UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Retrospectivity as an Ethical Stance: Revisiting the Zionist Dream in Israeli Fiction and Film Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9t237538 Author Tzuker Seltzer, Hanna - Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Retrospectivity as an Ethical Stance: Revisiting the Zionist Dream in Israeli Fiction and Film by Hanna Tzuker Seltzer A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair Professor Robert Alter Professor Naomi Seidman Professor Anton Kaes Spring 2017 Retrospectivity as an Ethical Stance: Revisiting the Zionist Dream in Israeli Fiction and Film Copyright 2017 by Hanna Tzuker Seltzer Abstract Retrospectivity as an Ethical Stance: Revisiting the Zionist Dream in Israeli Fiction and Film by Hanna Tzuker Seltzer Joint Doctor of Philosophy with the Graduate Theological Union in Jewish Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair My dissertation engages with Israeli works of fiction and film whose plots return to the period from the pre-state Yishuv in Palestine till the first years of Israeli statehood. Through close reading and analysis of narrative strategies and cinematic techniques, I explore the ways in which this retrospective gaze presents an ethical critique of the Zionist enterprise. These works reexamine essential notions in Zionist ideology such as the ideal of the New Jew, the negation of the diaspora (shlilat ha-galut), the treatment of Middle-Eastern Jews, and the fate of the Palestinians. I argue that only through retrospective narration is it possible for these Israeli writers and filmmakers to propose a nuanced ethical critique that both depicts the experience of daily life in those heady ideological days and offers a historical reassessment of the values of that era. Throughout this dissertation, my theoretical framework remains grounded in narratology, as well as in conceptions of intertextuality as a bilateral cultural practice. Part I of my dissertation is dedicated to S. Yizhar’s autobiographical novel Preliminaries (1992). The novel tells the story of a Jewish family that settles in Palestine during the period of the Yishuv, the New Jewish Settlement in the 1920s, and is narrated through the dual perspective of the youngest child in the family and of the adult some sixty years later. The co-existence of the two narrators enables the complex message of the novel; it places the events in their human and historical context, and yet, through the point of view of the adult narrator, also acknowledges the short-sighted conception of the New Jew in a New Land. My narratological analysis reveals the complex point of view of the narrator, whose child-like position defamiliarizes and literalizes key concepts, while his retrospective position as an adult simultaneously approves of and 1 criticizes them. The intertextuality in Preliminaries serves as a critique of ideology while also revealing the return of the repressed Jewish cultural echo chamber of Talmud and Torah study. In Part II I focus on the novel Infiltration by Yehoshua Kenaz (1986). It takes place in 1955 and depicts an IDF platoon whose soldiers have minor disabilities and are therefore deemed unfit for combat and subjected to their commanders’ contempt and abuse. The soldiers internalize the disdain they encounter and perceive themselves and their fellow platoon soldiers as defective and unworthy. Like Preliminaries, Infiltration is an autobiographical novel which employs a dual lens: that of the soldier narrator who tells of the events at the time they occur, and that of the adult narrator, who returns to these events 30 years later. I analyze the narratological articulations of the soldiers’ subjectification and loss of agency inherent in their submission to ideology. I show that the novel illustrates with exceptional precision all the features of interpellation discussed by Althusser. Intertextually, Infiltration models the death-like experience of the abject soldiers on Dante’s Inferno, while echoing Ben-Gurion’s account of the Israeli military experience as a purgatory of sorts. In the epilogue to this dissertation, I examine the films Kedma (2002) by Amos Gitai and Homeland (2008) by Dani Rosenberg, whose cinematic projects enhance the retrospective point of view as a condition for ethical critique. Although different in plot and stylistics, both films tell the story of Holocaust survivors who immigrate to Palestine during the 1948 war and are recruited into the Israeli military. Gitai and Rosenberg give presence to the Palestinians and their catastrophe, the Nakba: In Kedma, this is done through their testimonials, while in Homeland it is done through an emphasis on their haunting absence. The two filmmakers produce an analogy between the Jewish refugees and the Palestinian refugees, portraying the experiences of loss and disaster as a common ground for both. Acknowledging the Palestinians’ catastrophe indeed requires the Israeli audience to admit responsibility; yet the very recognition of the tragic connection between the two peoples, with the return of one people from exile creating the exile of the other, opens up a channel for communication and future reconciliation. I show how Kedma’s radical intertextuality, by incorporating citations from the works of Palestinian writers Ghassan Kanafani and Tawfiq Zayyad, gives voice and presence to the Palestinian experience. I also argue that modeling Homeland on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot constructs the absurdity of mobilizing Holocaust survivors to the war against Palestinians. Both films—like the two novels—portray the catastrophic consequences of erasing Jewish and Palestinian cultural memory. 2 For my beloved parents Shlomo and Lia Zucker Guy, love of my life and Yonatan and Naomi, my bright and shining stars i Table of Contents Acknowledgments iii Introduction vi Socialist Zionism in Dual Perspective: Yizhar’s Ambivalent Preliminaries 1 Training Base Four as Purgatory and Narration as Means of Resistance in Kenaz’s Infiltration 93 The Experience of Jewish and Palestinian Refugees: Common Ground and Communication Channel 194 Bibliography 227 ii Acknowledgments Berkeley has been my home for almost a decade; we arrived when my son Yonatan was 2.5 years old and now he is 11 and has a younger sister, Naomi, who is 4. The first person to greet us here, with keys for our rented apartment at the University Village, apple juice, and a story book for Yonatan, was Sandy Richmond. Since then, until this very day, you have always been there for me in every possible way, and I am so grateful for all your support and your kind heart. Chana Kronfeld, my advisor, walked me through this long journey, listening to me and encouraging me in difficult moments, carefully and lovingly reading many papers and drafts, and sharing with me her insightful feedback. Thank you, Chana, for being much more than just an adviser; for your generous mentoring, your warmth, and endless support. And thank you for always believing in me and reminding me of the value of my work and myself. Kareem Abu- Zeid, my dear editor, I am so grateful to you for your tremendous help. Thanks to your dedication, your meticulous and sensitive reading, and your kind and generous nature, I was able to pull this through despite the time constraints. For Naomi Seidman, my beloved teacher, I am grateful for the fascinating seminars on Yiddish and theories and for your friendship; you always inspire me with the natural connections you forge between ethics and scholarship. To Uri, Robert Alter, I owe many thanks for your classes on the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew poetry, for your patient reading, and for generously sharing your office with me. Much of this dissertation was written among the books in your welcoming office, dear Uri! I thank Tony Kaes, who inspired me in his film classes to continue to pursue the cinematic scholarship I began years ago, and who was always a generous and supportive reader. Erica Roberts and Etta Heber from the Center of Jewish Studies, who always welcomed me warmly in their office, answered my questions with patience and care, and did all they could to help and support me. Things always seemed much more hopeful and encouraging whenever I passed by your friendly office, and even more so once Shawna joined the team. Shorena Kurtsikidze from the NES Department helped me wholeheartedly in administrative matters at times when the Joint Doctoral Program had no administrative team; thank you dear Shorena. I wish to thank Erich Gruen, who guided me with care and warmth when I was navigating my way in teaching Jewish Studies 101 for the first time here in Berkeley, and who has remained a dear friend ever since. Rutie Adler, the Hebrew coordinator, from whom I learned a lot about teaching and generosity, thank you. I am also grateful to Paul Hamburg, the caring and knowledgeable Judaica librarian, and to Ruth Haber, who has continued Paul’s job since he retired a few years ago, and who has helped me numerous times in locating books and materials, always with a smile. Frank Bezner, iii who encouraged me in the stressful days of preparing for Qualifying Exams and who has generously shared his time and advice with me since then. Janet, my dear English teacher and my friend; thank you for helping me find my voice in English and for sharing with me your compassionate view of human beings. Ashley, who encouraged me in moments of despair, your kind words helped me to keep pushing through. My dear colleagues here in Berkeley were a source of knowledge exchange, inspiration and friendship: Thank you Sam England, Ayelet Even-Nur, Eyal Bassan, Noa Bar, Anna Torres, Anna Cruz, and Yael Segalovitz.