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Abstract
This paper analyses the varieties of psychosocial discourse present in the story ‘The Last Commander’, written by one of Israel’s most provocative and esteemed novelists: A.B. Yehoshua. Specifically, this article analyses the ways in which Yehoshua presents emphatically secular, left-leaning Israeli exegetical responses to several foundational narratives of the Judaic textual tradition. Through a close reading of the story, in tandem with explorations of Yehoshua’s extra-literary political statements and activities, the study examines how the subcultural particularities found in Yehoshua’s reconstructions of Judaic themes and imagery work as midrashic responses to what he sees as the problematic ‘metastories’ upon which Israeli society has been founded.
Acknowledgements
The present version of this article has benefitted greatly from the feedback of three anonymous readers for Jewish Culture and History. I thank them for their careful reading and astute suggestions.
Notes
1. Throughout this article, I use the more neutral term ‘Judaic’, rather than ‘Jewish’, when referring to most canonical aspects of the traditions and civilizations of Jews the world over. ‘Jewish’ has traditionally meant individuals or groups that are part of world Jewry, whereas the modern ‘Judaic’ refers to ‘Jewishness’ in general (i.e. related to Jews and to Judaism in the broadest sense, without suggesting a necessarily religious component). To avoid confusion, I have followed the standard usage of ‘Jewish literatures’ when referring to literature written by Jews that incorporates Judaic themes, as it is not yet customary to refer to such literature as ‘Judaic’.
2. Ruth Kartun-Blum, “The Aqedah as a Paradigm in Modern Hebrew Poetry,” in The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory, and Trauma, ed. Robert S. Wistrich and David Ohana (Portland: F. Cass, 1995), 1; Glenda Abramson, ed., Modern Jewish Mythologies (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College, 2000), vi. For more on this topic, see also Eli Yassif, “From Ancient to Modern Jewish Mythologies,” in Modern Jewish Mythologies, ed. Glenda Abramson (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College, 2000), 149–60.
3. See, in particular, Robert Alter, Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); Nitza Ben-Dov, Bakivun hanegdi: Kovets maamarim ‘al ‘Mar Mani’ shel A.B. Yehoshu‘a [In the opposite direction: Articles on A.B. Yehoshua’s Mr Mani] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1995); Yael S. Feldman, Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice and National Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); David C. Jacobson, Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Twentieth-Century Hebrew Writers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987); Dan Miron, From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); and Gershon Shaked, Gal khadash basiporet ha‘ivrit: Masot ‘al siporet yisraelit tse‘irah [A New Wave in Hebrew Fiction: Essays on Young Israeli Fiction] (Merkhaviyah: Sifriyat Po‘alim, 1970).
4. Jacobson, Modern Midrash.
5. Nehama Aschkenasy, “Introduction: Recreating the Canon,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 28, no. 1 (2004): 3.
6. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 9.
7. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89.
8. Yerach Gover, Zionism: The Limits of Moral Discourse in Israeli Hebrew Fiction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 9.
9. The original version of this story appeared in A.B. Yehoshua, Mot hazaken [Death of the Old Man] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1962), 143–67.
10. Yehoshua’s most famous and discussed subversion is that of the myth of the Binding of Isaac, from Genesis 22. For elucidations of the many settings and contexts in which this subversion takes centre stage, see Edna Amir Coffin, “The Binding of Isaac in Modern Israeli Literature,” in Backgrounds for the Bible, ed. Michael Patrick O’Connor and David Noel Freedman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987), 293–308; Joseph Cohen, Voices of Israel: Essays on and Interviews with Yehuda Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua, T. Carmi, Aharon Appelfeld, and Amos Oz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Feldman, Glory and Agony; Adia Mendelson Maoz, “The Bereaved Father and His Dead Son in the Works of A.B. Yehoshua,” Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 1 (2010): 116–40; Yosef Melman, “Zekhor et asher ‘asah avikhah’ – ‘Akedat Yitzkhak: Yesodot mashma‘utah basipur hamikrai vegilgulah beshirat hamekha‘ah bat yameinu’ [Remember What “Your Father Did” – The Akedah: Its Foundations in the Biblical Narrative and its Transformation in the Contemporary Poetry of Protest],” in Ha‘akedah: Mitos, temah, vetopos basifrut [The Binding of Isaac: Myth, Theme, and Literary Topos], ed. Zvi Levi (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), 53–72; Gilead Morahg, “Outraged Humanism: The Fiction of A.B. Yehoshua,” Hebrew Annual Review 3 (1979): 141–55; Gilead Morahg, “Facing the Wilderness: God and Country in the Fiction of A.B. Yehoshua,” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 8, no. 3 (1988): 311–31; Avi Sagi, “The Meaning of the Akedah in Israeli Culture and Jewish Tradition,” Israel Studies 3, no. 1 (1998): 45–60; Gershon Shaked, “Lo rak mukdam bekayitz 1970 [Not Only Early in the Summer of 1970]”, Siman Kriyah 1 (1972): 154; Mordechai Shalev, “Khotam ha‘akedah bisheloshah yamim veyeled, bitkhilat kayitz 1970, uve Mar mani [The Seal of the Binding of Isaac in ‘Three Days and a Child,’ ‘Early in the Summer of 1970,’ and Mr Mani],” in Bakivun hanegdi: Kovetz mekhkarim ‘al Mar Mani shel A.B. Yehoshua [In the Opposite Direction: Essays on Mr Mani by A.B. Yehoshua], ed. Nitza Ben Dov (Tel-Aviv: Sifriyat po’alim, 1995), 399–448; A.B. Yehoshua, ‘Sikum: Levatel et ha ‘akedah ‘al yedei mimushah’ [Conclusion: Annulling the Binding of Isaac through its Fulfillment], in Bakivun hanegdi: Kovets mekhkarim ‘al Mar Mani le A. B. Yehoshu‘a [In the Opposite Direction: A Collection of Studies on A.B. Yehoshua’s Mr Mani], ed. Nitza Ben-Dov (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1995), 388–94; A.B. Yehoshua, “From Myth to History,” trans. Harvey N. Bock, Association for Jewish Studies Review 28, no. 1 (2004): 205–12; and Anat Zanger, “Hole in the Moon or Zionism and the Binding (Ha-Ak’eda) Myth in Israeli Cinema,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 22, no. 1 (2003): 95–109.
11. Pathological motifs and practices abound in A.B. Yehoshua’s fictional universe, and these are frequently paired with what he presents as problematic metastories from the Judaic tradition. Among the many deviant behaviours carried out by his protagonists, we may mention incest, child abuse, murder, rape, pyromania, and kidnapping as the most frequent. See Nathan P. Devir, “Reexamining the Allegorical Hermeneutic in A.B. Yehoshua’s A Late Divorce,” Religion and the Arts 16, no. 5 (2012): 508–9.
12. James Hillman, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 11.
13. Yehoshua, “From Myth to History,” 205.
14. Gover, Zionism, 8.
15. Bernard Horn, Facing the Fires: Conversations with A.B. Yehoshua (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 47.
16. Baruch Kurzweil, Khipus hasifrut hayisraelit [In Search of Israeli Literature], ed. Zvi Luz and Yedidya Yitzkhaki (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1982), 307.
17. See A.B. Yehoshua, Mul haya‘arot [Facing the Forests] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1968); and A.B. Yehoshua, Hameahev [The Lover] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1977).
18. I conducted this interview with A.B. Yehoshua at his home in Haifa, Israel, on 20 May 2007.
19. Akiva Or, Israel: Politics, Myths, and Identity Crises (London: Pluto Press, 1994), 50 (my emphasis).
20. John Rose, The Myths of Zionism (London: Pluto, 2004), 7.
21. Joan Comay, Ben-Gurion and the Birth of Israel (New York: Random House, 1967), 80.
22. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 149.
23. On this point, Yehoshua has commented, in a frequently cited section from his Between Right and Right: ‘There is a permanent tension between the national and religious systems [in Israel], stemming from the constant contradiction between their goals. Here is a normal system functioning in accord with the basic needs of national existence within a specified territory, and here is a spiritual system setting spiritual goals for the people and trying to make existence subject to religious-spiritual demands. These are two different codes’. A.B. Yehoshua, Between Right and Right, trans. Arnold Schwartz (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 46.
24. In cultural psychology, this adherence to the collective is referred to as ‘the self-system as a dynamic collective process’. Hazel Rose Markus, Patricia R. Mullally, and Shinobu Kitayama, “Selfways: Diversity in Modes of Cultural Production,” in The Conceptual Self in Context: Culture, Experience, Self-Understanding, ed. Ulric Neisser and David A. Jopling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 13.
25. For more about this literary circle and its activities, see, for instance, Ruth R. Wisse, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 326–27; and Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 21–2.
26. In addition to the works cited in note 12, see also Yedidya Yitzkhaki’s Hapsukim hasmuyim min ha‘ayin: ‘al yetsirat A.B. Yehoshu‘a [The Concealed Verses: Source Material in the Works of A.B. Yehoshua] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992) for the most wide-ranging study on Yehoshua’s intertextual models that are taken from Judaism’s foundational textual sources.
27. Dan Miron, Im lo tehiyeh yerushalayim: Masot ‘al hasifrut ha‘ivrit baheksher tarbuti-politi [If There is No Jerusalem: Essays on Hebrew Literature in a Political-Cultural Context] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1987), 56.
28. A.B. Yehoshua, “The Literature of the Generation of the State,” Ariel: The Israel Review of Arts and Letters 107 (1998): 89.
29. Yehoshua, Between Right and Right, 142.
30. Quoted in Avraham Burg, ed., What Is a Jew? On Judaism and the Jewish People, proceedings of the World Jewish Congress, 8th Plenary Assembly, Jan. 1986, Jerusalem (Jerusalem: World Jewish Congress, 1986), 4.
31. Quoted in Burg, 7.
32. Yehoshua’s most recent book of essays in Hebrew, Akhizat moledet [A Homeland Grasp] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 2008), clarifies his positions on many of these contentious issues.
33. Quoted in David Zax, “Whose Diaspora Is It, Anyway?” Moment 32, no. 2 (2007): 24.
34. Quoted in Burg, What Is a Jew? 4.
35. Cohen, Voices of Israel, 45.
36. Morahg, “Outraged Humanism,” 142.
37. Horn, Facing the Fires, 46.
38. Quoted in ibid.
39. Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 104. The note is taken from A.B. Yehoshua, The Continuing Silence of a Poet: The Collected Stories of A.B. Yehoshua (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 237; subsequent citations to this work are given parenthetically in the text. All citations from ‘The Last Commander’ follow the most standard versions available in both the English translation and the Hebrew original. These are found, respectively, in The Continuing Silence of a Poet and A.B. Yehoshua, Kol hasipurim [The Collected Stories] (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameukhad, 1993).
40. Morahg, “Facing the Wilderness,” 316.
41. Ibid.
42. Ranen Omer-Sherman, Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 3.
43. Yosef Dan, “Elohei hatzvaot veelohei hatvusah: Hamefaked haakharon leA.B Yehoshu‘a’ [The Lord of Hosts and the Lord of the Downfall: ‘The Last Commander’ of A.B. Yehoshua],” Moznayim 40 (1975): 332.
44. Jacob Rabinowitz, The Faces of God: Canaanite Mythology as Hebrew Theology (Woodstock, VA: Spring, 1998), 8.
45. Gershon Shaked, “H.N. Bialik: The Myth of Rebellion – An Interpretation of ‘The Dead in the Desert’,” Hebrew University Studies in Literature 2.1 (1974): 97.
46. For more background on the demiurge Ialdabaoth, see Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1963), 134–35; and Ioan P. Culianu, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1992), 34–62. For the etymology of Ialdabaoth’s name, see Michael C. Astour, “Greek Names in the Semitic World and Semitic Names in the Greek World,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 23, no. 3 (1964): 197.
47. John McClintock and James Strong, Encyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. 7 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1877), 385.
48. Yehoshua, Kol hasipurim, 72.
49. Yeruham Fishel Lahover, Khayim Nakhman Biyalik: Khayav veyetsirotav [Chaim Nachman Bialik: His Life and Works], vols. 2–3 (Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1950), 398–400.
50. Chaim Nachman Bialik, Shirot Bialik: A New and Annotated Version of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s Epic Poems, trans. Stephen L. Jacobs (Columbus: Alpha, 1987), 88. For commentary and the full text of this poem in both the original Hebrew and the English translation, see Luz and Bialik, respectively. Zvi Luz, Al metei hamidbar: Masot ‘al poema liBiyalik [On ‘The Dead of the Desert’: Essays on a Poem by Bialik] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1988).
51. Shaked, “H.N. Bialik,” 101, 116.
52. A.B. Yehoshua, “Let Us Not Betray Zionism,” in Unease in Zion, ed. Ehud Ben-Ezer (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1974), 329.
53. Mario A. Jacoby, Longing for Paradise: Psychological Perspective on an Archetype, trans. Myron B. Gubitz (Boston, MA: Sigo Press, 1985), 164.
54. James Hillman, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, ed. Jeremiah Abrams and Connie Zweig (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Perigee, 1991), 242.
55. Demaris S. Wehr, Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), 61.
56. Sylvia Brinton Perera, “The Scapegoat Archetype,” in The Shadow of America: Reclaiming the Soul of a Nation, ed. Jeremiah Abrams (Novato, CA: Nataraj, 1994), 230.
57. Gila Ramras-Rauch, The Arab in Israeli Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 129.
58. Perera, “The Scapegoat Archetype,” 230.
59. Esther Rashkin, Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 1992), 6.
60. Alan L. Mintz, Translating Israel: Contemporary Hebrew Literature and Its Reception in America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 59.
61. Many of Yehoshua’s central fictional characters choose sleep as a pathological escape, such as the fire watcher in Mul haya‘arot, Asya in Hameahev, and the Orientalist professor Rivlin in Hakala hameshakhreret, while the notion of sleep as death (or, conversely, of death as sleep) appears in the guise of the man buried alive in Mot hazaken and the dying wife of Molkho in Molkho.
62. Jacoby, Longing for Paradise, 158.
63. Horn, Facing the Fires, 149.
64. Carl G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), 179.
65. Yehoshua, Between Right and Right, 28.
66. Helen Efthimiadis-Keith, “The Dream of Judith: A Jungian Perspective,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 25, no. 2 (1999): 167.
67. Gila Ramras-Rauch, “The Re-emergence of the Jew in the Israeli Fiction of the 1970s,” Hebrew Annual Review 2 (1978): 134.