Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
תיאוריה וביקורת; במה ישראלית
Angaben zur Quelle:
45 (2015) 115-137
Keywords:
Brenner, Joseph Hayyim,
;
Hebrew literature, Modern History and criticism 20th century
;
Hebrew literature, Modern Themes, motives 20th century
;
Jewish women in literature
;
Mothers and sons
;
Mothers in literature
;
Zionism in literature
Abstract:
The last two decades have witnessed a significant rise in literary representations of what had been, until then, a rather marginal character in Hebrew fiction – namely, the soldier’s mother. From the 1990s onward, its literary representations multiply. This paper traces the roots of this protagonist back to the historical-national context in which the question of the use of power by Jews was first raised: Yosef Haim Brenner’s early story Hu Amar Lah [He told her] (1905), which addresses the issue of self-defense in Russia’s pogrom-stricken Jewish communities. The story narrates a monologue by a seventeen-year-old boy who wishes to become “a new Jew.” He addresses his mother and begs for her support when he sets out to fight those who are attacking the Jews.The article looks into the provenance of the ideal of the national mother as it features in the son’s consciousness, and that ideal’s engagement with the figure of “the mother of seven sons.” The present argument is that whereas Zionist nationalism purported to shed the Jewish ideal of religious martyrdom in order to abandon the passivity and diasporic mindset associated with “the old Jew,” in the case of the mother’s role in the age of nationalism one can observe a clear continuity between the ideal of the martyr and the national ideal. In the manner of the popular midrash about religious martyrdom, the national ethos bids the mother to be willing to hand over her sons. The national ethos, however, does not merely reproduce the traditional role of the mother: it adds a new set of conditions and caveats. Referring to research on the gendered formation of modern nationalism (for example, Benedict Anderson, George Mosse), and on the masculine gendering of Zionism (for example, Anita Shapira, David Biale, Michael Gluzman), the present discussion points at the masculine ideal adopted by Zionist ideology. This ideal inevitably prescribes a template of motherhood in the national order, designed to assist the son in realizing his manhood, a process which reaches its apex and is tested in military confrontation and military service. Brenner’s story, then, initiates the image of the ideal Jewish mother whose son seeks to become a warrior.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
Permalink