Flesh of My Flesh

Ilana Szobel

Description

Flesh of My Flesh looks at one of the most silenced and repressed aspects of Israeli culture by examining the trope of sexual violence in modern Hebrew literature. Ilana Szobel explores how sexual violence participates in, encourages, or resists concurrent ideologies in Jewish and Israeli culture, and situates the rhetoric of sexual aggression within the contexts of gender, ethnicity, disability, and national identity. Focusing on writings of incest survivors, Sepharadi authors, wounded soldiers, and Hebrew authors such as Shoshana Shababo, Gershon Shofman, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Yoram Kaniuk, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, and Tsvia Litevsky, Szobel unveils the various roles of sexual violence in destabilizing hegemonic notions or reinforcing norms and modes of conduct. Thus, while the book looks at poetic and social possibilities of action in relation to sexual violence, it also exposes the Gordian knot of sexualized gender-based violence and the interests of patriarchy, heteronormativity, nationalism, racism, and ableism.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: "A Great, Oppressive, Suffocating Blasphemy": Sexualized Violence as an Insidious Trauma

1. "Lights in the Darkness": Prostitution, Power, and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature

2. Sepharadi Jewry in Pre-State Israel: Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexual Violence in the Work of Shoshana Shababo

3. "Do Not Bandage the Wounded": Wounded Soldiers and Nonconsensual Relations in Israeli War Literature

4. "Subduing the Terrible Sound of Silence": Memoirs of Incest Survivors

5. "The Girl with the Billy-Goat's Hoof ": Parental Abuse, Metamorphosis, and Poetics in the Poetry of Tsvia Litevsky

Conclusion: "Silence Cries Out"

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438484570
• Langue: English

Extrait

Flesh of My Flesh
SUNY SERIES IN C ONTEMPORARY J EWISH L ITERATURE AND C ULTURE EZRA CAPPELL, EDITOR

Dan Shiffman, College Bound: The Pursuit of Education in Jewish American Literature, 1896–1944
Eric J. Sundquist, editor, Writing in Witness: A Holocaust Reader
Noam Pines, The Infrahuman: Animality in Modern Jewish Literature
Oded Nir, Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction
Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Queer Expectations: A Genealogy of Jewish Women’s Poetry
Richard J. Fein, translator, The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever
Victoria Aarons and Holli Levitsky, editors, New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures: Reading and Teaching
Jennifer Cazenave, An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah
Ruthie Abeliovich, Possessed Voices: Aural Remains from Modernist Hebrew Theater
Victoria Nesfield and Philip Smith, editors, The Struggle for Understanding: Elie Wiesel’s Literary Works
Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang, editors, Off the Derech: Leaving Orthodox Judaism
Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff, editors, Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making
Patrick Chura, Michael Gold: The People’s Writer
Nahma Sandrow, Yiddish Plays for Reading and Performance
Alisha Kaplan and Tobi Aaron Kahn, Qorbanot
Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan, and Julia Creet, editors Shadows in the City of Light: Images of Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing
Flesh of My Flesh
Sexual Violence in Modern Hebrew Literature
Ilana Szobel
Cover image: Step 2 , by Hilla Ben Ari, 2006. © Hilla Ben Ari.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Szobel, Ilana, author.
Title: Flesh of my flesh : sexual violence in modern Hebrew literature / Ilana Szobel.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Jewish literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043046 | ISBN 9781438484556 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484570 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hebrew literature, Modern—20th century—History and criticism. | Sex crimes in literature. | Violence in literature.
Classification: LCC PJ5012.S49 S96 2021 | DDC 892.409/3556—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043046
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
you left me with / enough of self-destructiveness / as the sole form of violence / permitted to women / with a dream of a common language / with Audre’s: Poetry is not only dream / where that language does not yet exist / it is our poetry which helps to fashion it / for women / poetry is not luxury / as if all I had to do was turn my pen into a sword / turn that sword toward out / not in / practice / the opposite of sword swallowing
—Marva Zohar, “ from marginalized notes on silence/suicide/violence”
Contents

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION “A Great, Oppressive, Suffocating Blasphemy”: Sexualized Violence as an Insidious Trauma
C HAPTER O NE “Lights in the Darkness”: Prostitution, Power, and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature
C HAPTER T WO Sepharadi Jewry in Pre-State Israel: Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexual Violence in the Work of Shoshana Shababo
C HAPTER T HREE “Do Not Bandage the Wounded”: Wounded Soldiers and Nonconsensual Relations in Israeli War Literature
C HAPTER F OUR “Subduing the Terrible Sound of Silence”: Memoirs of Incest Survivors
C HAPTER F IVE “The Girl with the Billy-Goat’s Hoof”: Parental Abuse, Metamorphosis, and Poetics in the Poetry of Tsvia Litevsky
C ONCLUSION “Silence Cries Out”
N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Acknowledgments

I would like to start by thanking my eight and ten year-old daughters, who one evening, probably after hearing me complaining about something related to this book, suggested that instead of writing this book I should write a mystery book with lots of secrets and challenging mysteries. While it was a funny suggestion, I think that to some extent I actually did accept their recommendation, and in fact wrote a kind of a mystery book. Thus, I want to also thank my readers in advance for accompanying me in this at times ambiguous journey, and for allowing me to raise questions while not really solving the mystery of sexualized gender-based violence.
I am fortunate not to have gone through this writing adventure alone. I am part of a welcoming and intellectually stimulating environment at Brandeis University. I am grateful to my brilliant colleagues in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, ChaeRan Freeze, Jonathan Decter, Eugene Sheppard, and Bernadette J. Brooten, who in various conversations provided expertise and much-needed support. I would also like to thank Gannit Ankori for countless fascinating conversations about art, trauma, gender, and resilience. Our conversations, as well as your wisdom and warmth, are interwoven throughout the book. I take great pleasure in extending my deepest gratitude to Sylvia Fuks Fried, who followed the development of the manuscript patiently, and who no matter when I arrived at her office, always listened to me calmly and gave me valuable advice in a delightful mixture of English, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
I am thankful to my Hebrew literature circle in the US, England, and Israel: Yael Feldman, Hannan Hever, Ofra Yeglin, Nitsa Kann, Mikhal Dekel, Karen Grumberg, Maya Barzilai, Orian Zakai, Adriana X. Jacobs, Tamar Hess, and Andrea Siegel. Who else but you would talk with me about unknown and forgotten Hebrew writers as if there was nothing more important in the world? A precious interlocutor was Nili Scharf Gold, who carefully read the manuscript and contributed her generous, sensitive, and unfailing literary attention and insight. I am fortunate to have had such an engaged reader.
This book was written from a feminist position and as such it could not have been written without the sympathetic ear of my smart and creative friends Michal Ben-Josef Hirsh, Kimberly Stewart, Talya Meltzer, Merav Opher, Shirly Bahar, Dana Bar-el Shwartz, Ahuva Ashman, Einat Grunfeld, and Miriam and Avi Hoffman. With each of you I laughed and cursed the world, and each and every time your wisdom and generosity enabled me to return to writing with fresh zeal and renewed vigor.
Parts of the book were written during my sabbatical leave. I want to express my gratitude to the Department of Near Eastern Studies and to the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley for hosting me during that year. I thank Ron Hassner, and especially Rebecca Golbert, for being so friendly, accommodating, and generous. This year turned out to be enchanting especially thanks to Chana Kronfeld’s hospitality. Not only did she share her peaceful office with me, but she also read excerpts of the manuscript and had an inspiring and fruitful dialogue with me about it. Many thanks also to the brilliant graduate students at the “Writing Gender in Modern Hebrew Literature” seminar we co-taught, for their comments and insights on parts of the manuscript.
The book was also deepened and developed as a result of the time I spent at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University during my research leave. I am grateful to David Stern, and especially to Irit Aharoni for her thoughtful and generous soul. Your love of Hebrew literature makes this world a better place.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of several fellowships from Brandeis University, including the Graduate Student and Faculty Research Fund, The Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies; Creativity, Art, and Social Transformation (CAST) Grant; Senior Faculty Research Leave, The School of Arts and Sciences; The Provost Innovation in Research Award; and The Theodore and Jane Norman Award for Faculty Scholarship. Two chapters have been previously published elsewhere: Chapter 5, “ ‘ The Girl with the Billy-Goat Hoof’: Parental Abuse, Metamorphosis, and Poetics in the Poetry of Tsvia Litevsky ” was originally published in Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 28 (2016): 199–227. I thank Deborah Greniman for translating it from the Hebrew. Chapter 1, “ ‘ Lights in the Darkness’: Prostitution, Power, and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature ” was originally published in Prooftexts 34: 2 (2015): 170–206. I thank each of these publishers for their generous permission to include the pieces in this book. I am also grateful to Stephen Gulley for his expert and careful feedback on the chapter about disability, and to Mikayla Zagoria-Moffet for her thorough and wise editing of the book.
This book could not have been written without the ongoing encouragement and critical feedback from Hannah Naveh, who will always remain my beloved teacher and friend. I guess it is not so common to thank her for the advices she gave me in various conversations I had with her in my mind. But it is certainly a great privilege to express gratitude to her not only for following the evolution of the manuscript chapter-by-chapter and contributing