![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The article examines Amos Oz’s political and social outlook through four topoi that constitute his books, articles and correspondence: The first concerns his dialectics with Israel’s Mediterranean character, from his affinity to Albert Camus to his treatment of Ashdod as a metaphor for Mediterraneanism; the second is the Zionist-crusader analogy in the literature and poetry of his contemporaries, and particularly A. B. Yehoshua and Dahlia Ravikovitch; the third topic is Oz’s oppositionality to the political actualization of messianism on the gamut from Ben-Gurion to “Gush Emunim”; and the fourth issue relates to Oz’s controversy with what I have branded as “Canaanite Messianism,” namely those who promote expansionism toward Greater Israel. Together, these combined perspectives unfold Oz’s humanist vision on the future of the State of Israel.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Camus, The First Man.
2. Ohana, Albert Camus and the Critique of Violence.
3. Oz, Judas.
4. Ohana, “Mediterranean Humanism.”
5. Oz, In the Land of Israel, 241.
6. Miron Benvenisti, “Namal yam-tikhoni kozev [Deceptive Mediterranean Port],” Haaretz, March 21, 1996.
7. Rothbard, White City, Black City.
8. Alexandra Nocke, Interview with Amos Oz, April 2, 2003. Private correspondence.
9. See also, Ibid.; Idem., The Place of the Mediterranean.
10. Oz, The Same Sea, 1.
11. Bartfeld and Ohana, “Albert Camus: Parcours Méditerranéens.”
12. Shapira and Wiskind-Elper, “Politics and Collective Memory.”
13. Asali, “Zionists Studies of the Crusader Movement”; and Maalouf, The Crusaders through Arab Eyes.
14. Here I will briefly analyze works of Yehoshua, Oz and Ravikovitch. Further elaboration on the history of the Zionist-Crusader analogy, see: Ohana, The Origins of Israeli Mythology.
15. Shalev, Parashat Gabriel Tirosh; Zalka, “Ba-derekh le-Haleb”; and Shimoni, Ma’of ha-yona.
16. Yehoshua, “Mul ha-ye’arot,” 122–92.
17. Oz, Unto Death.
18. Ibid.
19. Naomi Golkind, Interview with Amos Oz, Ha-Tzofe, May 29, 1981.
20. Bassok, Le-yofi nisgav libo er.
21. Greenberg, Ha-gavrut ha-ola.
22. Ravikovitch, Kol Hashirim ad ko, 133–4; See an illuminating interpretation in: Tikotzky, Dahlia Ravikovitch.
23. The full name of Saladin is: An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, however, in European literature he is often called “Saladin” and in spoken Arabic as well as in Hebrew sometimes is called “Salah ad-Din”. Here I will use the two interchangeably.
24. Shalev, “Tzalbanim,” 43–44.
25. Oz, “The Specter of Saladin,” The New York Times, July 28, 2000.
26. Oz, “Falestin tzrikha li-vhor [Palestine Must Choose],” Yediot Aharonot, August 8, 2000.
27. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape.
28. Yeshurun, Eikh asita et ze?, 189–228.
29. Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, 58.
30. Oz, Judas, 149.
31. Oz, “Netzigo shel Yeshu megi’a le-Yerushalaim [Jesus’s Deputy comes to Jerusalem],” Be-etzem yesh kan shtei milhamot, 65.
32. Ibid., 64–65.
33. Flusser, Yeshu; see also Rosenzweig’s discussion in “Atheistic Theology,” could reveal an interesting analogy between the discussions of the Protestant theologians in the 19th century and the discussions of the Israeli scholars concerning the character of Jesus, and especially the tendency to demythologize the Messiah, to view Jesus as a human being.
34. Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel.
35. Oz on Joseph Klausner, see especially: A Tale of Love and Darkness, 58.
36. Oz and Oz-Salzberger, Jews and Words.
37. Oz, Dear Zealots, 44.
38. Oz, How to Cure a Zealot, 49; Thirty-three years before the publication of Dear Zealots, in a fascinating meeting that has not been previously recorded with the Dominican Father and philosopher Marcel Dubois, Oz went up to him and said, “I once said ironically that the first university in the world that opened a department of comparative zealotry should turn to me and ask me to be the first professor. I think I am qualified. Forgive me my lack of modesty. I am acquainted with zealotry. It is perhaps my luck that I have experienced more than one zealotry. After you have experienced two, you are inoculated.” Apart from the anecdotal interest, one can already see in the young Oz his mature outlook concerning political zealotry. I wish to thank Professor Avraham Shapira for bringing this conversation to my notice. “A Conversation between Amoz Oz and Marcel Dubois,” Avraham Shapira’s private archives.
39. Oz, How to Cure a Zealot.
40. Oz, “Kol ha-hesbon od lo nigmar [Until All Accounts Have Been Settled],” Lecture at the Tel-Aviv University, June 3, 2018.
41. Oz, Me-moradot ha-Levanon, 196.
42. Ibid., 196–7.
43. Ibid., 197–8.
44. Oz, Kol ha-tikvot, 10–11.
45. Oz, Me-moradot ha-Levanon, 116.
46. Ibid., 117.
47. Ibid., 195.
48. Oz, Dear Zealots, 82.
49. Ibid., 89.
50. Ibid., 96.
51. Oz, Dear Zealots, 131.
52. Dov Schwartz, Religious Zionism; Aran, Kookism.
53. Jacob L. Talmon, “Dmuta shel Yisrael be-tfutzot ha-olam [Israel’s Image in the World],” address by Talmon at the Ma’ariv symposium, January 9, 1970.
54. Howe, “Interview with Gershom Scholem.”
55. Zeev Gallili, “Meshihiyut, tziyonut, ve-anarkhiya ba-lashon,” 58.
56. Oz and Salzberger-Oz, Jews and Words, 177.
57. Brinker, Ha-safrut ha-ivrit.
58. Ohana, The Intellectual Origins of Modernity, London 2019.
59. Ohana, “The Israeli Identity and the Canaanite Option.”
60. Haim Be’er, “Gush Emunim: ‘Can’anim’ ha-menihim tefillin [Gush Emunim: Canaanites who Wear Phylacteries],” Davar, October 15, 1982.
61. Shapira, “Le’an halkha shlilat ha-galut?” 22.
62. Ya’akovi, Eretz ahat ve-shnei amim ba, 104.
63. Diamond, Homeland or Holy Land?
64. Oz, Under this Blazing Light, 85.
65. Samuel Hugo Bergman, “Al itzuv dmut ha-uma be-medinateynu [On the Formation of the Nation’s Character in Our State],” Ha-Poel Ha-Tzair, vols. 26–27, April 10, 1949.
66. Oz, Under this Blazing Light, 88.
67. Yehoshua, “Be-khol zot mahapekha [Nevertheless, A Revolution],” 59.
68. See note 36 above.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David Ohana
David Ohana is a Emeritus Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and a life member at the Clare Hall College,Cambridge. He studies Intellectual Modern European History and Israel studies. His many books include: The Origins of Israeli Mythology (Cambridge U.P.), and most recently The Fascist Temptation (Routledge 2021).