman, Menachem. “Life Tradition and the Book: Tradition in the Development of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism.” In Israeli Judaism, edited by Shlomo Deshen, Charles S. Liebman, and Moshe Shokied. New Bruswick, N.J. and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995, 127–44.
Fuchs, Esther. “Apples from the Desert.” In Modern Hebrew Literature 3–4 (Spring 1988): 46–47.
Furstenberg, Rochelle. “Dreaming of Flying: Women’s Prose of the Last Decade.” In Modern Hebrew Literature 6 (Spring/Summer 1991): 5–7.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Goldscheider, Calvin. Israel’s Changing Society: Population, Ethnicity, and Development. Boulder, Co.: Western Press, 1996.
Gunew, Sneja and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. “Questions of Multiculturalism.” In Women’s Writing in Exile, edited by Mary Lynn Broe and Angela Ingram. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, 412–20.
Handelman, Dov and Elihu Katz. “State Ceremonies of Israel: Remembrance Day and Independence Day.” In Israeli Judaism, edited by Shlomo Deshen, Charles S. Liebman, and Moshe Shokied. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: 1995,75–85.
Holtzman, Avner. “The Holocaust in Hebrew Literature: Trends in Israeli Fiction in the 1980s.” Modern Hebrew Literature 8–9 (Spring/Fall 1992): 23–27.
Liebrecht, Savyon. Apples from the Desert (in Hebrew). Tel-Aviv: Sofriat Poalim, 1986.
———. “The Influence of the Holocaust on My Work.” In Hebrew Literature in the Wake of the Holocaust, edited by Leon Yudkin. Rutherford, Madison, and Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993, 125–30.
———. Interview with Argaman-Barnea, Amalia (in Hebrew). Yediot Ah’ronot, 6 May 1992.
———. Horses on the Highway (in Hebrew). Tel-Aviv: Shifrat Poalim, 1988.
———. On Love Stories and Other Endings (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Keter, 1995.
———. What Am I Speaking, Chinese? She Said to Him (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Keter, 1992.
Lugones, Marcia and Elizabeth V. Spelman. “Competition, Compassion, and Community: A Model for a Feminist Ethos.” In Competition: A Feminist Taboo? edited by Valerie Miner and Helen E. Longino. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1987, 234–47.
Niderland, W. G. “Clinical Observation on the ‘Survivor Syndrome’: Symposium on Psychic Traumatization Through Social Catastrophe.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 49 (1968): 313–31.
Oz, Amos. My Michael. London: Chatto and Windus, 1975.
Palgi, Phyllis. Death, Mourning, and Bereavement in Israel. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1973.
Ramraz-Rauch, Gila. The Arab in Israeli Literature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; London: I. B. Tauris, 1989.
Rattok, Lily and Carol Diamant, eds. Ribcage: Israeli Women’s Fiction. New York: Hadassah, 1994.
Shohat, Ella. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989.
Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.
Tammuz, Benjamin and Leon Yudkin, eds. Meetings with the Angel. London: Andre Deutch, 1974.
Wardi, Dina. Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.
Yaeger, Patricia. Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women’s Writing. New York: Columbia University