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After “Postmemory”: Coping with Holocaust Remembrance in Postmodern Hebrew Literature

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After “Postmemory”: Coping with Holocaust Remembrance in Postmodern Hebrew Literature AFTER “POSTMEMORY”: COPING WITH HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE IN POSTMODERN HEBREW LITERATURE YAEL SELIGER A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HUMANITIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO MARCH 2015 © YAEL SELIGER, 2015 Abstract This interdisciplinary study suggests that the time has come to pursue a new modality of Holocaust remembrance. It assumes that when we speak of “remembering” we are referring to acts of remembrance; with the exception of those who lived through the Holocaust, those of us who were not “there” cannot remember the actual events of the Holocaust. The study further contends that acts of Holocaust remembrance ought to be perceived as forms of coping with remembrance of the Holocaust. It also suggests that critical frameworks and narrative strategies developed in postmodern Hebrew literature – specifically the writings of Etgar Keret – offer a literary exemplar of coping with Holocaust remembrance. The articulation of the raison d’être for a paradigmatic shift in conceptualizing Holocaust remembrance is defined in the context of the general field of Holocaust representation. More specifically, the modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance is juxtaposed with an existing and prevalent conceptualization known to scholars and writers as “postmemory” – a structural framework of Holocaust remembrance applied to the second generation. Of special significance is the interlacing of the modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance with postmodern thinking. Foremost in this alignment with postmodernism is the acknowledgement that the events of the Holocaust destabilized Enlightenment- modern metaphysical faith in human rationalism and linearity of epistemological, ontological, scientific, and humanistic progress. Prominent in this discussion is the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and the ethics of the language of deconstruction. These theoretical insights are then applied to the writings of Etgar Keret. Apart from presenting ii Keret as a consummate storyteller, Keret’s art and its relation to the modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance is analyzed as integral to the cultural, social, and political ambiance of a postmodern Israeli milieu. iii Acknowledgements As I bring my doctoral thesis to its conclusion, and reflect back on how it all began, I realize with full certainty that I could not have arrived at this point without the support and generosity of several people. I wanted to write a comprehensive study on Holocaust remembrance for a long time but aspiring and actually doing are two very different things. I have no doubt that had it not been for the direction, guidance, inspiration, and support I received from my supervising committee I would not be where I am today. There are not enough words to thank Sara Horowitz, Priscila Uppal, and Marty Lockshin for their boundless wisdom and friendship. I am privileged to have Sara Horowitz as my supervisor. Having a world- renowned scholar of Holocaust writings as your supervisor can be pretty daunting. But the truth is that I was lucky to have a supervisor who has very high expectations and standards. It is thanks to Sara’s fierce commitment to excellence and her careful attention to my work that I have become a better scholar, thinker, and writer. Special thanks for the friendliness and for assuring me that I should think of myself as a young and capable savta. Once in awhile, life brings along unexpected blessings. Enrolling as a graduate student in a course taught by Priscila Uppal turned out to be one such turn of events. Priscila’s creativity knows no bounds. On more than one occasion I felt that I was swept along by Priscila’s resourceful energy. Her challenging questions, professional guidance, tips on good creative writing, and delicious sense of humor made my academic journey so much more meaningful. iv I am indebted to Marty Lockshin for many things not least of which was getting me into the PhD program to begin with. Once accepted, Marty followed my progress with a great deal of interest and cheered me on enthusiastically. I thank Marty for ingratiating me with his wisdom and inspiration. His support and mentorship throughout my PhD journey was invaluable. I also wish to thank Markus Reisenleitner who, as Director of the Graduate Program in Humanities at York University, was always there for me and provided me with some excellent advice. I want to thank my wonderful friends for their unending support, curiosity, and conversations over countless cups of coffee. Last, but definitely not least, an overwhelming measure of love and gratitude goes to members of my Israeli and Canadian family who believed in me and strengthened me with their unconditional approval and unending love. I have many faults and here and there a few good qualities. I owe all my good qualities to you. … This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Max Seliger, Paula Seliger, Lotti Hollander, and Gottfried Hollander. Max died before the Holocaust. Paula, Lotti, and Gottfried were murdered in Auschwitz. Not a day goes by without your granddaughter longing to have known you. v Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………............vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Part I: Methodology, Theory, and Conceptualization of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance Chapter One Holocaust Representation………………………………………………..........................40 Chapter Two Collective-Cultural Memory and Holocaust Remembrance……………………………..63 Chapter Three From Postmemory to Coping with Holocaust Remembrance……………….................100 Chapter Four Postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction and the Language of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance………………………………………………….............130 Chapter Five The “Ethical Constellation” of Literature and Holocaust Remembrance………............170 Part II: Cultural and Political Zionism, Israeli Holocaust Remembrance and Etgar Keret’s Literature Chapter Six Secular Cultural Zionism, the Palestinian Other and Coping with Holocaust Remembrance…………………………………………………………………………..200 Chapter Seven Etgar Keret’s Literature: A Genre of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance………….235 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...336 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………….............341 vi Introduction Forgetting someone is like Forgetting to put out the light in the back yard And leaving it on all day: But it’s the light That makes you remember. (Yehudah Amichai, The Great Tranquility; Questions and Answers) Generational Remembrance And the Rat Laughed (2008) is an extraordinary novel written by Nava Semel. Semel is an Israeli writer and a daughter of Holocaust survivors. She is well known for her short stories and novels on Holocaust remembrance. The narrative of And the Rat Laughed opens in the year 1999 at a Tel Aviv apartment. As part of a project on Holocaust survivors, a granddaughter asks her grandmother to reveal her Holocaust past. Until now, grandmother kept silent about her past. But today, she finds it difficult to refuse her granddaughter’s wish to know. Still, she tries to hold back. “I had a mother. I had a father. Won’t you make do with that? I loved and I lost. That’s the end of the story” (5). Several pages later she agrees to remember more. In those days “being Jewish was a terrible thing; being a Jewish little girl was the worst thing in the world” (15). Brutalized by Christian peasants, the only solace known to the girl while being starved, tormented and raped in a backyard pit, was the company of a rat. From present-day Tel Aviv to the Holocaust, from the Holocaust to the future, then back to the Holocaust and the present, Semel’s narrative travels in time and genre. Novel, poetry, science fiction and memoir are interposed throughout this haunting tale. At a certain point, grandmother’s story metamorphoses into the myth of “Girl & Rat.” The myth is lost in 2025 in the ashes of an ecological disaster but is somehow kept alive 1 through academic research and virtual games. It is fully revived in 2099 when archeological excavations uncover ruins of “Madonna of the Rat Church in a geographical place once called Poland” (118). Back in the days of the Holocaust, a priest named Father Stanislaw rescued the Jewish girl from being murdered by local peasants. The priest kept a diary in which he tells of some harrowing events occurring between September 1943 and February 1945. Kneeling before the tortured girl Father Stanislaw beseeches God: My Father, did You not see what was happening underneath the soil, or did You turn your back? Even Your Son was not a little child when He was made to suffer, and even then, on His final journey, He was not alone. (170-171) Father Stanislaw tells the girl she is Jewish. The girl becomes hysterical. I tell her, Joachim and Anna, father and mother of Mary, were Jews […] but she will not listen. How then will this be remembered? For her, forgetting is healing, but for the world, forgetting is the very disease itself […] I am sealing the diary because I cannot trust the memory of humans. It is not a part of Creation because Adam was born without memory. But memory is the only thing that was created in Your image. Both You and memory are a decaying image, hobbling along on crutches and tagging behind all the others. (221, 229) Present-day granddaughter is disappointed. As a school project this will not do. Textbooks, teachings, and ceremonial commemorations of the Holocaust are all about ghettoes and concentration camps; Even though my grandmother really was in the Holocaust, I’m not sure it counts, because she was a little girl and she didn’t go through any of the big, horrifying things we learn about in history or read about or see in the movies. (54) I open the introduction with Semel’s novel because it mirrors the multidimensional entanglements of generational Holocaust remembrance, individual versus collective memory, Jewish and Christian remembering-forgetting, and the 2 challenges of writing fiction related to events which were not experienced firsthand.
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