New Article: Szobel, Prostitution, Power and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature

Szobel, Ilana. “‘Lights in the Darkness’: Prostitution, Power and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature.” Prooftexts 34.2 (2015): 170-206.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/prooftexts/v034/34.2.szobel.html

 

Abstract

This article explores the juxtaposition of prostitution, masculinity, and nationalism in the works of Hebrew writers at the beginning of the twentieth century. By discussing the psycho-poetical elements that underlie David Vogel’s depiction of prostitution and the ideological elements in Gershon Shofman’s work, and by exposing their dialogue with Hayim Nahman Bialik, this project explores power, vulnerability, gender, sexuality, and nationalism in Hebrew literature of the first half of the twentieth century.

My study argues that the trope of the prostitute enables writers of early Hebrew literature to negotiate questions of strength and weakness in the Jewish world. Although Bialik’s option of sovereign masculinity became the norm for the Zionist discourse, Shofman, Vogel, Brenner, Reuveni and others expressed different perceptions of gender and power. Hence, in order to understand the intensity of the poetic, national, and gendered dilemmas and struggles of this generation, this study offers to listen not only to their concepts of revival, renewal and empowerment, but also to their expressions of weakness, frustration, loss, anger and aggression.

 

 

New Article: Hollander, Zionism, Masculinity, and Sexuality in Reuveni’s ‘Ad Yerushalayim

Hollander, Philip. “Rereading ‘Decadent’ Palestinian Hebrew Literature: The Intersection of Zionism, Masculinity, and Sexuality in Aharon Reuveni’s ‘Ad Yerushalayim.” AJS Review 39.1 (2015): 3-26.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0364009414000622

 

Abstract

This article asserts that politics motivated Aharon Reuveni to employ representations of psychic fragmentation and dysfunctional social institutions to portray Palestinian Jewish life in his novelistic trilogy ‘Ad Yerushalayim. These purportedly decadent representations helped him foreground individual and collective flaws he saw limiting the early twentieth-century Palestinian Jewish community’s development and promote norms he saw as conducive to growth. Thus, as examination of the trilogy’s central male figures demonstrates, Reuveni advances a Zionist masculinity grounded in introspectiveness and ongoing commitment to the achievement of communally shared goals. To further support this Zionist masculine form, the trilogy categorizes men who pursue homosocial ties with others who don’t maintain this masculinity as homosexuals. Thus gender and sexuality are used to coerce male readers into adopting specific behavioral norms. This attention to gender and sexuality’s role in early twentieth-century Palestinian Hebrew fiction offers a way to grasp its long-overlooked political character.

 

Cite: Siegel, Rape and the ‘Arab Question’ in Arieli & Reuveni

Siegel, Andrea. “Rape and the ‘Arab Question’ in L.A. Arieli’s Allah Karim! and Aharon Reuveni’s Devastation.” Nashim 23 (2012): 110-128.

 

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/nashim.23.110

 

Abstract

The image of the New Woman in early Zionist literature is at present an understudied field, though there have been significant advances in recent years. This article brings together the “Woman Question” and the “Arab Question” in Zionist thought prior to the 1929 Arab riots in Palestine. When reading concurrently for race and gender, the import of rape surfaces as a trope in two of the most significant Hebrew literary works relating to the Arab Question: L.A. Arieli’s drama Allah Karim! (1912) and Aharon Reuveni’s novel Devastation (1925).

Arguably, Zionist writers carried to Palestine a deep concern about rape from the east European pogroms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and projected this concern onto the Arab male foe. In their writings, the pioneer Zionist man’s own sexual urges (whether enervated or unruly) are put to the test: Can he properly channel his virility as he prepares to battle the Arab foe? Within this tension, I highlight how Jewish women’s roles are both controversial and pivotal in the narratives.