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Abstract
Culture planning should perhaps not be judged in terms of absolute failure or success. Yet the degree of its effectiveness could be measured by the symbolic profit it offers to the collective. In this paper, I test these notions with the help of peripheral popular literature that sprang up in pre-state Israel but reached the peak of its success in Israel between 1950 and 1960. Though largely ignored, in both senses of the word, this popular literature seems to have undermined the ideological basis of the “elitist” mobilized mainstream. Many of its agents remained obscure and hid behind pseudonyms, but its role in forcing the mainstream to stratify and, consequently, to participate in the “democratization” of literature is far from negligible. This essay presents parts of a project in progress on the socio-cultural aspects of this peripheral literary production and its agents, comprising interviews with small-time publishers and translators of popular literature in the 1950s–1960s.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the international workshop in honor of Itamar Even-Zohar's 40 years of scholarship, “Culture Contacts and the Making of Cultures”, 8 January 2008.
Notes
1. I do not use the term “Sabra ideology”, for at best the term would have to be “ideologies”.
2. As opposed to the Old Jew, negatively associated with the Diaspora, the New Jew or New Hebrew was supposed to be physically strong, masculine, proud and productive.
3. A list of the American bestsellers rejected by the mainstream in the 1950s and 1960s would include famous titles such as Steinbeck's East of Eden, Shaw's Young Lions, Wouk's Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar, Jones's From Here to Eternity, MacLean's Guns of Navarone, Metalious's Peyton Place and, possibly the greatest bestseller, Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. In some cases, the mainstream did accept “cleaner” novels written by the selfsame authors (MacLean's HMS Ulysses), especially novels of socialist hue (Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath).
4. The British Mandatory Rule infuriated the Jewish population of Palestine by issuing decrees, such as the “White Book” (1922, 1930, 1939), which eventually prevented Holocaust refugees from entering the country. The decrees coincided with the rise of Nazism in Europe and the closing of the immigration gates in America. The Jewish population was torn by violent conflict. While most people opted for passive resistance and sided with the British war against Nazi Germany, a minority was for terrorist measures against the British. The same conflict arose concerning the Arab revolt and terror against Jews that had recently started. The groups advocating Jewish terror (the EZEL, or Irgun Zvai Leumi, and the more extreme LEHI, Lochamei Herut Israel) did not accept the majority vote, an unforgivable act in the eyes of the leader, David Ben-Gurion. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948 with Ben-Gurion as first prime minister, he decreed that the dissidents should not be employed in any public post – especially not in education, in schools or universities.
5. Interviewed February 2006.
6. Following the British Mandatory rules, books that had been banned in England were also banned in Palestine, their status remaining the same after 1948. Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, was not fully translated into Hebrew until 1971.
7. Geographically the kibbutzim were, of course, the periphery, while the big cities were the center. Yet the Sabra ethos, and especially the New Hebrew ethos, was associated with the communal settlements, where “real Sabras” were supposed to be found.
8. Interviewed June 2006.
9. Interviewed January 2008. Unfortunately Aharon Amir passed away 28 February 2008.
10. The end of World War II produced an avalanche of American war novels translated in “peripheries” all over the world, many followed by movies.
11. Interviewed March 2006.
12. From the 1940s on, the “Canaanites” (or the Council for the Coalition of Hebrew Youth) called on Hebrew youth to disaffiliate themselves from Judaism and Zionism alike. It preached the establishment of a Hebrew identity that would bond with the Biblical-Canaanite identity of the second century BCE and be part of the Semitic neighborhood.
13. Interviewed March 2006.
14. MAPAI (Mifleget Poalei Eretz Israel) was a socialist Zionist movement, founded in 1930, which led the Yishuv along the lines of “practical Zionism” until the establishment of the state. In 1968 it was to become the core of the Labor Party.
15. Formed in 1973 by Menachem Begin's Herut party, central liberal parties and some smaller factions.
16. Both the poet Sh. Shifra, widow of Matti Shmuelevitz of Ktavim publishing, and publisher Benjamin Gepner of Ledori offered this explanation.
17. After 1967 Gilan went into exile in Paris, founded the magazine I&P (Israel and Palestine) and allegedly established contacts with Arafat at a time when this was still strictly forbidden for Israeli citizens.
18. Interviewed March 2008.
19. Reviews of pulp literature were to be found, if ever, in the then notorious Ha'olam Ha'ze magazine. In the rare case where it was mentioned in central organs such as Davar, it was referred to as “vomit pills” (see Z. Shavit Citation1998, 470).
20. The following is based on two interviews held in February 2006.