Heading home: The domestication of Israeli children's literature in the 1960s as reflected in Am Oved's Shafan ha-sofer series

Abstract

This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of statehood, on the basis of a popular series of children's books published by Am Oved (the commercial publishing arm of the hegemonic Labor Party, Mapai). In contrast to the Yishuv era, after ten years of statehood, the concept of “home” dominates hegemonic children's literature on several levels. On the thematic level, home and family became the focal point. On the commercial level, the home emerged as the locus for reading and evaluating the book, i.e., it was perceived as “the market” catered to by the publishers. On the poetic level, the home was recognized as an arena in which writing for children takes place. This new dominance of “home” suggests a dramatic transformation both in the ethos on which Israeli children were raised after the transition from Yishuv to statehood and in the way “the Israeli child” was perceived by key taste-setters of the time: the shift from the “pioneer child,” whose main social and nation-building tasks were set outdoors, to the sheltered and familial “child citizen.”

Keywords:

• Hebrew children's literature
• Am Oved
• T. Carmi
• Shafan ha-sofer
• Mapai
• statehood ethos

Notes

 1. See Zameret and Yablonka, eds., Ha-asor ha-rishon; Pilowsky, ed., Ha-ma'avar mi-yishuv li-medinah ; Bar-On, ed., Etgar ha-ribonut. For the change in the national ethos during the 1950s and its effect on the individual, see Rozin, The Rise of the Individual; and Helman, Bigdei ha-aretz ha-hadashah.

 2. For books edited by Carmi in the Shafan ha-sofer series, see Kressel, ed., Sifrei Am Oved.

 3. For various national histories of children's literatures, see International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature .

 4. See Itamar Even-Zohar, “Ha-tzmihah veha-hitgabshut”; Basmat Even-Zohar, Yetzirat ha-ma'arekhet; Shteiman, Itzuv dmuto shel ha-yeled ha-ivri he-hadash; Shavit, “Yeladim ke-nosei mahapekhat ha-dibur ha-ivri.”

 5. See Darr, “A Confrontation between Two Doctrines.”

 6. For the negation of the diaspora as a prime principle in the education of the Hebrew child during the Yishuv era, see Shapira, “Le'an halkhah shlilat ha-galut?”

 7. For the marginalization of the role played by the family in the upbringing of kibbutz children until around the mid-1950s, see Dar, “Ha-zehut ha-mishtanah”; and Berman, “Communal Upbringing in the Kibbutz.”

 8. For this tendency of Labor children's literature to undermine parental authority, see Darr, Kanon be-khamah kolot, chaps. 1 and 2.

 9. Aaron, Beito he-hadash shel ha-gamad (first published in English in 1962) (unpaginated); Shenhav, Mitz Petel (unpaginated). Although “raspberry” is the equivalent to the Hebrew petel, mitz petel might be better understood as the equivalent of any number of oversweetened, artificially flavored, red children's beverages. All translations into English in this article are mine.

10. Dalia Karpel, “At ro'ah, biglalekh” [Because of you], Ha'aretz, Supplement, June 3, 1994, 63–64, 92.

11. Dalia Karpel, “At ro'ah, biglalekh” [Because of you], Ha'aretz, Supplement, June 3, 1994, 63–64, 92, 64.

12. Burla, Shalosh ve-od kahol (unpaginated).

13. Eliezer Peri, A review of Am Oved's plan for the end of 1964, 2, Board Meeting file, Am Oved Archive, Tel Aviv.

14. Peri's file, correspondence, Am Oved Archive.

15. Peri's file, correspondence, Am Oved Archive

16. Peri's file, correspondence, Am Oved Archive

17. The biological sense of the word “generation,” referring to age, must be distinguished from the poetic sense of the word. According to the former, the term “Generation in the Land” (dor ba-aretz), known also as the “Palmah Generation,” includes writers who were born during the first and second decades of the twentieth century and whose youth or early adulthood took place in Palestine during the Yishuv era. The term “Statehood Generation” (dor ha-medinah) includes Israeli writers who were born ten or fifteen years before the establishment of the state. The poetic terms “Palmah Generation” and “Statehood Generation” usually correspond to the biological sense, although not hermetically. Several prominent writers, such as Yehuda Amichai and T. Carmi, are included among the Statehood Generation poets, although in terms of biological age they belonged to the Palmah Generation group.

18. For more about the Statehood Generation, see Brinker, “Dor ha-medinah.” See also Tzamir, Be-shem ha-nof, where she highlights the gender aspect in the writing of the Statehood Generation and presents the subversive poetical position of women poets as part of the poetic negotiations that took place in the 1950s and 1960s over Israeli national identity and the identity of the national subjective. Some of these women poets, including Tirtza Atar, Nurit Zarhi, and Dahlia Ravikovitch, also left their mark on writing for children during the 1960s and 1970s.

19. Yehuda Amichai wrote three children's books in the space of twenty years: Mah she-karah le-Roni be-New York (1968); Ha-zanav ha-shamen shel ha-numah [The Numa's fat tail] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1978); and Sefer ha-lailah ha-gadol [The great night book] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1988), each devoted to one of his three children: Roni, David, and Emanuela, respectively.

20. Carmi, “Pekudat yom” [Order of the day], in idem, Hitnatzlut ha-mehaber, 10–11.