Yehudit Hendel: Writing on the Fringe

Yehudit Hendel: Writing on the Fringe

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YEHUDIT HENDEL: WRITING ON THE FRINGE

DINA RIPSMAN EYLON, PH.D.

Yehudit Hendel was the first female Israeli writer to achieve acclaim in the

decade following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. However, very few of

her works have been translated into English from the original Hebrew, and she is little

known outside of Israel. Hendel’s body of work deals with themes of traumatic loss — of

a homeland, mother tongue, community, family members and loved ones — in wars and

other calamities. Hendel’s heartrending characters struggle with their ordeals using

various escape mechanisms: denial, amnesia and mental illness. Thematically, several of

her early stories deal with the aftermath of the 1948 War of Independence and the social

conflicts of that era. As a member of Dor Ha’Palmakh, the first generation of Israeli

writers that composed literature that was distinctively Israeli, her initial writings followed

the conventions of the period. They ignored issues of gender equality and the lack of a

need for a specific female voice. Only in mid-career did Hendel find a voice of her own

and her work began to exhibit feminist characteristics.

Yehudit Hendel was born in 1926 in Warsaw, Poland to a Hasidic family,

descendents of Rabbi Yehezkiel of Kazmir. In 1925, Hendel’s grandfather sold his large

estate in Poland and along with his sons and daughters immigrated to pre-state Israel and

settled in Tivon. Afterward, her grandfather became one of the founders of Kfar Hasidim,

a small religious farming community near Haifa. In 1930, Hendel’s family joined their

relatives, settling in Tivon and later moving to the neighborhood of Nesher on the slopes

of Mount Carmel. When Hendel was a young girl, her mother died of typhoid fever. The

effects of this devastating event were to resurface continually in her writings. (In "A

Story with No Address" from her collection of short stories Small Change, the dead

mother’s spirit hovers over the daughter’s fiction and reverberates in many of the

daughter’s protagonists.) Hendel’s family next moved to Haifa, where she attended the

prestigious Reali High School. After graduating, she enrolled at the Levinsky College of

Education in Tel Aviv.



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In 1946, Hendel began publishing short stories in Hebrew dailies like “Ha’aretz”

and “Davar.” Even in these modest efforts, notes Dan Miron, the notable literary scholar

and critic, Hendel distinguished herself from her contemporaries by her inimitable

writing style and choice of subject matter. Miron suggests that whereas many of her

contemporaries focused on the mainstream of Israeli society, Hendel preferred to show

life on its periphery. This divergence would forever be her hallmark as a writer. On

several occasions, Hendel indicated that she agreed with this assessment. In an interview

for the weekly “Dvar Ha’Shavua” in January 29, 1988, she admitted: I wrote about the people on the fringe [of society] and not the heroes of the wars. I was always attracted to the marginal aspects of life and to the people who lived on the fringe. I wrote about the iceman from Nesher, and I wrote about the redheaded paralyzed young woman, asking to be seated under a speck of sun, in the light.

In 1947, while seeking shelter from a heavy rain at a café in Haifa, she met the

Israeli modernist painter Zvi Mairovich. Fifteen years her senior, he became the most

influential figure in her life. They married the following year in front of strangers. They

had two children: Dorit (1950-2007) and Yehoshua (Shuki, 1962). From 1949 to 1950,

the young couple lived in Paris. From 1950 until Mairovich’s death in 1974, Hendel lived

in Haifa, where much of her fiction takes place.

In 1950, Hendel published her first collection of short stories, Anashim Aherim

Hem (They Are Different). The book went out of print quickly, but remarkably, fifty

years later in 2000, was revised and re-printed. In the prologue of the enlarged second

edition, Hendel recalls her frustrating experience with the editing of the 1950 edition.

Without consulting, her editor changed the ending of one of the stories, "Kever-Banim"

(Unmarked Communal Grave), which deals with a father who loses his son in the War of

Independence. In the original ending the grieving father visits his son’s communal grave

on a stormy day. Upon leaving the cemetery, he numbly takes off his coat and places it,

along with a small rock, on the grave to protect it from the torrential rain. The story was

inspired by Hendel’s aunt, Pesia, who lost her son in the war and kept watch for him at

her window for two years until she died of a broken heart. Written just a year after the

war, this ending represented a radical notion that ran contrary to the norm where grieving

families endured and saw war casualties as heroic acts.



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The first edition of Anashim Aherim Hem included seven short stories. Four dealt

exclusively with the aftermath of the 1948 war. Loss of loved ones and the disabilities

incurred during the various battles are themes frequently revisited. "Zikhrono nifga,” (He

Lost His Memory) one of the stories written in 1948 and added to the 2000 revised

edition, is a delicate, touching narrative about a young man who suffers a head wound

during the war and consequently loses his memory. The story is told from the point of

view of his live-in girlfriend, whose reality becomes completely shattered as a result of

the young man’s injury. Although composed in the same year, this story differs

significantly in theme and style from the title story, “Anashim aherim hem” (They Are

Different) in which Hendel exposes the social inequality between new immigrants and

native-born Israelis. Told from the point of view of the immigrants, the underdogs,

Hendel depicts the prejudice and stereotypical attitudes held by the native-born Israelis

toward the newcomers, whom they regard as their social inferiors. In a similar fashion,

the author sides with the victims of war, the disabled and the displaced, becoming their

champion, even though Hendel herself was a member of the Palmakh and performed

military related activities.

In 1955, Hendel published her first novel, Rehov Ha-Madregot (translated as

Street of Steps in 1963). Unlike Anashim Aherim Hem, which went out of print quickly

and was essentially ignored by the critics, Rehov Ha-Madregot became an instant best-

seller. It won the Asher Barash Award, saw several editions, and was adapted for the

stage in 1958. A story of love in modern Israel, the novel portrays discrimination and

alienation between Jews of different ethnic backgrounds in the early years of the State.

Against the backdrop of the hills of Haifa, two young people, Avram "Ram" Bekhar, a

Sephardic Jew, and Erella "Ella" Dagan, from an Ashkenazi background, fall in love.

From the outset it is obvious that their romance is ill-fated, largely due to strong

opposition from Erella’s father. Hendel’s artistic talent intertwines a sophisticated

narrative using both dynamic and one-dimensional characters. The protagonists’ social

status is echoed in the ascending and descending of the hundreds of steps leading from

Haifa’s coast to the top of Mount Carmel.

After a long period of silence, Hendel published her second novel, Ha-Hatzer

Shel Momo Ha-Gdola (The Yard of Momo the Great) in 1969. Also known in its revised



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edition as Ha-Hamsin Ha-Aharon (The Last Hamsin, published in 1993), it was adapted

in 1971 as a television screenplay by the Israeli film director Yehuda Jud Ne’eman. Like

her earlier works, this psychological novel is set in Bat-Galim, a small seaside

neighborhood in Haifa, where Momo the Great rents out a room to Shaul, a Holocaust

survivor in his thirties. Hendel traces six hot summer weeks in which Shaul’s world is to

crumble. He starts an affair with Tamara, another tenant, who is depressed and

confounded by the loss of her baby girl and by two previous divorces. Her third husband,

Yoakhim, is practically unavailable and oblivious to his wife’s affair. The tale is replete

with obsession, loneliness and the psychological disintegration of three lost souls, and

ends with Yoakhim’s suicide. Menachem Perry, the book’s editor, noted that: "with her

fantastic realism, which combines restraint with restlessness, Hendel writes about people

who live carelessly yet try to hold onto life."

In April 1971, Hendel’s husband the artist Mairovich suffered a stroke that

paralyzed the right side of his body. Several weeks later, he started painting with his left

hand but needed constant care. On November 11, 1974, in the middle of a conversation

with his wife, Zvi Mairovich suddenly collapsed and died—three and a half years after

suffering a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body— after which Hendel nursed

him devotedly. After her husband’s death, Hendel decided against ever publishing the

manuscript she had been working on—though the movie Ztelilah Hozeret (Repeated

Dive, 1980, written and directed by Shimon Dotan) is based on this story.

Six years later, Hendel moved to Tel-Aviv, determined never to write again. Yet,

in 1976 she started to work on a semi-autobiographical piece, Ha-Koah Ha-Aher (The

Other Power), in which she revealed many aspects of her life with her painter-husband.

The book was published in 1984. In 1999 it was subsequently included in an exhibition of

Mairovich’s paintings in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Marking a turning-point in

Hendel’s writing career, Ha-Koah Ha-Aher is an intricate work centered on Mairovich’s

creative life, work and death. The various texts which compose the book were first

published in the kibbutz movement literary journal Siman Kriah during 1977-1983. The

intimate subject matter might be seen as an illustration of how Hendel created a coping

device to deal with the crisis she underwent after Mairovich’s death. In these poetic and

highly personal reconstructions of the painter’s career, she uncovers the meaning of



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living side-by-side with an artist who views art as an uncontrollable spiritual force, which

Hendel dubs "the other power."

Although they were married for twenty-eight years, Hendel always referred to her

husband by his last name, and does so in the book: "For many years I called him

Mairovich. The move to call him Zvi was difficult… After all I was his wife… it seems

to me that just a few called him Zvi…" As evident from the book, Mairovich was

obsessed with death. He suffered from insomnia, phobias and constant headaches, but

had a mesmerizing personality and a vivid sense of humor. When asked how she found

the courage to live with a man who talked incessantly about death, Hendel explained that

her real life began when she first met Mairovich. And her life, she continued, ended with

his sudden death.

Throughout the book, Hendel describes living in the shadow of Mairovich and

uses the phrase "living beside him" as opposed to "living with him" when she refers to

their relationship. Vehemently, she writes: "No. Life beside him wasn’t easy, but also that

which is beyond all predicaments. Today too I still wonder what reality means and what

the meaning of the weak[er] power is." In an interview with the Israeli magazine “Ha-‘ir”

(February 18, 1985), Hendel partly explained her identification with this weaker power:

"I decided to place myself on the side, in the rear, in the other room, in the corridor. I

wanted to convey his [Mairovich’s] spiritual world as a painter… A person who reads the

book would not know anything about me.” One of Mairovich’s statements that are more

outrageous epitomizes the message of this atypical work: "To work is to submit to the

domination or the will of some superior power, while being assailed every morning by a

nameless despair."

In 1985, Hendel began broadcasting a radio show called "Be’guf Rishon" (In the

First Person). In its second year it featured Hendel’s popular recollections from a trip to

her birthplace and the remains of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland. The same year,

these radio talks were published as a book, Leyad Kefarim Shketim (Near Quiet Places.)

In 1988 Hendel published another collection of short stories, Kesef Katan,

(translated into English as Small Change in 2002) which is considered one of her best

works and is second only to Street of Steps in the amount of attention it attracted from

both critics and the general public. The English translation of Small Change contained



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five short stories from the original and three from Aruhat Boker Temimah (An Innocent

Breakfast). In the “Forward,” (a Jewish publication, September 19, 2003), Naomi Sokolof

stated: "The selections illustrate many of the author’s trademark qualities: her subtle

rendering of inner worlds, her sensitivity to women’s perceptions and fluctuating

emotional states, her attention to the minutiae of passing moments."

The title story, “Kesef katan” ("Small Change"), is a horrific psychological

account of a father-daughter relationship. The father is a bus driver who has compulsively

squirreled away small change accumulated from his fares. The daughter tells her story to

a narrator after her return from a Swiss jail, where she had been incarcerated for illegally

exchanging her father’s coins. The recurrent symbol of the father obsessively collecting

and stacking his small change signifies the trivial things in life: actions humans do

compulsively without any kind of deliberation. The narrator spends a considerable time

observing and watching the pair through her apartment window. The immediate

impression is that the protagonists live alongside the narrator. The close relationship

between the narrator, the protagonists, and the reader illustrates Hendel’s rare statement

during a later radio interview shortly after she had been awarded the Israel Prize for

Literature. She admitted reluctantly that writing had been an existential necessity — she

could not pass a day without writing and it has been the only thing that kept her alive.

Whenever she would reach a deeper stage of the writing process, Hendel related, she felt

as if the characters of the story were indeed practically living in her home.

Another typical Hendel story in Kesef Katan is "The Letter that Came in Late." A

new widow, despite keeping up normal appearances after her husband’s funeral, commits

suicide. She leaves behind a meticulous home, labeled belongings and a farewell letter

that must reach her family at a particular time. The fuzzy line between life and death is a

familiar territory for Hendel. In the last paragraph of "Small Change," the narrator says:

"I would say to myself then something I learned a long time ago, that just as life carries in

it death so death carries in it life." The story "My Friend’s B’s Feast" follows a similar

theme. In this tale, a woman dying of cancer invites her friends and relatives to a final

supper. As the party proceeds, it becomes apparent that the husband has already replaced

his wife with a new lover. In the story "Low, Close to the Floor," a dying man cannot

decide with which of his two deceased wives he should be buried. In these macabre



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scenes, Small Change offers a glimpse into the broad showcase of contemporary Israeli

women’s writing.

A new edition of her first novel, Rehov Ha-Madregot was published in 1998, and

a newly revised edition of her first collection of short stories, Anashim Aherim Hem,

appeared in print in 2000. Hendel’s latest novel, Terufo Shel Rofe Ha-Nefesh, (Crack Up)

appeared in 2002. It is another complicated psychological work in which a psychiatrist

slowly loses his mind. Another novella, Har Ha-To`im (The Mountain of Losses), came

out in 1991. Once again Hendel writes about bereavement and demise as a result of war,

as she describes a group of grieving parents and wives visiting the graves of their loved

ones sixteen years after the Yom Kippur war. In 1996 another collection of short stories,

Aruhat Boker Temimah (An Innocent Breakfast), appeared. In this compilation the author

asserts her feminist voice: all the stories deal with women haunted by revelations and

memories from their past. In 2007, Hendel published a short story collection entitled Ha-

Makom Ha-Reik (The Empty Place). The collection’s synopsis states that “[by] the side

of Hendel`s protagonists crouches imminent death, devoid of any romanticism. Yet, the

obsessive characters that Hendel depicts here, and the ones that most fire the imagination,

are the most realistic she has ever created—the man who watches over his wife’s empty

place on the park bench; Rimona whose lover died while they were making love; the man

who dances incessantly in Dubnov Garden, for he will die the moment he stops; and

Arnona, in a superbly grotesque story, who is dragged unwillingly to a party at the end of

which Yonatan does not know whether she is in the emergency room or the morgue.”

Hendel contributed many essays and articles to Israeli newspapers, journals, and

magazines. Her stories were translated into many languages and are part of the

curriculum of many schools of higher education. Hendel’s early writing career was

marked by long periods of silence. The gap between her first novel, Rehov Ha-Madregot,

and her second, Ha-Hatzer Shel Momo Ha-Gdola, is close to fifteen years. The same is

true for her next book, Ha-Koah Ha-Aher, which appeared sixteen years after her second

novel. It appears that after the death of her husband, these gaps closed and Hendel

became more prolific. Furthermore, some critics claim that at this particular juncture her

poetics changed and turned to literary impressionism. Borrowed from the visual arts, the



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term literary impressionism denotes the attempt to describe sensory and emotional

perceptions of a scene, instead of recreating the objective nature of the scene.

Hendel’s inconsistent publishing record is mirrored in the reception she received

as a writer, getting mixed reviews and capturing less attention than other female writers.

While her first book, Rehov Ha-Madregot got rave reviews; her second novel was

ignored and only saw a modest revival twenty-four years later in a newly revised edition

and title, Ha-Hamsin Ha-Aharon (The Last Hamsin). As Jeff Green wrote in the

Jerusalem Post (May 3, 1996): ‘‘Hendel has been writing fiction on a high level for

several decades, and she would probably figure on every knowledgeable critic’s list of

significant Israeli writers, though she is not as well known as she might be.’’

Yehudit Hendel has been honored with numerous literary prizes: the 1954 Asher

Barash Prize for Literature, the Prime-Minister’s Prize for Literature in 1975 and again in

1998, the 1976 ACUM Prize, the 1989 Agnon Prize, the 1995 Newman Prize, the 1996

Bialik Prize and the most prestigious, the Israel Prize for Literature, in 2003.

Interestingly, after she received the Israel Prize in 2003 she disclosed in a television

interview that she had lived as a virtual recluse in her home since her husband’s death

twenty-eight years earlier.

The judges offered an accurate assessment as they awarded Hendel the Israel

Prize. They credited her with "a distinctive, emotional, and powerful voice, imbued with

psychological depths that resonate in Israeli literature." They said that "her understanding

of the human soul and daily existence is manifested in a sharp analysis and awareness of

the tragic fate of humans. Hendel is a pioneer in her divergence from the center of the

social fabric to the periphery. She is a creative woman who combines genuine female and

male experiences in her books."

YEHUDIT HENDEL’S BOOKS Anashim Aherim Hem (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1950); Rehov Ha-Madregot (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1955); translated by Rachel Kats and David Segal as Street of Steps (New York: Herzl Press, 1963; London, Thomas Yoseloff, 1964); Ha-Hatzer Shel Momo Ha-Gdolah (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1969); revised and retitled as Ha-Hamsin Ha-Aharon (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 1993);



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Ha-Koah Ha-Aher (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 1984); Leyad Kefarim Shketim (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 1987); Kesef Katan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 1988); Har Ha-To`im (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 1991); Aruhat Boker Temimah (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 1996); Terufo Shel Rofe Ha-Nefesh (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 2002). Editions in English Rehov Ha-Madregot (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1955); translated by Rachel Kats and David Segal as Street of Steps (New York: Herzl Press, 1963; London, Thomas Yoseloff, 1964); Small Change, translated by Barbara Harshav (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002). References: Jeffrey M. Green, ‘‘Reading from Right to Left,’’ Jerusalem Post, 3 May 1996, 26. Nurith Gertz, “’I Am Other:’ The Holocaust Survivor’s Point of View in Yehudit

Hendel’s Short Story ‘They Are Others.’” Divergent Jewish Cultures: Israel and America, edited by Deborah Dash Moore and S. Ilan Toren (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 217-237.

Dan Miron, Ha-koah ha-halah: ‘iunim ba-siporet shel Yehudit Hendel (Tel Aviv:

Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2002). Matt Nesvisky, ‘‘Missed Opportunity,’’ Jerusalem Post, 19 April 1999, 13. Gila Ramras-Rauch, ‘‘Six Israeli Novellas,’’ World Literature Today, no. 73 (1999): 808. Pnina Shirav, Ketiva tamah: ‘Emdat siah ve-yitzugai nashiut bi’ytziratan shel Yehudit

Hendel, Amaliah Kahana-Carmon ve-Ruth Almog (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1998), pp. 9-114.

Naomi Sokoloff, “Remembering the Woman: Combining the Macabre and the Everyday,

One Writer Charts the Female Psychological Experience,” review of Small Change: A Collection of Stories, by Yehudit Hendel. In Forward, 19 September 2003.

Yehudit Hendel: Writing on the Fringe

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