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Playing Jewish Geography: Diaspora, Home, Nation

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Playing Jewish Geography: Diaspora, Home, Nation PLAYING JEWISH GEOGRAPHY: DIASPORA, HOME, NATION-STATE, AND ZIONISM IN CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN AND AMERICAN JEWISH FICTION AARON KREUTER 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 ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO January 2020 © Aaron Kreuter, 2020 ii Abstract This dissertation explores fiction by American and Canadian Jewish authors that has Israel/Palestine as its setting or subject matter, analyzing them through a lens of diaspora studies in order to demonstrate how diaspora is an ethical alternative to the ethnic nationalism of Zionism. Theoretically, this project deploys thinkers of diaspora (Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, George Steiner, Judith Butler) and world literature (Wai Chee Dimock, Rebecca Walkowitz) with historians and critics of Zionism and Israel/Palestine (Nur Masalha, Ali Abuminah, Steven Salaita, Ella Shohat, Yehouda Shenhav). The dissertation is also interested in how Zionist national time and diasporic time (as theorized by Eyal Chowers and others) compete within and without the project’s archive of primary texts. The works of diasporic fiction this project unpacks are written by Theodor Herzl, Leon Uris, Philip Roth, Ayelet Tsabari, and David Bezmozgis. Where the first two chapters interrogate canonical texts by established American (and Austrian) authors, the second two chapters analyze contemporary texts by Canadian authors in the beginning or middle of their careers. Throughout the dissertation, I develop the concept of diasporic heteroglossia—a combining of the work of Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin with the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin—which can be defined as fiction’s unique ability to contain multiple, diasporic voices that resist a national, in this case Zionist, center. What the close, historically and politically informed readings of my primary texts reveal is Jewish diasporic fiction’s role in establishing the centroperipheral relationship between Israel (the Zionist center) and the diaspora, as well as the concomitant possibility for Jewish diasporic fiction to challenge, trouble, and discard this relationship. I argue that any work of Jewish fiction that concerns itself with Israel/Palestine and Zionism has a number of heightened responsibilities, primarily the making of narrative space for the Palestinian narrative/worldview, iii the dispossessed other of the Zionist project. Cumulatively, the primary texts underscore the level to which Zionist narratives and myths have infiltrated the Jewish world, and gestures to how we can move beyond the violent fallout of national thinking, towards the ethical alternative of diaspora, where collective life is not predicated on sole ownership of land, xenophobia, militaries, or hegemonic power structures. In the dissertation’s conclusion, where I briefly look at two novels by Palestinians living in diaspora (Randa Jarrar, Susan Abulhawa), I adhere to the idea that the Zionist settler colonization of Palestine has led to a powerful, if currently violently uneven, bond between the two peoples, one that fiction can, and should, have a role in mending. iv This dissertation is dedicated to Steph Korn And to my great-grandparents v Acknowledgements Firstly, I must thank my supervisor, Dr. Julia Creet. Without her guidance, incisive feedback, and hours-long discussions, this dissertation would never have been written. I also must thank the other two members of my committee, Dr. Art Redding and Dr. Lily Cho, who were likewise instrumental in the research, work, and thinking that went into this project. I would also like to thank my internal examiner, Dr. Deborah Britzman, and my external examiner, Dr. Ranen Omer- Sherman, for giving me invaluable feedback that could only make this project stronger in future iterations. Thanks is also deserved to Dr. Marie-Christine Leps, who has been a presence in my PhD since my first year, and helped shape this dissertation in more ways than one. Thank you to Kathy Armstrong, for all of the help, support, and knowledge you shared over the past seven years. A lot of the work in this dissertation has been presented at conferences in Canada, America, and Europe. I would like to thank the organizers, panel moderators, and chairs of these conferences, for allowing me to share and shape the readings and analyses that find their final form here. Thanks to the Philip Roth Society for choosing my essay—excerpted from chapter 2 in this dissertation—as the winner of the 2018 Siegel McDaniel Award for Graduate Student Writing. And thanks to Dr. Aimee Pozorski and Dr. Maren Scheurer, who edited an extended version of the paper for publication in Philip Roth Studies. Thank you to Marie Carrière, Ursula Mathis-Moser, and Kit Dobson for including my essay on Ayelet Tsabari in the collection All The Feels/ Tous les sens Affect and Writing in Canada / Affect et écriture au Canada. I started this PhD with an excellent and supportive cohort, many of whom I now consider good friends and colleagues: Kristina Getz, Eric Schmaltz, Tyler Scott Ball, MLA Chernoff. Thanks to Myra Bloom, to David Huebert. To Steph, my partner. To Piper: I’ll never forget vi sitting in the kitchen with you when you were a three-month-old puppy, studying for my first comprehensive exam. To my parents, Cathy and David, who instilled in me a love of Jewishness, of political struggle, of literature, and of music. I couldn’t have written this dissertation without them. To Steph’s parents, Mark and Susan. To my siblings and their partners: Ben, Rachel, Jenn, Daniel, Sam, Jon, and Dana. I wrote this dissertation mostly in Toronto—at home, at York, at various cafes, libraries, and park benches. Research, planning, and writing also took place on Kahshe Lake, in Florida, in Montreal, in Boston, and on a number of car and bus journeys. I listened to a lot of music while working on this project, but there is no doubt that the band I listened to the most is Phish. Finally, I want to acknowledge Noa, my daughter, who was born near the end of the writing of this dissertation. I hope we are able to imagine a better world for you to grow up in. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………….. iv Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………….. v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………... vii Introduction: “Leaving Other People Alone”: The Ethical Power of Diaspora, The State Power of Zionism, and the Potential Power of Jewish Fiction…………………………….. 1 Diaspora and Nationalism………………………………………………………….. 10 “The Zionist Propaganda Machine”: Suicide and Surrender, Nationalism and Diaspora in The Powers of Diaspora……………………………………………..... 29 Lies and Half-Truths (Machine Guns and Sub-Machine Guns): Zionism, The Nation-State, and the Text in George Steiner…………………………………….... 32 Elliptical Refractions, Deep Time, Born Translated Novels, and Diasporic World Literature………………………………………………………………………….... 34 Diasporic World Literature: Ravitsh’s Mad Market, Rivkin’s Quasi-Territory, and Hesse’s Politics of Jewishness………………………………………………........... 39 Writing on Writing on Israel/Palestine…………………………………………….. 43 A Comparative Look at the American and Canadian Jewish Communities, With Special Emphasis on Zionism and Israel/Palestine……………………………….... 50 Talking About the Fiction………………………………………………………….. 58 Chapter Breakdown………………………………………………………………… 64 Some Final Introductory Thoughts……………………………………………….... 69 Chapter One: Herzl Meets Uris: Altneuland and Exodus in Diasporic Comparison………. 73 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….... 73 Temporality, History, and Jewish Time…………………………………………..... 86 Publication History and Critical Reception……………………………………….... 107 Jewish Language/Jewish Translation……………………………………………..... 118 The Palestinians and the Arabs in Altneuland and Exodus………………………… 128 “A Solution is Still Possible”: Conclusion………………………………………..... 150 Chapter Two: Philip Goes to Israel: Jewish Justice, Diasporism, Palestinian Voices, and Zionist Self-Censorship in Operation Shylock…………………………………………….. 154 Diasporic Heteroglossia: Introduction……………………………………………... 154 Determining Justice: Demjanjuk, Ramallah, and a Tribunal From the Future…….. 165 “No More Suitcases, No More Jews”: Diasporism and Zionism………………….. 184 “Palestine is a Lie! Zionism is a Lie! Diasporism is a Lie!”: Operation Shylock’s Palestinians…………………………………………………………………………. 193 Against “Jewish Totalism”: Operation Shylock’s Missing Chapter……………….. 203 Letting Our Jewish Conscience Be Our Guide: Conclusion……………………….. 216 Chapter Three: Arab Jews, Dynamic Diasporas, Porous Borders: Israel/Palestine in the Short Fiction of Ayelet Tsabari……………………………………………………………. 219 Introduction: Ayelet Tsabari’s Short Fiction………………………………………. 219 viii The Arab Jew as Diasporic Possibility…………………………………………….. 230 The Yemeni Jewish Diaspora, Its Dissolution, And Its Treatment by the State….... 245 Visible Minorities, Invisible Diasporas: The Seen and the Unseen in “Invisible”.... 253 Travel, Return, Skin Colour: The Collision of Colony and Diaspora In “A Sign of Harmony”…………………………………………………………………………... 266 “Egyptian, Israeli, It Was All the Same”: Collapsing Borders in “Borders”………. 276 “The Irreversible Conditions of Social Life”: Conclusion…………………………. 290 Chapter Four: “The Jewish Semitone”: Zionism and the Soviet Jewish Diaspora, Morality and Power in The Betrayers………………………………………………………………... 293 David Bezmozgis, Soviet Jewish Literature, Diaspora, and Israel/Palestine: Introduction………………………………………………………………………...
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