Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Contemporary History
Angaben zur Quelle:
31,3 (1996) 567-595
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Commemoration
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Public opinion
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
Employing content analysis of texts that mainly address issues connected with commemorating the Holocaust, shows how the linguistic conceptualization of the Holocaust reveals the process of internalization of that event among the Jews of Eretz Israel and in the early years of the state. Focuses on use of the terms "hurban" and "Shoah", and the evolution of the concepts "Shoah u-gevurah" (Holocaust and heroism) and "Shoah u-tekumah" (Holocaust and rebirth). The word most frequently used by Jews in Eretz Israel and in the Diaspora until 1947 was "hurban" (destruction), the traditional Hebrew term to describe the destruction of the Temple, extended to Jewish sufferings in exile in general. The use of "Shoah", from 1947 on, implies the search for a special vocabulary to describe the fate of Europe's Jews, unprecedented in the continuum of Jewish historical experience. The second stage of integration of the Shoah into emotional and cognitive awareness took place between 1948-53, from the Israeli War of Independence to the Knesset enactment of the Yad Vashem Law. The vocabulary used by most speakers in the Knesset debate on that law reveals that, by then, the perceptions of the Shoah had been substantially formed as part of the national legacy and placed within a solid set of national, social, and religious values.
Note:
Appeared also in "Avar ve'Atid" 3 (1996).
URL:
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