Learning to be seen: the depiction of encounters between Israeli and newcomer children in children’s literature

Abstract

Books written for and about children may serve to convey central cultural tenets to new members of society. This paper looks at the depiction of encounters between newcomer and locally born children in contemporary Hebrew literature aimed at teenage readers and presents the major resources and practices by means of which the newcomer protagonists are portrayed as coming to find their place in the new society. The paper suggests that, rather than introducing Israeli‐born readers to newcomer cultures, as might be expected in the current ideological climate of cultural pluralism, these books serve as a means of conveying to children and young people socially sanctioned modes of coming to belong to Israeli society.

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank colleagues at the research group on Immigration and Identity at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute for their comments on this paper. The research group, under the thoughtful guidance of Tamar Rapoport and Edna Lomsky‐Feder, is an unusual blend of intellectual challenge and conviviality.

Notes

1. For an overview of Hebrew and Israeli children’s literature, see Shavit (1996).

2. This selection is based on the collection of children’s literature at the Haifa University Library, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the country.

3. This compares with approximately 27 books published from 1948 to 1984. It is our view that the increase over the last two decades reflects not only a general upward trend in the publication of children’s literature in general (see Eccleshare, 1991 on the dramatic increase in the publication of children’s books in the UK) as well as in Israel, and particularly of locally produced Hebrew children’s literature rather than translations (Shavit, 1996), but also an increased interest in the topic of immigration and immigrants.

4. Books excluded from our analysis include those which focus on stories of newcomers in previous decades, non‐fiction books that provide factual accounts of the immigration to Israel, and adventure stories in which a newcomer is a member of a group of Israeli children. This latter category is interesting in so far as it perhaps indicates a process whereby newcomer children are taken for granted and hence ‘unmarked’ as a special category.

5. See Ben‐Ezer (2002) on the importance of the story of the journey for Jews of Ethiopian origin in Israel.

6. In 2001, for instance, a school in Tel Aviv among whose pupils was a large percentage of immigrant children from the former Soviet Union made the headlines when 16 of its pupils were killed in a suicide bomb attack in a local discotheque frequented by Russian youth. Following this incident, the huge donations that flowed to the school were used to improve its facilities, and ties were established between the school and Jewish communities in the US (see Resnick, unpublished paper).

7. On violence and death in children’s literature in general, see Inglis (1981, p. 271–291).

8. For the implications of this authorship for questions of cultural authenticity, see the collection of essays edited by Fox and Short 2003.

9. In these stories, the only adults who provide vital help to the children in finding their place are three grandmothers (The Patchwork Coat; The Rainbow Girl; The Stranger with the Camera).