Israel: Ingathering the Exiles

“Exodus from Egypt 33”

Marc Chagall (Etching, 1956)

Operation Magic Carpet Airlifts Yemenite Jews to Israel, 1949

The Idea of “Ingathering Exiles” Jewish religious belief stemming from the Bible (Prophets):

Isaiah 11:12 – He (the Lord) will hold up a signal to the nations

And assemble the banished of Israel,And gather the dispersed of JudahFrom the four corners of the earth.

Jeremiah 31:10: He who scattered Israel will gather them, And will guard them as a shepherd his flock.

Also a component of Jewish daily prayers: “Blessed are you, O Lord, who gathers in the dispersed of Your people Israel .”

Became a core focus of the Zionist political philosophy to increase immigration and settle the land

Goals of Today’s Lecture To see how the concept of “Ingathering”

played out in Israeli society and culture starting in the 1950s To understand the role of mainstream, native

Israeli writers To cite examples of Mizrahi (“Eastern”) authors

and artists who emerged later in Israeli society And to pose the question: How unifying or

inclusive is the label of “Israeli culture” today?

Consolidating the State through Culture: A Model of Hebrew Cultural Production

ValuesE.G. Labor, The Land,The Collective Good

Cultural Production

E.G. Literature, Poetry, Music,

Visual Arts

Political and Social

Ideologies

Who were the mainstream writers in the early years of the state? Dor Ba’aretz (the generation in the land / the

native generation): born to Ashkenazi immigrant families at the end of WWI and early 1920s

Because many of these writers fought in the War of Independence, this generation of writers is also sometimes known as the Palmach Generation or the Generation of Independence.

Common experiences shaped their writing: British Mandate the Holocaust the War of Independence and establishment of the state

Palmach Generation of Writers MOSHE SHAMIR

1921 – Born in Safed, Israel (died 2004)

Served in Palmach during War of Independence

Served in Knesset 1977-1981 Notable Works:

He Walked In the Fields (1947)

With His Own Hands:

The Elik Chronicles (1951)

FAMOUS LINE: Elik was born of the sea – Elik nolad min hayam.

He Walked in the Fields

Movie Poster1967

S. YIZHAR 1916 – Born in

Rehovot, Israel (died 2006)

Fought in 1948 War Served in Knesset for

17 years (MAPAI) Notable works:

“The Prisoner” (1949) Days of Ziklag (1958) Preliminaries (1992)

Center and Margins The Center: In the two decades surrounding the

creation of the Israeli state, mainstream cultural production was dominated by male authors of Ashkenazi origin who wrote about secular, socio-political concerns. The Hebrew canon served to reinforce the values and goals of the new state.

The Margins: Other voices such as non-European Jewish immigrants (Sephardim / Mizrahim), women, the religious, and Arab-Israelis, created as a cultural minority. These groups gained recognition only in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Name Game Sephardi (plural: Sephardim) – Jew of

Spanish/Portuguese descent from the word Sepharad (Spain)

Mizrahi (plural: Mizrahim) – “Easterner” or Eastern Jew from the word mizrah (East)

Oriental – refers to Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent

Levantine – from the Levant, a geographic area east of the Mediterranean

…all considered to be ethnically and culturally

OTHER than the Ashkenazi (European) Jews

Stirring Up the Melting Pot As the “Ingathering of the Exiles” became a

reality, and Jews immigrated to Israel from various countries during the 1950s, new elements were introduced to Israeli culture.

At the same time, the process of absorbing these immigrants was difficult. Reality of ma’abarot (transit camps) versus

dream of Promised Land Ties to place of origin and religious/family

customs versus pressure to “become” Israeli

Sallah Shabati (1964) Directed by Ephraim Kishon

Uses the amusing troubles of a North African Jewish immigrant to satirize the Israeli establishment and immigration bureaucracy

Quotable quote:"Lady, no work, no bread,

no housing, seven children, one in the womb, his name is Ben-Gurion.”

Conceptualizing Mizrahi IdentityAmmiel Alcalay:“During the 1950s and 1960s, over half a million

Mediterranean, North African, and Middle Eastern Jews came to Israel with little more than the clothes on their collective back. . . . Completely dependent upon state institutions intent on remolding them in their own image, choices were limited and autonomy, except in the most private sense, was unimaginable. . . . Active resistance often took the form of social and cultural movements and it is within these movements that a mizrahi consciousness developed.”

-Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing (1996), vii-viii

SHIMON BALLAS 1930 – Born in

Baghdad; educated in Jewish schools and the Communist movement

1951 – Arrived in Israel

Notable Works: The Transit Camp

(1964) A Locked Room (1980) The Other One (1991)“The problem of the exile, the problem of the stranger, the

problem of the man different from his environment—occupies me in all of my work . . .”

Shimon Ballas In His Own Words

“It is much more convenient for this mainstream establishment to refer to my work as the work of an ‘Oriental Jew.’ In other words, work that belongs on the margins, beyond the mainstream. This, however, absolves them of having to contend with my work on its own terms. ”

“…I came from the Arab environment and I remain in constant colloquy with the Arab environment. . . . The whole project of a nationalist conception, of Zionist ideology, of the Jewish point of view, the bonds between Jews in the diaspora and Israel, all of this is quite marginal for me and doesn’t play a major role, it’s not part of my cultural world. I am not in dialogue with the nationalistic or Zionist point of view, nor am I in dialogue with Hebrew literature . . . . If anything, I am in dialogue with language itself.”

-From “At Home in Exile: An Interview with Shimon Ballas by Ammiel Alcalay”

1937 - Born in Baghdad 1950 - Arrived in Israel Today he is the

director-general of the youth immigration division of the Jewish Agency.

Notable Works: Scapegoat (1984) Farewell, Baghdad (1992) Jasmine (2005)

ELI AMIR

“My generation's dream about the Land of Israel was of vast proportions, which generated a huge fall. . . . We came here borne on the wings of a dream . . .”

-Haaretz.com

Eli Amir in His Own Words

On what it took to write Scapegoat (pictured left) :

"It took me 20 years after I came to Israel . . . and, according to the experience of other writers who describe the crisis of immigration, it takes between 10 and 20 years until you can start writing about it. Immigration is such a deep experience, such a total uprooting of one's roots, that the day-to-day struggle tries to repress it, and we can't deal with it in the first years. It's an experience that interferes with and weakens the individual, constantly reminding you that you are different. Maybe one of the kids who is now arriving at the same age I did will write their Scapegoat 20 years down the line."

-Haaretz.com

SAMI MICHAEL 1926 - Born in Baghdad;

active in Communist party

1949 - Arrived in Israel Notable Works:

Equal and More Equal (1974)

A Trumpet in the Wadi (1987)

Victoria (1993) – the story of a young girl growing up in a poor courtyard in Baghdad at turn of century

Sami Michael in His Own Words

“You have to understand, I am not writing about the reality in Iraq for the Iraqi reader, but for the Israeli reader,

that these chapters of the past are a part of [the Israeli],

and I mediate them for him.”

-Interview in Yediot Aharanot, 1985

RONIT MATALON Born 1959 in Ganei Tikva

(new immigrants’ town near Tel Aviv) to Egyptian parents

1985-1990 - As a journalist for Ha’aretz she covered Gaza and the West Bank.

Notable works: The One Facing us (1995)

This novel, told through photographs and fragments, is about how being in cultural exile affects an Egyptian-Jewish clan.

Sarah, Sarah (2000)

The One Facing Us“The siblings went their separate

ways. Different times and places, different needs and experiences divided them; the few surviving photographs left great gaps in the story—empty spaces that the family filled with words, gestures, childhood yearnings that had become tainted by later hues, a desire to link past and future and a longing for other days, for the people they had been in other days, and for a place that had never been a homeland but that they had called home.” (-p.113-114)

DORIT RABINYAN 1972 - Born in Kfar

Saba, Israel Notable works:

Persian Brides (1995) Our Weddings (1999)

Set at the turn of the century in the fictional Persian village of Omerijan, Persian Brides tells the magical story of two young girls--Flora and Nazie Ratoryan--and their many neighbors in the almond tree alley in Omerijan where they live.

Dorit Rabinyan in Her Own Words

“I think books are written by people who stubbornly won't let go: of a moment to be forgotten, of a beauty or an injustice, but mainly of the their own past. We all have our childhood inside of us, we all miss a paradise in some sense: authors are constantly reliving it, retracing it as a profession. I think the present is to be experienced. Only when it turns into a past—after a second, an hour, a lifetime—can it become an inspiration.”

-Interview on Randomhouse.com

A Recent Scholarly Assessment “… the Sephardi writers, those from Arab and

Islamic lands in particular, have made great contributions to contemporary Israeli literature. They are among the first and foremost to write immigrant literature, to develop the political novel, and to restore the reconstruction of the past to the literary scene. As such, they are no longer the ‘other’ but an integral part of the development of Israeli literature.”

-Nancy E. Berg, “Sephardi Writing: From the Margins to the Mainstream” (1997)

Following the Same Pattern: Israeli Music Generally, as with literature, Mizrahi music

was marginalized by mainstream Ashkenazi culture in the first three or four decades of the state.

Middle Eastern-style music by Jews from Arab lands began to penetrate public awareness in the 1970s. Since it was hard for these artists to gain radio exposure, cheap cassette recordings were mass produced and distributed in the lower class neighborhoods near Tel Aviv’s old Central Bus Station.

Teapacks The members of the band

grew up in Sderot, a southern development town that initially housed Moroccan and Yemenite immigrants.

The band’s name refers to Tipp-Ex (European brand of White-out) and symbolizes how they are “a band who erased the borders between styles.”

Cover art from 2001 album, “Sitting in a Coffee Shop”

The Idan Raichel Project

Idan Raichel is a 29-year-old composer born in Kfar Saba to parents of Eastern European origin.

He was music director of the Army rock band during his army service.

His music takes inspiration from Ethiopian, Arabic, Yemenite, South American, and other musical traditions.

The triple-platinum first album (2002)

After the ingathering: what comes next?

“Israel Melting Pot” T-shirt , 2008

Immigrants after a rescue operation, 1948-49

Contact InformationPresentation ©Hannah Pressman, January 2008

pressman@u.washington.edu