Thesis: Melamed, Israeli Homemade Video Memorials and the Politics of Loss

Melamed, Laliv. Sovereign Intimacy: Israeli Homemade Video Memorials and the Politics of Loss, PhD dissertation. New York: New York University, 2015.
 
URL: http://gradworks.umi.com/37/40/3740826.html
 
Abstract

Sovereign Intimacy takes as its subject of investigation video memorialization of dead Israeli soldiers done by their close family and friends. Mixing private loss, home-made video production, military conduct, state politics, and an institutionalized commemoration, it redraws the affinities between affective intimacy and forms of governing. It delineates the reshaping of sovereignty by filial relationships, video practicing and aesthetics, state and military administration of death and mass media. Sovereign Intimacy inquires into the political currencies of mourning and loss.

The videos respond to an event triggered by operations of state violence—figured by military power—with a personal lamenting of the breaking of intimate ties. These videos are made by the family and for the family, through amateur and semi-amateur modes of production. Although they were meant to be privately circulated, this phenomenon emerged in tandem to the videos being broadcast on television during the events of the National Memorial Day.

Home-made video memorials become a standard of Israeli memorialization during the 1990s. Largely the result of waning public support of the Israeli occupation of the south of Lebanon, and of a growing disavowal of state authority, the phenomenon represented a potential challenge to hegemonic narratives and aesthetic forms, through the appropriation of memory and means of production. However, it did not make way to a new political voice to emerge. Instead, these videos emotionalized violence and victimized its deliverers. Furthermore, the broadcasting of the videos on television—allegedly as a tribute to the families, a communal gesture of listening and a call for solidarity—participated in a national economy of death in which the lives of Lebanese, Palestinians and marginalized people within Israeli society had no value. Lastly, the phenomenon of memorial videos normalized the growing militarization of civil society and neutralized any call for political action.

 

 

 

New Article: Wright, The Ethico-Politics of Love and Mourning in Jewish Israeli Solidarity Activism

Wright, Fiona. “Palestine, My Love: The Ethico-Politics of Love and Mourning in Jewish Israeli Solidarity Activism.” American Ethnologist 43.1 (2016): 130-43.
 
URL: dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12268
 
Abstract

Jewish Israeli left-wing activists engage in a subversive affective politics when they express love for, and mourn the loss of, Palestinian life. But the affects of love and mourning also bind these solidarity activists to Israeli state violence and sovereignty in various ways, entangling them in the very forms of power they aim to challenge. Loving and mourning the Palestinian Other involves an ambivalent ethics in which the activist subject objectifies the Other, and this objectification is a kind of violence that emerges in the affective becomings of solidarity activism. Activist loving and mourning thus call into question the nature of solidarity and alert us to the difficulty of ethics as troubled relations enmeshed in the violence of politics.

 

 

 

New Book: Hever, Suddenly the Sight of War

Hever, Hannan. Suddenly, the Sight of War. Violence and Nationalism in Hebrew Poetry in the 1940s. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

 

Suddenly, the Sight of War is a genealogy of Hebrew poetry written in pre-state Israel between the beginning of World War II and the War of Independence in 1948. In it, renowned literary scholar Hannan Hever sheds light on how the views and poetic practices of poets changed as they became aware of the extreme violence in Europe toward the Jews.

In dealing with the difficult topics of the Shoah, Natan Alterman’s 1944 publication of The Poems of the Ten Plagues proved pivotal. His work inspired the next generation of poets like Haim Guri, as well as detractors like Amir Gilboa. Suddenly, the Sight of War also explores the relations between the poetry of the struggle for national independence and the genre of war-reportage, uniquely prevalent at the time. Hever concludes his genealogy with a focus on the feminine reaction to the War of Independence showing how women writers such as Lea Goldberg and Yocheved Bat-Miryam subverted war poetry at the end of the 1940s. Through the work of these remarkable poets, we learn how a culture transcended seemingly unspeakable violence.

 

Table of Contents

Part I: Hebrew Symbolist Poetry During World War II
1. “The Real Has Become a Symbol”
2. The Dispute over War Poetry
3. Criticism of Nationalism Violence
4. Reading Nationalist Poetry Critically
5. Nationalism Anthologized
6. The Living-Dead in Joy of the Poor
7. Revence on a Nationalist Scale
8. Leah Goldberg Writes War Poetry
9. The Duality of the Symbolist Woman Poet
10. The Living-Dead and the Female Body
11. Amir Gilboa: Boy Poet

Part II: Historical Analogy and National Allegory During the Holocaust
12. A Surprising Moral Judgment
13. The Uncommon Stance of a Major Poet
14. Critical Reception
15. A Postnationalist Reading
16. A Symbol, Not an Allegory
17. Allegory in The Poems of the Plagues of Egypt versus Symbolism in Joy of the Poor
18. Allegory as a Nonhegemonic Stance
19. Alterman and the Memory of the Holocaust
20. The Father-Son Strategy
21. Blind Vengeance
22. Breaking the Cycle of Crime and Punishment
23. History of the Defeated

Part III: Symbols of Death in the National War for Independence
26. Return of the Hegemonic Symbol
27. The Living-Dead in the Independence War
28. Amir Gilboa and the Subversion of the Symbol
29. Gilboa versus the Metaphor of the Living-Dead
30. Poets as Reporters
31. Sorrow Petrified into Symbols
32. Hegemonic Strategies
33. From Reportage to Lyric
34. Women Write of Fallen Soldiers as Flesh and Blood
35. In the Service of National Subjectivity
36. Women and the Metaphor of the Living-Dead
37. Criticism of the Living-Dead Metaphor
38. The Authority and Power of Women
39. Popular versus Canonical Mourning
40. The Secrets and Power of Women

Conclusion
Index

 

HANNAN HEVER is the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale University. He is the author of several books, including Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon.

 

 

 

Photo essay: Levac, Eye on Israel

Levac, Alex. “Eye on Israel.” Jewish Quarterly 62.2 (2015): 18-23.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0449010X.2015.1051695

 

Excerpt

Photography is supposed to be an international language. But is it really so? My photography is extremely culture-related. Since it’s concerned with human situations, mostly, it could be misunderstood, even meaningless, to people outside Israel. Understanding culture is easier for a native.

I photograph in Israel, for the Israeli viewer. It is not that I am aware of it all the time – but it is always there, in the back of my mind. It’s the way I see. I’m directing the sharpness and irony at us, Israelis.

 
 
 
 

New Article: Barak and Leichtentritt, Ideological Meaning Making After the Loss of a Child

Barak, Adi and Ronit D. Leichtentritt. “Ideological Meaning Making After the Loss of a Child: The Case of Israeli Bereaved Parents.” Death Studies 39.6 (2015): 360-368.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2014.958626

 

Abstract

The study provides a view of ideological meaning-making processes of 10 Israelis who lost a child examining the parents’ perspectives and written public documents. The texts and interviews were analyzed using Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy. Findings indicate that bereaved parents construct conflicting ideologically oriented viewpoints: doubting and affirming the Zionist ideology; ascribing sense and senselessness to the loss; and joining the ethos but keeping personal meanings. Our conclusion is consistent with theorists who reject the notion that the human narrative should be coherently unified. We point to potential links between relational dialectics and meaning-making theory and outline implications for practice.

New Article: Possick, Grandparents’ Meaning Construction of the Loss of a Grandchild in a Terror Attack

Possick, Chaya. “Grandparents’ Meaning Construction of the Loss of a Grandchild in a Terror Attack in Israel.” Journal of Loss and Trauma 20.3 (2015): 214-28.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2013.852028

 

Abstract

This qualitative research study is based on in-depth interviews with 12 grandparents who had a grandchild killed in a terror attack in Israel. Two main categories that emerged from the data analysis were (a) loss in the personal context and (b) loss in the collective context. Each category was subdivided into two groups: first, grandparents whose grief centered on specific aspects of the painful loss of an intimate connection with the grandchild and grandparents who were directly exposed to the terror attack and whose narrative focused on the traumatic memory, and, second, grandparents who constructed their loss as part of the history of anti-Semitism and grandparents who constructed their loss as part of the Israeli narrative of the struggle for the land and the state of Israel. The article demonstrates how each type highlights a different aspect of grandparental bereavement as a result of a terror attack. Clinical implications of the findings are presented.

Seminar: Azrieli Institute Student-Faculty Seminar (Nov 26, 2014)

Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies

Student-Faculty Seminars

Join us for our first seminar of the year!

Wednesday November 26, 2014

10:30AM-12:30PM

 

Jerusalem Art History Journal. An Undergraduate eJournal: The Process and Product

– Dr. Loren Lerner, Project Director, Department of Art History

– Pata Macedo, Journal Designer, Department of Design and Computation Arts

– Israeli Archaeology in Jerusalem: National Heritage, Identity, and Partiality – Charlotte Parent

– Symbols and Motifs: Depictions of the Heavenly Realm in Mordecai Ardon’s At the Gates of Jerusalem – Valerie Gauthier

– Expressing Exile as a Shared Experience: The Work of Steve Sabella – Stéphanie Hornstein

– From the Depths of the Matrixial Sea: Reviving Loss and Memory in Contemporary Israeli Art – Braden Scot

– The Artistic Apocalypse: Three Religious Depictions of the End of Days – Amanda Charlebois

– Representations of Jesus in Early Christian Art – Samantha Wexler

 

The Benefits of International Diversification:The Case of Israel in a Nexus of Market Development, Corporate Governance and Structural Change

– Dr. Lorne Switzer, Department of Finance

Reviews: Levy, Israel’s Death Hierarchy

Levy, Yagil. Israel’s Death Hierarchy. Casualty Aversion in a Militarized Democracy. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

 

Reviews

• Lassen, Amos. “Making the Ultimate Decision.” Reviews by Amos Lassen. November 5, 2012.
• Moore, Will H. “Civilian Casualties, Democracy & Wealthy Countries.” Political Violence @ a Glance, Novemebr 5, 2012.
• Kober, Avi. “Israel’s Death Hierarchy.” Fathom. January 31, 2013.
• Benjamin, David. “Review.” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 7.2 (2013): 143-146.
• Lachmann, Richard. “Review.” Contemporary Sociology 43.2 (2014): 229-230.

New Publication: Harris and Omer-Sherman, eds., Narratives of Dissent

Harris, Rachel S. and Ranen Omer-Sherman. Narratives of Dissent. War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 2012.

 

 

 

URL: http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/narratives-dissent

The year 1978 marked Israel’s entry into Lebanon, which led to the long-term military occupation of non-sovereign territory and the long, costly war in Lebanon. In the years that followed, many Israelis found themselves alienated from the idea that their country used force only when there was no alternative, and Israeli society eventually underwent a dramatic change in attitude toward militarization and the infallibility of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). In Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture editors Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman collect nineteen essays that examine the impact of this cultural shift on Israeli visual art, music, literature, poetry, film, theatre, public broadcasting, and commemoration practices after 1978.

Divided into three thematic sections-Private and Public Spaces of Commemoration and Mourning, Poetry and Prose, and Cinema and Stage-this collection presents an exciting diversity of experiences, cultural interests, and disciplinary perspectives. From the earliest wartime writings of S. Yizhar to the global phenomenon of films such as Beaufort, Waltz with Bashir, and Lebanon, the Israeli artist’s imaginative and critical engagement with war and occupation has been informed by the catalysts of mourning, pain, and loss, often accompanied by a biting sense of irony. This book highlights many of the aesthetic narratives that have wielded the most profound impact on Israeli culture in the present day.

These works address both incremental and radical changes in individual and collective consciousness that have spread through Israeli culture in response to the persistent affliction of war. No other such volume exists in Hebrew or English. Students and teachers of Israeli studies will appreciate Narratives of Dissent.

 

 

Table of Contents (from Library of Congress)

Introduction: zionism and the culture of dissent / Ranen Omer-Sherman — Private and public spaces of commemoration and mourning — "Music of peace" at a time of war : Middle Eastern music amid the second intifada / Galeet Dardashti — Privatizing commemoration : the helicopter disaster monument and the absent state / Michael Feige — "Cyclic interruptions" : popular music on Israeli radio in times of emergency / Danny Kaplan — Consuming nostalgia : greetings cards and soldier-citizens / Noa Roei — The photographic memory of Asad Azi / Tal Ben Zvi — "We shall remember them all" : the culture of online mourning and commemoration of fallen soldiers in Israel / Liav Sade-Beck — Poetry and prose — Bereavement and breakdown : war and failed motherhood in Raya Harnik’s work / Esther Raizen — From IDF to .pdf : war poetry in the Israeli digital age / Adriana X. Jacobs — "Unveiling injustice" : Dahlia Ravikovitch’s poetry of witness / Ilana Szobel — War at home : literary engagements with the Israeli political crisis in two novels by Gabriela Avigur-Rotem / Shiri Goren — Forcing the end : apocalyptic Israeli fiction, 1971-2009 / Adam Rovner — Oh, my land, my birthplace : Lebanon war and intifada in Israeli fiction and poetry / Glenda Abramson — Vexing resistance, complicating occupation : a contrapuntal reading of Sahar Khalifeh’s wild thorns and David Grossman’s The smile of the lamb / Philip Metres — Gender, war, and zionist mythogynies : feminist trends in Israeli scholarship / Esther Fuchs — Cinema and stage — Representations of war in Israeli drama and theater / Dan Urian — From national heroes to postnational witnesses : a reconstruction of Israeli soldiers’ cinematic narratives as witnesses of history / Yael Munk — A woman’s war : The Gulf War and popular women’s culture in Israel / Rachel S. Harris — Beaufort the book, beaufort the film : Israeli militarism under attack / Yaron Peleg — Shifting manhood: masculinity and the Lebanon war in Beaufort and waltz with Bashir / Philip Hollander — List of contributors — Index.

ToC: Journal of Israeli History 31.2 (2012)

Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture

Volume 31, Issue 2, 2012

 

Articles

Political aspects of the literature of the Israeli War of Independence

Avner Holtzman
pages 191-215

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710770

 

The influence of Abba Hillel Silver’s diaspora Zionism on his decision not to immigrate to Israel

Ofer Shiff
pages 217-233

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710771

 

Creating a socialist canon for children: Lea Goldberg dictates a revolutionary dualism in labor movement children’s literature in the 1940s and 1950s

Yael Darr
pages 235-248

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710772

 

 

Funeral at the edge of a cliff: Israel bids farewell to David Ben-Gurion

Michael Feige & David Ohana
pages 249-281

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710773

Motherhood and nation: The voice of women artists in Israel’s bereavement and memorial discourse

Yael Guilat
pages 283-318

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710774

Book Reviews

 

British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915–1922: A Critical Appraisal

Asher Susser
pages 319-321

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710775

 

Evolving Nationalism: Homeland, Identity and Religion in Israel, 1925–2005

Stuart Cohen
pages 321-324

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710776

Nation and History: Israeli Historiography between Zionism and Post-Zionism

Eran Kaplan
pages 324-328

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710777

 

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Changing Women, Changing Society

Sharon Halevi
pages 328-330

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.710778

 

Miscellany

Editorial Board

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2012.734055

Cite: Hermoni and Lebel, Politicizing Memory

Hermoni, Gal and Udi Lebel. “Politicizing Memory.” Cultural Studies 26.4 (2012): 469-491.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rcus/2012/00000026/00000004/art00003

 

Abstract

This paper argues that hegemonic memorial ceremonies are typically based on the practice and discourse of de-politicization of the `Israeli condition’. Three mechanisms serve such de-politicization: rendering death meaningful; idealizing the fallen and focusing on their transcendental as opposed to their corporeal side and the sanctification of time. Ceremonies featuring these mechanisms are paradigmatic events that perpetuate the hegemonic model of bereavement in Israel. Ceremonies deviating from these practices function as an opposition to static collective memory by acting as extra-paradigmatic sites of memory (Lieux de mémoire). This paper analyzes the Hallal (Hebrew for both `fallen’ and `void’) ceremony (Tzavta Theatre, Tel Aviv, 2009), that serves as an `alternative’ Remembrance Day ceremony. Drawing on the ethnography of ceremonies, we claim that this ceremony is an extra-paradigmatic event on account of its subversion of the de-politicizing mechanisms.

New Publication: Feldman, Glory and Agony

Yael S. Feldman. Glory and Agony. Isaac’s Sacrifice and National Narrative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

 

URL: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=10659

Cite: A Visitor Book at an Israeli Commemoration Site

—————-

Noy, Chaim. "Mediation Materialized: The Semiotics of a Visitor Book at an Israeli Commemoration Site." Critical Studies in Media Communication 25,2 (2008): 175-195.

————-

This article deals with visitor books as a dynamic medium of communication, and explores how material aspects of such a book—including its physical affordances and the spatial and institutional environment in which it is located—affect its capacity to create and mediate social meaning. In line with recent studies that set out to rematerialize communication and its devices, and, more specifically, to examine writing as an embodied communicative practice, it is argued that material considerations, while frequently overlooked, constitute preconditions of communication, and are organic to semiotic processes and formative in shaping them. The data analyzed are entries in, and observations on, a visitor book located in a war commemoration museum in West Jerusalem, Israel. It is demonstrated that, within the context of a national commemoration site, the visitor book proves to be a fascinating medium of inscriptive communication which is manipulated to serve as a cultural site of nationalist participation, commitment, and performance. The article draws on sensibilities from material and technological literature in order to shed light on the ways in which individuals interact with written environments and technologies.

————

Keywords: Writing; Materiality; Affordances; Semiotics; Commemoration; Mediation, חיים נוי

URL: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a792996888